Consider this: Barbie is a space-age recasting of a stone-age fertility totem, symbol of an ancient, enduring matriarchal faith.
Why now: The now 64 year-old doll is especially hard to ignore these days, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s relentlessly promoted Barbie movie. Her plastic face is everywhere, in high relief against blinding fuchsia backdrops.
Why it matters: If Barbie can be seen as a modern emblem of an ancient goddess faith, much about her starts to make sense. Keep reading for a look at her origins and enduring popularity.
Unlike flash-in-the-pan toys, Barbie is still going strong after 64 years. She’s especially hard to ignore these days, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s relentlessly promoted "Barbie" movie. Her plastic face is everywhere, in high relief against blinding fuchsia backdrops.
Why has Barbie now endured for more than four generations?
Many people suggest that it has to do with global brand recognition that’s on par with Coca-Cola. Others point to her responsiveness to broad social trends — yes, her novel careers and new-fangled accessories, but also new body types and ethnicities. Barbie has even challenged traditional notions of gender.
Still, others credit the low price point at which consumers can hop on the Barbie bandwagon (or Malibu beach cruiser).
There is some truth to all of these explanations. But I believe the real reason runs deeper.
Barbie as a fertility totem
Consider this instead: Barbie is a space-age recasting of a stone-age fertility totem, a symbol of an ancient, enduring matriarchal faith.
True, Barbie, with her cinched-in waist and narrow hips, is hardly a swelling Venus of Willendorf, a type of well-known goddess sculpture made in Europe almost 25,000 years ago. Yet like that prehistoric Venus, Barbie is a small, portable object. An object that nomadic peoples — or contemporary kids — can grab and cradle and carry in their hands.
There are other similarities, too. I rest much of my argument on Barbie’s itty bitty arched feet. Like Barbie, Neolithic goddess figures did not have feet; their legs tapered to prongs. To stand up, they were plunged into the earth, linking them to the Great Mother, Mother Earth, the chthonian (dark/underworld) source of their power.
Nor did all goddess figures have waistlines as wide as they were tall. Barbie, for instance, closely resembles the Cycladic idols — broad-shouldered, streamlined female figures with slender hips that were made in the Cyclades between 3000-2200 BCE, and that are believed to have functioned as objects of veneration.
Replica of Venus of Willendorf.
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Cycladic figurine replica, representative of the Cycladic civilization that developed from about 3200 - 2000 BC , in the group of Cyclades islands.
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If Barbie can be seen as a modern emblem of an ancient goddess faith, much about her starts to make sense. After all, in 1959, Barbie came first, two years before Ken, in the same way that the ancient goddess religions antedated Judeo-Christian patriarchal monotheism. Nor should it be a surprise that Barbie lives in a paradise of consumer goods; there is no garden — no Eden — from which a patriarchal God could exile her.
Likewise, with this perspective, Ken’s second-class status and genital abridgment make sense: he is a eunuch priest in a goddess cult. Per the tagline of Gerwig’s movie: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”
Barbie’s origin story
In The Barbie Tapes, a podcast I co-host with Antonia Cereijido, we delve into the origins of the Barbie we know today, the one who rates a major Hollywood film some 60 years into her time in the spotlight.
The beginning of that global fame was sparked when Ruth Handler, who was one of the co-founders of Mattel, saw a German doll known as Lilli on vacation in the late '50s.
As pieces of sculpture, the Barbie doll and the Lilli doll are almost indistinguishable. But they have very different invented personalities.
An advertisement published in the author's 2004 book "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll."
Lilli was based on a comic character in the Bild-Zeitung, kind of a downscale German tabloid newspaper, like The National Enquirer. In the single-panel comics, Lilli is essentially always seen taking money from jowly fat cats for sexual favors.
The emblematic cartoon, is one of Lilli completely naked, holding up a newspaper — a tabloid — to cover her naked body. She's in the apartment of a female friend and she says to the friend something along the lines of “We had a fight, and he took back all his presents.”
That gives you a sense of how Lilli operated in the world.
