BILL WOLFF: From NPR News in New York, this is the Bryant Project.
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RACHEL MARTIN, host:
Overlooking historic Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, live from NPR studios, this is the Bryant Park Project from NPR News. News, information, S-O-L-O, that spells solo. That's how I'm flying today. I'm Rachel Martin.
And speaking of spelling, the National Spelling Bee is going on today in Washington, D.C. ESPN carries the semifinals live today. I can't watch that stuff. It totally stresses me out. I'm so nervous for those kids. But I do give them major props, because in the age of the spell check, the fact that they can get up there and spell those long, multisyllabic words is completely amazing to me. It's like spelling is this lost art, like macrame or cartography, and they have nailed it.
And these words, they're not like things that you use every day. They're kind of obscure. I'm just looking today at an article that was citing some of the words they had to spell yesterday. A portmanteau, ever heard of that? I hadn't. I feel dumb all ready. It's a leather suitcase, apparently. Aporetic? This is something that means tending to doubt or perplexing. And amole, that is not the chocolate dark sauce that comes on your enchiladas at a Mexican restaurant. This is the root of a plant. And these kids had to spell all kinds of words that were that difficult and far more complex. So I wish good luck to all the semifinalists today, and for the rest of us, we'll just go back to using spell check.
Coming up on the show today, first up, nearly a month after a cyclone devastated the country of Myanmar, we'll hear about the situation from someone who is on the ground there. This week the military junta, the government there, decided to grant dozens of visas to foreign aid workers. If you remember, all these aid workers had been relegated to Thailand. They've been waiting at the border trying to get into the country to do their work. Finally, dozens of those visas have been granted. And we will speak with one of the aid workers who has just arrived in the city of Yangon, in Myanmar.
Plus, good news for any European fish that might be listening out there. The fishermen are on strike. In France, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, they've reeled in their hooks to protest rising fuel prices, and they're joined by farmers and truck drivers. We'll talk with NPR's Jerome Socolovsky who will break down the issue for us from Madrid.
And the UK's Daily Mail, it's a newspaper there in Great Britain, has tagged emo as a suicide cult. This happened after a 13-year-old girl hanged herself, and her death was linked to the song - or the group, My Chemical Romance. And what do you do if you're an emo fan and someone insults you? You get emotional, and people are upset about it. They're going to be marching tomorrow outside of the offices of the Daily Mail. We'll talk with someone who has been following that story.
We'll get the day's news headlines in just a minute. But first...
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Mr. DAVID HALL (Executive Director, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid): The message from the Supreme Court to Child Protective Services is clear. Send these children home.
MARTIN: That was a lawyer yesterday reacting to the Texas Supreme Court ruling that child welfare officials must return dozens of children taken last month from a polygamous ranch, must return them to their parents. That lawyer was David Hall, head of a legal aid group representing more than three dozen mothers from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the FLDS.
The court upheld a decision by an appellate court last week that said Child Protective Services failed to demonstrate that there was an immediate danger to the more than 400 kids swept up from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, nearly two months ago. FLDS members greeted the ruling with joy and relief, but church elder Willie Jessop says the damage has already been done.
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Mr. WILLIE JESSOP (Elder, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints): There has been a catastrophic emotional and physical trauma to these families, permanent damage that will be left on them for a lifetime.
MARTIN: Texas officials said the removals were necessary to end a cycle of sexual abuse at the ranch. But parents denied those allegations, and said they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Jessop said yesterday he didn't know of any such abuse at the ranch.
Mr. JESSOP: We hope that the judge, at some point, will come down to the ranch and look at it for what it is, instead of sitting here and letting people that hate our church and hate our religion pass judgment on it.
MARTIN: In a written statement yesterday, Child Protective Services said of the ruling, quote, "We are disappointed, but we understand and respect the court's decision," end quote. The ruling technically only applies to 139 children whose mothers went to court to regain custody, but it's expected to result in the release of all of the more than 450 children detained.
It's not clear just how soon that will happen, although Texas District Judge Barbara Walther has been ordered to return the children within a reasonable time period. However, she still may place some restrictions on the families, such as where the parents could live. You can go to npr.org throughout the day for updates on this story. Now let's get more of the day's news headlines with the BPP's Mark Garrison.
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