Congress is expected to vote Thursday on an emergency funding bill of $659 million for border security. Then, we’ll check in with a reporter to find out who the 100 individuals are who paid $5,000-a-person to help finance Brown’s trip and form the delegation that traveled with him. Also, an American doctor is in grave condition in the West African country of Liberia after contracting the Ebola virus. Finally, does language shape the way we think?
House GOP set to unveil border funding bill
Congress is expected to vote Thursday on an emergency funding bill of $659 million for border security. Crafted by House Republicans, the package has yet to be unveiled, but is said to fund a National Guard troop deployment to the Mexican border and speed the return of minors to Central America. The most recent request for a similar measure from President Barack Obama was pegged at $3.7 billion. Last week's GOP plan was priced at $1.5 billion.
What allocations would be stripped from the latest bill? What would the more limited spending measure mean for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? If the bill does not receive Senate support, what comes next?
Guests:
Fawn Johnson, Congressional correspondent, National Journal
Alan Gomez, Immigration reporter based in Miami, USA Today
Everything you need to know about Gov. Jerry Brown’s trip to Mexico
Governor Jerry Brown is wrapping up his Mexico tour, where he’s been talking trade, attempting to boost tourism, and making waves with jabs at Texas governor Rick Perry’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to the border. We’ll check in with a reporter who’s been on the trip with Governor Brown and we’ll also find out who the 100 individuals are who paid $5,000-a-person to help finance Brown’s trip and form the delegation that traveled with him.
Guests:
Dan Walters, Columnist, Sacramento Bee
Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times reporter traveling with the governor
Will latest USC death deter China from sending its students abroad?
The Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles issued a statement asking authorities to take more measures in protecting Chinese students in the United States following the death of 24-year-old Xinran Ji, who was killed near his USC apartment early Thursday.
Ji is the latest victim of violence at USC, following two other Chinese graduate students who were gunned down two years ago near the campus. Six month later, a gunman opened fire at a Halloween party near the university.
The consulate has reminded students “to be more alert and take further protection steps.” However, 40% of the international student body comes from China, composing one of the largest percentages of any campus in the country. Will this latest act of violence deter enrollment from Chinese students to USC? How can USC meet the consulate’s demands to make the campus safer?
Guests:
Daniel Deng, a lawyer based in Rosemead, California. He represented the parents of Ming Qu and Ying Wu – the two Chinese graduate students who were shot to death in their car in 2012. Deng is now working with the parents of Xinran Ji, who was killed outside his apartment complex last week, to secure their visas to come to the US.
David Carlisle, Deputy Chief of the Department of Public Safety at USC
Kate Mather, LA Times staff writer covering crime and breaking news
Ebola outbreak vexes Nigerian officials; infects first Americans
An American doctor is in grave condition in the West African country of Liberia after contracting the Ebola virus.
Dr. Kent Brantly's mother, Jan Brantly, says her 33-year old son was exhausted after months of treating patients with the deadly disease. The second ailing American is Nancy Writebol, an aid worker with the allied aid group Serving in Mission, who was working in the same hospital.
West African doctors and nurses have also succumbed to the disease, in this most widespread outbreak in the virus' 40-year history. After being isolated to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for the last four months, an airline traveler flying to Nigeria died of the disease in the capital of Lagos last week.
The deceased man, Patrick Sawyer - a Liberian working in Nigeria - had taken several flights on his journey. It’s unclear whether fellow passengers of Sawyer were screened or not before continuing their journeys in Lagos - the most populous city in Nigeria.
Now, screening procedures have been instituted at some airports in the affected countries. How could travel restrictions impact the spread – in the wake of the Nigerian death? How is the search being conducted for fellow travelers? Why aren’t we able to prevent the infection of healthcare workers? Why is this the largest outbreak in history?
With files from the Associated Press.
Guest:
Laurie Garrett, best-selling author of “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance;” her new book is “I Heard the Sirens Scream: How Americans Responded to the 9/11 and Anthrax Attacks;” Senior Fellow in Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations
Con man, cult leader, business tycoon: The man behind South Korea’s ferry tragedy
A badly decomposed body found in an orchard in South Korea was identified by police earlier this month as that of Yoo Byung-eun, the South Korean business tycoon wanted by authorities in connection to the sinking of the Sewol ferry that killed over 300 people, many of them high school students.
Yoo was widely believed to be the head of the ferry company behind the disaster.
The 73-year-old eluded capture for two months, becoming the subject of a massive manhunt in the country. He was facing charges ranging from embezzlement to negligence, and investigators believe that Yoo and his family pocketed millions of dollars that should have gone to ensuring onboard safety.
This isn’t the first shady business dealings Yoo is linked to. He was the leader of a church he founded in South Korea, an ex-con that went to prison for fraud, a self-professed high art photographer who spent millions of dollars to have a show at the Louvre, and much more.
Guests:
Aidan Foster Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea, Leeds University, UK, and a longtime Korea watcher. He’s been writing about Yoo for various publications
Alison Leigh Cowan, longtime reporter at the New York Times who has co-written a piece on the Yoo family
How does language influence the way you think?
Does language shape the way we think? Some research shows that perception of the world is frequently influenced by the language or languages we speak.
From color, gender, to geography, to idiomatic understanding, language has a clear impact on culture. For example: Japanese has a word that means both blue and green, while Russian has no one word for blue – it completely depends on the object and the shade.
Do Japanese and Russian speakers see color differently? Are languages that use geographic directions (north, south, east, west) instead of egocentric (left, right, front, back) more able to orient themselves in space? Are certain languages predisposed to mathematics? Or are things the same in any language?
Guest:
Michael A. Arbib, Ph.D, Neuroscience and Psychology Director, USC Brain Project