Empire State Building Goes Green — For Good?

The Empire State Building seems to be grappling with a color problem — specifically the color of its upper levels.

Building management got into hot water this week over plans to illuminate the top floors with red lights — in honor of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Tibet-issues activists and other protesters turned out to denounce the recognition.

But it turns out the color the building's ownersreally want associated with the Manhattan landmark is green — which may be an achievable goal, after a $550 million environmental upgrade and renovation.

Even before the Empire State Building opened in 1931, its main attraction for sightseers was somewhere up above the sidewalk. Now there's reason (besides the line for the observatory) to linger on the ground level: the Celestial Mural. The collection of golden panels has run across the ceilings of the entire main lobby since the skyscraper was built, but most visitors — even most tenants — have never seen it.

"It was an urban legend," says Jeff Greene, President of EverGreene Architectural Arts. "Preservationists and historians knew that it was there, but the general public had forgotten about it. It was covered for 46 years."

Under A Dropped Ceiling, A Trail Of Grime

A team of artists from his studio started their work to re-create the mural — the original was too badly damaged to restore — by removing a dropped ceiling that had hidden it since the early 1960s.

"The World's Fair was coming to New York, [and] people wanted to modernize," Greene says, explaining that now-perplexing decision. "They wanted to improve the light levels."

(Other landlords made similarly head-smacking calls: "At the Chrysler Building," Greene says, "they just stuck downlights in the Edward Trumbull mural.")

What EverGreene's team found in the Empire State Building's lobby was in even worse shape. The Celestial Mural had been riddled with hundreds of holes and covered in layers of white paint. As they set about researching their reconstruction, the team stripped small ceiling sections, eventually hitting gold leaf.

Luckily, the metallic surface under the paint had held a small electrical charge — enough to attract dirt in patterns that outlined the design, almost like a magnetic drawing board. Restorers were able to make out suns, moons and stars stylized to look like cogs and gears — a celebration of the Machine Age, designed by artist Leif Neandross.

The renovation has updated more than just the ceiling, of course. Under the sterile UV lights in the old white ceiling, the lobby's gray and pink marble corridors used to look a little like cold roast beef. Now, with warmer lighting, they conjure up a champagne cocktail.

"It looks like they're doing just a wonderful job — and I'm not often one who says that," says Lisa Kersavage, a public policy expert for the Municipal Art Society, a century-old organization that fights for intelligent urban planning, design and preservation.

Kersavage points out that construction-related debris accounts for 60 percent of New York City's waste stream. She wants to change a popular misconception: that it's better to demolish old buildings and erect new green ones.

Opening New Windows On Enviro-Friendly Rehab

"About 55 percent of New York City's building stock was built before 1940," Kersavage says. "And what's important about that is that pre-1940s buildings were built before the era of cheap energy and mechanical systems like air conditioning and heating. So they were built to work with the environment better than later buildings."

Take the Empire State Building's windows.

"Windows tend to be the first thing that people want to change when they want to do an energy retrofit," Kersavage says. "And there's so many ways to repair and improve the efficiency of existing windows instead of throwing them into a landfill. So it's really important in terms of the efficiency — but also in terms of the architectural character of a building."

So the Empire State Building Company decided to refurbish all 6,500 of its thermopane windows.

"We're taking them out, breaking the seals, inserting a mylar sheath," says Anthony Malkin, who heads the company. "And then we're resealing with krypton argon gas and reinstalling them. All of this will be done without the windows ever leaving the building."

Malkin says the windows and other upgrades will result in a nearly 40 percent energy savings. And he's promised to share the new techniques developed during the restoration.

With the majority of New York's greenhouse gas emissions coming from the construction and operation of buildings, that could help other architectural gems ensure themselves a golden future — whatever the color of their lobby ceilings.

Career Changers Find Way Around The Classroom

Until a year ago, Beverly Harvey was more familiar with balance sheets than attendance sheets. Harvey had spent 25 years in the banking industry before switching careers and becoming an elementary-school teacher.

Every year, schools in the U.S. hire a quarter of a million new teachers. Desperate to boost the number of top-quality educators, school districts are luring people from other professions.

Harvey, a former vice president at Citigroup, had been attracted to teaching all her life. She left the company in 2007 after 25 years and decided to make the career switch. And after finishing a teacher training program last summer, she is now settling into a classroom full of 33 first-graders at Oakcrest Elementary School in Landover, Md.