Handler brings back the doll and shares it with Jack Ryan, a Yale-educated engineer who worked on the Sparrow and Hawk missiles and whom Mattel had hired to do engineering work. He takes it to Japan, where he assists other members of Mattel’s design team in finding someone to make a copy of it
Ultimately those invented personalities — Barbie versus Lilli — were very different, but, you know, a woman in the 1950s had to be the wholesome milkshake-drinking girl next door and — I search for euphemisms — also have the body of a German sex worker.
Barbie as goddess
Greta Gerwig poses on the pink carpet upon arrival for the European premiere of "Barbie" in London on July 12.
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Gerwig, in fact, seems to have homed in on the goddess aspect of Barbie’s identity. In the film, Barbie leaves her idyllic Olympian toy world for the terrestrial one inhabited by humans. This is a familiar trope in mythology. Consider the mess the Greek goddess Athena made meddling in human affairs, not the least of which was causing the Trojan war. (Because Barbie has no navel, she reminds me of Athena. Neither were of women born.)
The hero’s journey of discovery is also a trope in fairy tales. In "The Little Mermaid," Ariel cuts a deal with a treacherous witch to incarnate as a person. She swaps her fish tail for legs and relinquishes her voice — an unfortunate exchange that imperils the very transformation she seeks.
I realize there is a tongue-in-cheek, ivory-tower quality to the idea of Barbie as an ancient feminine archetype. Yet Barbie's first marketers, an unabashedly cynical bunch, relied heavily on the idea of unconscious motivations — and pervasive archetypes — to construct their advertising campaigns.
What a Freudian psychoanalyst had to do with Barbie’s success
Ernest Dichter, a real Viennese Freudian psychoanalyst, revolutionized U.S. marketing in the 1950s and 60s. He analyzed consumers' deep-seated fears and needs, then exploited those fears and needs to sell products. In Getting Motivated, his 1979 memoir, Dichter admitted that in marketing, his “knowledge of mythology came in handy.”
The first sales strategy for Barbie came out of the focus-group research Mattel had commissioned from, yes, Dichter himself.
Not only could Dichter identify people’s unconscious drives, he also saw the ugly social order as it was, not as people may have wanted it to be. His crafty strategy to sell Barbie, however, had less to do with her underlying identity and more to do with the second-class status of real-life women. In the 1950s and 60s, women could not buy property or open a checking account without the sponsorship of a husband or father. This meant that men, in those days, were essentially meal tickets.
During Dichter’s Barbie focus groups, the cunning psychoanalyst saw how dead-set most mothers were against the doll: one referred to her as an over-sexed “daddy doll.” But when a rough tomboy told her mother that Barbie looked “well-groomed,” the mother softened toward the doll.
This, Dichter realized, was a way to position Barbie. Better her daughter should learn to snare a man in a sleazy way than not be able to snare one at all.
What this has to do with the new ‘Barbie’ film
Over Barbie’s six decades of doll dominance, she’s inhabited a toy ecosystem now fully realized on the big screen in Gerwig’s relentlessly marketed film.
Gerwig’s costumes and settings that are often direct quotations from real outfits and playsets that the director herself, age 39, would have encountered in childhood.
Barbie drives the cars, not Ken. Barbie owns the dream houses, not Ken. Barbie is the empowered figure, and Ken, if not literally a eunuch priest, is very much her subordinate.
It is, of course, a fantasy world — and a world that entices viewers through nostalgia. It is also world of exaggeration, of “camp,” a world that is artificial, and defiant in its flirtation with kitsch. Camp is ironic. It presents a world of objects surrounded by air quotes — a world not of lamps but “lamps.”
Viewers will have to determine how well Barbie survives a harsh human world that is still very much controlled by men. I want that archetypal feminine essence to prevail. I hope she emerges as a goddess, not merely a "goddess."
Of course, Ruth Handler once dismissed the goddess idea as "baloney." That said, the designers who crafted the doll did not.
Most were well-schooled in visual art and understood its metaphorical underpinnings. In the 1990s, I asked Aldo Favilli, Mattel's chief of sculpture since 1972 and a former sculpture restorer at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, about the idea of Barbie-as-goddess.
