“White House or Buckingham Palace?” – “White House, just because Buckingham Palace looks like it would take a really long time to mop.”

BBC Radio 4 Best of Today: Prince Harry interviews Barack Obama. (Audio, 39 minutes.)

“2017 began with Barack Obama leaving the White House and handing over the baton of the presidency to Donald Trump.

Our guest editor today, Prince Harry, met President Obama, in Toronto in September during the Invictus Games to talk about his memories of the day he left office, his post-presidential work with the Obama Foundation and his hopes for the future.”

This interview was published on 27 December 2017 and is available for listening or downloading for three more days.

Recovering from being minimally conscious

Houston Chronicle: Alive Inside.

“Across the country each year, thousands of people are wrongly labeled unconscious after suffering severe brain injuries.

Sometimes, their families are urged to remove life support.

Among the survivors, a few, including Nick Tullier, make it to a Houston rehab hospital, where those with even the worst prognoses get a shot at recovery — and where some families learn loved ones once thought as good as dead are still alive inside.”

Previously.

Link via MetaFilter.

“We were frozen out,” said Knowles.

The Washington Post: Nearly all members of National Park Service advisory panel resign in frustration.

“More than three-quarters of the members of a federally chartered board advising the National Park Service have quit out of frustration that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had refused to meet with them or convene a single meeting last year.

The resignation of 10 out of 12 National Park System Advisory Board members leaves the federal government without a functioning body to designate national historic or natural landmarks. It also underscores the extent to which federal advisory bodies have become marginalized under the Trump administration.”

Update:
NPR: Majority Of National Park Service Board Resigns, Citing Administration Indifference.

“”The President still hasn’t nominated a director for the National Park Service and Secretary Zinke has proposed tripling entrance fees at our most popular national parks,” [Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell] said. “His disregard of the advisory board is just another example of why he has earned an ‘F’ in stewardship.”

“To not have any meetings, to not have their phone calls returned, to not have any opportunity to have an audience with the officials at the interior department is really a slap in the face and I think sometimes you have to make a statement,” Sally Jewell, the secretary of the interior during President Obama’s second term, told NPR’s Here and Now on Wednesday.

“They were being ignored, and I have to believe that’s consistent with what this administration has done with other advisory boards and councils in other agencies, as well,” she said.

Since taking office, President Trump has sought to roll back protections of national parks and public lands under the auspices of the Department of the Interior. The administration has ordered a dramatic downsizing of two massive national monuments in Utah and has announced plans to open up oil drilling in protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic.

“If we lose the people with the knowledge and the ability to educate the next generation of young people, to appreciate our history, our culture, our natural world,” Jewell said, “then we lose the value of the national parks.””

“I realise now that life isn’t about money, fame. Actually, all that crap. It’s simply love that’s important.”

The Telegraph: Dolores O’Riordan, singer with The Cranberries, has died aged 46.

NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert: The Cranberries. “After a long hiatus, the best-selling Irish pop-rock band is about to return with a new album called Roses. But if this performance at the NPR Music offices is any indication, the group isn’t afraid to dip into its arsenal of early hits.” (March 2, 2012)

Belfast Telegraph: Dolores O’Riordan: The demons that linger in her life. “Barry Egan tells the turbulent and tragic story of rock star Dolores O’Riordan. It involves four years of rape as a child, suicidal thoughts, depression and her arrest for an alleged assault on a plane.” (November 22, 2014)

Links via MetaFilter.

Deutsche Welle: Cranberries-Sängerin Dolores O’Riordan ist tot. “Die Frontfrau der irischen Rockband The Cranberries ist überraschend im Alter von 46 Jahren gestorben. Sie hielt sich für Studioaufnahmen in London auf. Ihre charismatische Stimme ließ niemanden kalt.”