To prepare for the classroom, Harvey and about 20 other teachers in training took a six-week course through Prince George's County Schools in Maryland. The Prince George's County Teaching Fellows program sends career changers into the classrooms of the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Except for Harvey, most of her fellow students are only a few years out of college.

The questions that Harvey and the others ask their instructors seem trivial, but for teachers about to face a room full of children, nothing is too small.

"How often do you let them go to the water fountain and do you have any special procedure?" Harvey asks.

"What if they like, go on their pants? Like, what do you do?" asks another.

Classroom management of young students is a key focus of this training program, and it's something this group is anxious about. They will all be working with kids in the early grades, children who have yet to develop any of the skills and habits they need to succeed in school.

Educational Roots

Harvey is the second-youngest of seven kids. She grew up in the South, raised by a mother who cleaned houses and a father who could not read or write. Her parents wanted her to do better.

Today, she is still inspired by teachers who insisted that she try harder.

"My teachers were always kind of on top of me. And when I see some of these students off track and not believing in themselves, that they can do it, it's just encouraging them that they can do it, and giving them the opportunity to do it," Harvey says.

Harvey is exactly the kind of person the Prince George's County teaching fellowship is designed for. She's an experienced professional with proven leadership skills who didn't want to go through a traditional teachers' college program.

After the crash course and some practice teaching, Harvey was thrown into the classroom in late August.

Experience, it turns out, is a harsh teacher.

A Teacher In The Making

Harvey has been handed 33 squirming, fidgeting first-graders at Oakcrest Elementary School. Harvey's principal has told her this class will eventually be cut, but in the meantime, her hands are full.

Constant noise interrupts everything she does. Harvey interrupts a story she's reading and lets loose a stern admonition — "No talking!" — but she has trouble getting the students to focus.

She also tries a little physical activity to help them burn off a little energy. She tells them all to get up — "Hop on one foot!" — but this just gets them all riled up.

Harvey has a rescuer of sorts. Patricia Williams, Harvey's mentor, shows up. Williams has 10 years of experience and helps her manage the classroom.

In the classroom, Williams has a presence and a confidence as well as an effective superpower: a stare so penetrating that it might make adults want to fold their hands and hush up.

When asked how you teach someone to do that, she laughs.

"I don't know! You give them the look, and they know to stop," she says.

While the students are at lunch, peace has returned, giving Williams and Harvey time for a little debriefing session.

Harvey says she feels she is getting the hang of this.

"I like the fact that they pretty much know their morning routine," Harvey says. But she continues to struggle with the size of the class. No sooner has she dealt with one student than she has to rush over to deal with another — and then another.

Harvey and Williams try to figure out how to keep this large class occupied. Williams has a satchel full of activities, chants and songs to grab kids' attention.

Williams warns Harvey that kids will get tired of any activity so she will have to keep inventing new ones all year long.

Harvey is finding that keeping up with these kids is exhausting.

Sometimes when she's running low on energy, Harvey renews her dedication by thinking of her illiterate father.

"Can't let what happened to him happen to them. It's more challenging than I thought," Harvey says.

Back in class, Harvey savors a moment of calm. She reads a story, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

For a few minutes, students are listening and reading along.

Harvey has a long way to go before she figures out how to make this happen more regularly.

That won't be easy. A month into the school year, and Harvey's principal still has not reduced the size of her classroom. She's still got her hands full with 33 students.

Radio story produced by Marisa Penaloza.

Holding On To Health Insurance That Works

Dave Koenig gets private insurance through his employer and couldn't be happier. A conservative, he thinks private health care is the way to go, but he supports some changes to the insurance industry to protect patients from losing their coverage.

Tall and with a buzz cut, Koenig, 49, works as a manager for a tech company, Hitachi Data Systems. He lives in a pristine suburb of Sacramento, Calif., with his wife and 8-year-old son. Their backyard has a pool, a foosball table, a shaded hammock, and fruit trees ripe with peaches, pears, oranges, apricots, cherries and plums.

"It's kind of a quiet, pretty expensive neighborhood. Guess we'd probably be considered middle- to upper-class," Koenig says.

Insurance That Does Its Job

And his high-paying job doesn't just mean a nice house. He also gets pretty decent health benefits. It's private insurance through Blue Cross — he pays a monthly premium of about $300 for his family's coverage.