His judicious reply: "I've heard that said."
Listen to our podcast "The Barbie Tapes"
About the author
M. G. Lord is a cultural critic and investigative journalist. She is the author of the widely praised books Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science, a family memoir about Cold War aerospace culture, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll and The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice. A graduate of Yale, Lord was for twelve years a syndicated political cartoonist and columnist based at Newsday. Lord is an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California.
Researchers are dipping into a new field of study called "smoke ecology." The goal is to understand how the smoke billowing off of wildfires may be disturbing wild places and creatures — and whether anything can be done to prevent possible harm.
Why it matters: Toxic smoke from fires is an increasingly common problem, even in places untouched by flames. Fire season is starting earlier, lasting later, burning more land — and as a result, producing far more smoke.
The backstory: Birds are especially sensitive to smoke in large part because of how they breathe. A human being has soft lungs that allow inhalation and exhalation of air. By contrast, birds have rigid lungs surrounded by a collection of air sacs that act like bellows, pushing air continuously through the system.
Olivia Sanderfoot stands on a flower-freckled hillside in Amherst in Western Massachusetts. She listens for a moment — and a volley of birdsong flutters forth.
An Eastern Wood-Pewee. A goldfinch. A downy woodpecker.
"It's just magical," she says with an air of reverence. There are birds foraging among the flowers. Fluffy fledglings are darting about, learning the ways of the world.
"Every day that I get to start birding is a good day," she says. "If you want to get the widest range of species and hear the most songs, you want to be out here in the morning."
For new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines, follow NPR’s Short Wave podcast.
Sanderfoot, a global change ecologist at Cornell University, knows that for the birds that live here, not every morning is this idyllic. Over the summer, this area was suffused with toxic smoke from distant wildfires in Canada. It's an increasingly common problem, even in places untouched by flames. Fire season is starting earlier, lasting later, burning more land — and as a result, producing far more smoke.
"Smoke can blow hundreds to thousands of miles away from that burn site," Sanderfoot explains. "That means that the footprint of a smoke event greatly exceeds that of any fire. How do birds deal with that?"
This is the central question animating Sanderfoot's desire to form a new field of study called "smoke ecology." The goal, she says, is to understand how the smoke billowing off of wildfires may be disturbing wild places and creatures — and whether anything can be done to prevent possible harm.
Air today, gone tomorrow
Sanderfoot's curiosity about how birds cope with smoke emerged in 2018 when she was living in Seattle and wildfires blazed in Eastern Washington. "The air smelled acrid," she recalls. "The city was just blanketed in this sickly yellow, gray haze."
She was told it was a one-time event — yet the same thing happened two years later.
"I remember walking outside and my eyes were just burning," Sanderfoot says. "And I thought, 'What on earth are animals doing? Are they OK?'"
An adult bluebird sits atop a nesting box containing its chicks at the Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary.
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Very little was known apart from anecdotes — like the absence of birdsong or the arrival of droves of birds to a backyard, famished and parched.
"Smoke is a toxic soup of substances," she says. "It's not just about what [birds are] inhaling, which is inevitably bad for them. It's also about how the cues that they use to navigate their world are upended when it gets smoky outside."
To puzzle out what was going on, Sanderfoot realized that she needed to collaborate with researchers from a range of other disciplines, including conservation biology, statistics, ecophysiology and atmospheric chemistry.
"Real-world problems don't map cleanly onto the same academic silos that have been set up for decades," says Tracey Holloway, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the lead of NASA's Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team, and a colleague of Sanderfoot's. "We need to be tackling new problems with new partnerships."
For instance, in order to understand what birds are inhaling, one has to know what's moving through the air in time and three-dimensional space. "It depends on which way the winds are blowing," says Holloway, "what chemical processes are happening in the air, and also patterns of rainfall and where the emissions are coming from." The science depends on air quality monitoring, satellite data, and evermore sophisticated computer modeling.