"My current insurance through my company is wonderful. I pay a copay for doctors' visits, I pay a co-pay for prescriptions. Through the six or seven surgeries I've had in the last five years, I've never paid a dime to a hospital, an anesthesiologist, blood work — it's all been covered, so I'm of course very happy with my insurance," he says.

Things weren't always that easy. In the early '90s, he was laid off and went without insurance for several months. He says it was an uncertain time, and he sympathizes with the millions of Americans who don't have coverage — or could be dropped at any time.

"I mean, you hear horror stories about people who have insurance, and then all the sudden get denied coverage down the line because they may have had a pre-existing condition," Koenig says. He, too, worries that he's one step away from being dropped from his plan, or losing his job and not being able to afford coverage.

Supports Changes, Not Overhaul

And that's why Koenig is on board with parts of the big push to change the health care system. But he says the focus should be on regulating the insurance industry, not a government takeover, which he believes President Obama is pushing for.

"I find that scary for me personally, because right now I've got what I feel is great coverage from my company. Tomorrow it could all change, I don't know," he says. "I don't want to see massive overhaul. I can see reform taking place in areas, but do I want the system overhauled? No. And I don't think the majority of the people in the country want it overhauled."

Koenig keeps returning to the fact that in his experience, health insurance has been great. And, he says, in the case of his younger sister, her health insurance paid for the care that saved her life.

Five years ago, his sister Jane was out on a jog when she collapsed and had a heart attack. "She got lucky that some neighborhood women were out for a walk, and they walked by and saw her on the ground gasping for air," Koenig says.

Scared To Lose What They Have

Like him, his sister has good employer-based health insurance — she gets it through her husband, who is a vice president of a credit union.

"She's 46 now. She was 41 when she had her heart attack, and 41 when she had her transplant. They ended up finding a genetic heart defect. She had full coverage, so I guess we didn't even think about it at the time, but thankful for it now."

Koenig and his sister are happy with their health insurance coverage. But Koenig worries that the benefits they enjoy could change under a complete overhaul.

Dr. Strangelove's 'Doomsday Machine': It's Real

Just two years before Bernard Schriever retired from the Air Force, director Stanley Kubrick finished the movie Neil Sheehan just talked about a few minutes ago, "Dr. Strangelove."

In that film, which became a defining Cold War satire, leaders from the United States and Russia worked to prevent a terrible weapon from being triggered.

(Soundbite of film, "Dr. Strangelove")

Mr. Peter BULL (Actor): (As Ambassador Alexi De Sadesky) The Doomsday Machine.

Mr. PETER SELLERS (Actor): (As President Merkin Muffley) The Doomsday Machine? What is that?

RAZ: It was a system designed to unleash global nuclear Armageddon if Russia were attacked. Now, in 1964, that concept was a movie fantasy. What few knew until recently is that in 1984, the Soviet Union actually did build a doomsday machine of sorts. They called it Perimeter. It's discussed in not one but two books released this month and in an article in the latest issue of Wired magazine.

Earlier this week, I spoke with the author of that story, Nicholas Thompson, who also wrote the new book, "The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the history of the Cold War." Thompson explained how Perimeter works.

Mr. NICHOLAS THOMPSON (Author, "The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the history of the Cold War"): If there's a crisis, somebody in the Defense Ministries has to turn it on, so that's the first step. It then tries to find evidence that there's been a nuclear hit on the Soviet Union. If it determines that there has been a hit, then it tries to communicate back to the Defense Ministries. And if it can talk to them, it says, okay, humans are still alive. I don't need to work. I'll shut off.

But if it can't communicate with them, then it knows there's been a crisis. We've been hit by a nuclear warhead and all the lines of communications with the Defense Ministries have been taken out. So now, we need to bypass all the traditional layers of command authority, and suddenly, the ability to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike is given to some junior official in a bunker.

So suddenly, there's the capacity for the Soviet Union - even though the entire leadership is dead - to still strike back and destroy the United States.

RAZ: You did talk to many senior American officials: James Woolsey, former senior CIA director; George Shultz, the former secretary of state, who thought that this was a fantasy. They just didn't believe that anything like this existed.

Mr. THOMPSON: Well, once it's explained - I mean, they believed that it's real once there's evidence and once it's shown. But the amazing thing is that we weren't told about this system. George Shultz, secretary of state when this thing went online, he wasn't told.