Birds are especially sensitive to smoke in large part because of how they breathe. A human being has soft lungs that allow inhalation and exhalation of air. By contrast, birds have rigid lungs surrounded by a collection of air sacs that act like bellows, pushing air continuously through the system.
"This allows birds to take up about twice as much oxygen with each breath that they inhale compared to us," says Sanderfoot. "This means that they're vulnerable to all the other things that are in the air, too."
Morgan Tingley, an ecologist at UCLA, is another member of the burgeoning smoke ecology cohort. "What we're trying to do is getting smoke to be recognized as a disturbance in and of itself distinct from fire that is worthy of our concentrated attention," he says.
For much of his career, Tingley has studied wildfires — events with a clear start and stop, and defined borders. But the smoke produced by those wildfires can present its own unique set of problems, as it can spread far from the original blaze.
"Smoke is extremely hard to predict and it's highly variable," he says. "It can be there one day, one hour, and gone the next. Which means that it's hard to actually disentangle what its impacts are because you can't really control it."
This means that it's not possible to anticipate where smoke will appear, or when. Scientists also prefer not to subject animals to smoke intentionally.
So when it comes to studying wildfire smoke and birds, the trick is to gather data everywhere. To do so, the researchers rely on legions of amateur birders and professional conservationists and ornithologists across the country who are already on the ground collecting data when smoke happens to blow in.
Big army, little birds
One such individual is Pam Sowizral, the bird project coordinator at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln outside of Boston. On a sunny morning in late August, she walks up to a bluebird nest box and gently raps on the outside.
Pam Sowizral is one of the legions of birders and conservationists across the country who are already on the ground collecting data about birds when smoke happens to blow in.
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"Always give a little knock first," she advises quietly. "Let them know you're coming." When she lifts the side panel, she reveals two feathery puffballs huddled on a bed of pine needles. These baby bluebirds are the last of the season here.
Sowizral says that nearly every year for the last 20 years, three times a week in spring and summer, she and her volunteers check the bird boxes here and count the nests and the eggs and how many chicks fledge. They check when the weather's good, when it's bad (within reason) — and when the smoke rolls in.
"Those periods of time when the smoke was here, the air somehow felt a little different," she says. But "that didn't stop us from doing our usual monitoring of our boxes."
That's key. Nationally, counts like this one, which is part of Cornell University's NestWatch project, provide a portrait of bird activity and behavior before, during and after smoke events.
Two feathery puffballs huddle on a bed of pine needles in a nesting box. These baby bluebirds are the last of the season.
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Sanderfoot of Cornell University says she's using these kinds of observations, alongside observations of breeding behavior, to help her understand how birds are coping with wildfire smoke in a variety of places.
She's revealed three distinct strategies, depending on the species and the individual birds. They either hunker down and stay put, fly away, or shift their behavior — by not vocalizing as much or venturing out less often, say.
"This could be an attempt to mitigate their exposure," says Sanderfoot. "It might also be how they are forced to respond if they feel unwell."
In addition, she and her colleagues have observed that repeated exposure to smoke appears to impair the body condition of a variety of birds, leading to lower weight overall.
"They all respond in different ways," she says. "And we need to figure out what those ways are and how effective they are in order to design effective conservation strategies for a rapidly changing world."
This is one of Sanderfoot's top priorities: determining what might constitute what she calls smoke refugia for birds — safer spots where they can hunker down until conditions improve. "I want to know where birds are going when it's smoky," she says, "what resources they're seeking out, and what we could provide to help them during a risky time" — like water and perhaps shelter or food.
"I would like to be able to give people something they can do to help," she says.
Sanderfoot's personal experience with wildfires didn't end in Seattle. "I almost feel like the smoke is following me," she says.
In early 2025, she and her family fled the fires in Los Angeles, where they were living at the time. And this summer, she watched as a blanket of smoke descended upon parts of the U.S., including Ithaca, where she lives now, blowing off the remote Canadian infernos. She says she doesn't think it's a coincidence.
"Let's put it this way," she says: "We can expect that the future will be smokier."
It's a fact that's true for birds and people, which means that what Sanderfoot and her colleagues learn about smoke ecology may reveal a clearer way forward — for us all.
"By learning more about birds," she says, "I think we might learn something about how we can take care of ourselves and each other."
The Be Well campus in the city of Orange has 60,000 square feet of space.
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Topline:
Orange County has ended its relationship with its main mental health partner, Mind OC, which does business as Be Well. Officials announced the split Tuesday as part of a legal settlement with the nonprofit.
Why it matters: The settlement means Orange County’s Health Care Agency will now have full control over the county’s Be Well mental health campuses in Orange and Irvine. The opening of the Irvine campus had been delayed because of the dispute.
The legal dispute: The county filed a lawsuit in March accusing Mind OC, commonly known as Be Well OC, of squandering more than $60 million in public funds. The nonprofit had previously accused the county of violating its lease agreement for the Orange campus.
What happens next: Clinical providers and teams are gearing up to begin services at the Irvine campus as soon as possible, the county said in a news release. Patients can expect a full rebranding of both campuses from the Be Well OC name to a new brand name and design.
Background: A damning audit in 2024 found the organization failed to ensure proper staffing and effective outcomes of key services. LAist also reported in 2004 that Mind OC used taxpayer money to pay a person close to disgraced former Supervisor Andrew Do for work that was never completed.
Officials weigh-in: “We are proud to have built two state-of-the-art campuses for behavioral health services in Orange County. We look forward to continuing our mission and serving Orange County residents,” Dr. Richard Afable, board chairman of Mind OC, said in a statement.
“We finally secured the keys and can open the Irvine campus so children and families facing a behavioral health crisis get the care they need closer to home,” Supervisor Katrina Foley wrote in a statement.
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Jones Cheng, 5, and his brother Reggie, 4, sit on a barrier on the 6th Street Bridge during CicLAvia on Oct. 15, 2023.
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Topline:
This Sunday, Oct. 11, a 6.5-mile stretch of road will be closed to cars from Mariachi Plaza to Echo Park for CicLAvia Heart of L.A.
When is it and what can I expect? CicLAvia Heart of L.A. will take place Sunday, Oct. 11 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Participants can expect to see local gems along the route, restaurants and vendors, and event hubs featuring activations and water refill stations.
Parking and transportation: No street parking is allowed along the CicLAvia route from 1 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Driveways along the route will also be inaccessible from 7 a.m. to approximately 6 p.m. on Sunday, so be sure to plan ahead and move your car before 7 a.m. if you need to use it.
Read on... for more on road closures, parking, and where to find our partners Boyle Heights Beat and The LA Local at CicLAvia.
Despite an intense heat wave scorching Southern California this week, temperatures will begin to cool, just in time to enjoy car-free streets in Boyle Heights for CicLAvia this weekend.
On Sunday, Oct. 11, a 6.5-mile stretch of road will be closed to cars from Mariachi Plaza to Echo Park for CicLAvia’s Heart of L.A., encouraging residents to enjoy open streets in their neighborhood. This year, Boyle Heights Beat and The LA Local will be tabling at CicLAvia to share more about our community-centered reporting.
Whether you choose to walk, run, or roll, be sure to enjoy the fresh air, drink plenty of water, and wear sunscreen (and don’t forget your helmet if you’re on wheels!).
Here’s what to know about street closures, local gems to explore across the neighborhoods and how to get reimbursed for parking.
Cyclists and pedestrians head down 1st Street during CicLAvia on Oct. 15, 2023.
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When is it and what can I expect?
CicLAvia Heart of LA will take place Sunday, Oct. 11 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Participants can expect to see local gems along the route, restaurants and vendors, and event hubs featuring activations and water refill stations.
What is the route?
The route spans 6.5 miles through Boyle Heights, the Arts District, Little Tokyo, Downtown, Chinatown and Echo Park.
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What kind of vehicles are allowed at the event?
Only people-powered vehicles are allowed, including bikes, scooters, skateboards, and rollerblades.
Motorized wheelchairs and mobility devices for people with disabilities are allowed. E-bikes are allowed with some restrictions. See the full guidelines here.
What streets in Boyle Heights will be affected?
Stretches of 1st Street, St. Louis Street, Boyle Avenue, Whittier Boulevard and the 6th Street Bridge will all be closed to car traffic. Check out the full event map here.
Street closures will begin as early as 4 a.m. on the day of the event. Streets are expected to reopen by 6 p.m.
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Parking and transportation
No street parking is allowed along the CicLAvia route from 1 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Driveways along the route will also be inaccessible from 7 a.m. to approximately 6 p.m. on Sunday, so be sure to plan ahead and move your car before 7 a.m. if you need to use it.
According to the CicLAvia website, cars will be towed if they are parked along the event route.
If you live or work directly on the route, CicLAvia says you may be reimbursed up to $20 per vehicle for any parking costs incurred from 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10 through 6 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11.
To request reimbursement:
Email a copy of your parking receipt and proof of residence or employment to info@ciclavia.org with the subject line “Parking Reimbursement.”
Reimbursement requests must be submitted within 30 days of the event date.
All buses that usually run along the CicLAvia route will be detoured on the day of the event. A full list of bus detours can be found here.
In Boyle Heights, these Metro stations are located less than half a mile from the route:
Be sure to check out a range of event hubs, local gems, shops and restaurants along the route using this interactive map. And come say hi to the Boyle Heights Beat team—we will be stationed at the Mariachi Plaza Hub from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
President Donald Trump is seen before speaking during a campaign rally in Nebraska, on Oct. 5, 2026.
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Kent Nishimura
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
The White House clarified Donald Trump's comments at a Monday night rally, explaining that the president was not insinuating that he wanted Iran to attack U.S. cities but instead wants to prevent Tehran from having that capability.
What happened: Trump was discussing the Iran war and the resulting high gas prices that have become a midterm liability for Republicans during his remarks in Nebraska when he mentioned the possibility of an Iranian attack on U.S. soil. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” he said of the war and its economic fallout. “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
The context: The commentary, including Trump's casual mention of the two California cities, was delivered in the familiar meandering style that he uses at campaign rallies, when he speaks for extended periods — often an hour or more — and is only occasionally following prepared remarks on a teleprompter.
Pushback: His comments were condemned on social media by lawmakers in California, including the governor, and L.A. and San Diego mayors. At least one Republican politician also pushed back, saying “no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”
The White House clarified Donald Trump's comments at a Monday night rally, explaining that the president was not insinuating that he wanted Iran to attack U.S. cities but instead wants to prevent Tehran from having that capability.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on social media Tuesday that the president's comments have been misunderstood and misrepresented in a “media freakout” that is “not rooted in reality.”
Trump was discussing the Iran war and the resulting high gas prices that have become a midterm liability for Republicans during his remarks in Nebraska when he mentioned the possibility of an Iranian attack on U.S. soil.
“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” he said of the war and its economic fallout. “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
The commentary, including Trump's casual mention of the two California cities, was delivered in the familiar meandering style that he uses at campaign rallies, when he speaks for extended periods — often an hour or more — and is only occasionally following prepared remarks on a teleprompter.
Critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, seized on his statements. The governor, a Democrat who could run for president in 2028, called Trump “deranged and dangerous” for, in Newsom's framing, “saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego.”
Cheung, in his response Tuesday, said it was obvious that Trump was not calling for such an attack.
“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” he said. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President.”
Cheung added that Iran “has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”
Still, at least one Republican politician shared Newsom’s interpretation.
“As a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war,” Jim Desmond, the Republican congressional nominee in a metro San Diego district, wrote on social media, adding that “no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”
Trump has often criticized U.S. cities as he campaigns, especially the largest areas that lean heavily Democratic. At a recent North Carolina rally, he described the state's cities as “blood-soaked killing fields.” North Carolina's violent crime rate ranks in the middle third of states, according to FBI statistics.
Iran has said that it’s not pursuing nuclear weapons, but has enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels that have no civilian purpose.