And okay, so now why didn't the Soviet Union tell us about it?

RAZ: Right. If it was supposed to be a deterrent, why didn't they tell us?

Mr. THOMPSON: And the reason they didn't tell us, there are a couple of reasons. One, they're extremely secretive. They didn't tell their own arms negotiators. Number two is if you tell the United States about it, there's a better chance that we could disable, or trick it, or destroy it. But then the third reason is that it wasn't built as a classic deterrent. It was built to deter the Soviet Union. It was built to prevent this issue of launch on false warning. And that is the Soviet radars pick up what they think is an American nuclear strike.

Now, it might not be an American nuclear strike. It may be an eclipse or it may be a flock of geese. But they think they only have 10 minutes in order -whether to decide whether to retaliate before they're all killed. If you have this doomsday machine, it means you don't feel like you need to respond immediately.

RAZ: Hmm

Mr. THOMPSON: You can wait and see whether the radars are correct and whether it really is a nuclear strike or whether it's a flock of geese. My sense is that overall, it made us safer.

RAZ: I'm wondering how plausible that theory is, though? If SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, which became known as Star Wars, was very consciously designed as a deterrent and was publicized by the United States…

Mr. THOMPSON: Yeah.

RAZ: …as a deterrent, it seems odd that the Soviets wouldn't do the same with this.

Mr. THOMPSON: Well, the Soviets just thought a lot differently about deterrence theory than we did. I mean, the closest parallel is we had an airborne command center flight during the entire Cold War, so that if the Soviet Union blew up Washington, we could have responded.

RAZ: We had airplanes in the sky 24 hours a day.

Mr. THOMPSON: Right. And that's actually, in its effect, not that different from Soviet doomsday response machine. But there's a big difference, we told the Soviets about it because we wanted to deter them from striking. They didn't tell us because of all these other issues.

RAZ: We should make it clear: this system is still in place. It still exist and could be turned on, right?

Mr. THOMPSON: The system is still in place. It's not on, as far as I understand, it's not on hair-trigger alert. It doesn't play the same central role in Russian nuclear strategy that it played under Soviet nuclear strategy. But according to people we - the people I've talked to, lots of them, many of whom would know, it's still there.

RAZ: Nicholas Thompson is a senior editor at Wired magazine and the author of the new book "The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan and the History of the Cold War." He joined us from New York.

Mr. Thompson, thank you.

Mr. THOMPSON: Thanks a lot for having me here.

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Surprise! Water Found On Moon's Surface

Three different space probes have gathered evidence that the top layer of the moon's surface contains hidden stores of water.

The moon is generally thought to be a dry place, although scientists have long suspected that ice might be trapped in cold, permanently shadowed craters. A NASA mission will test that theory next month, by smashing a spent rocket part into a dark crater near the moon's south pole and creating a big debris cloud that will be searched for water.

But surprisingly, researchers have now found that there's water on the sunlit surface of the moon, where no one expected it to be.

Molecules of water as well as hydroxyl — that's just one atom of hydrogen with an oxygen atom, instead of the two hydrogen atoms normally found in water — are all over the lunar surface, in the very top layer of dust, according to new reports published online by the journal Science.

The first hint that the water might be there came from a NASA instrument called the Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft launched by India last October to orbit the moon.

A Shock To Researchers

The discovery was so surprising that researchers at first thought it was some kind of calibration problem. "Like any normal person, you'd say, 'Well, that's ridiculous, you know. It can't be there,' " says Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist at Brown University.

"So we spent months on the team, scrubbing this data with every means possible, arguing amongst ourselves," Pieters says, "and it would not go away."

Then they were able to confirm their observations using data from two additional spacecraft: NASA's Cassini probe that passed by the moon in 1999 while traveling to Saturn, and the Deep Impact spacecraft, which whizzed by the moon in June of this year on its way to visit a comet.

The water seems to be a very thin film of molecules stuck to the surface, says Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland-College Park.

"It's not liquid water, it's not frozen water and it's not gaseous water, OK? It's none of those things," Sunshine says. "It's not your grandmother's water on the moon. It's a completely different mindset. You sort of have to throw out everything you think of by that phrase."

Pieters concurs that the moon is still a very dry place. "There's no question about that. The amount of water is small," she says, even though it is found extensively over the moon's surface.

Still, the discovery has excited space buffs who say water and hydroxyl could be an important resource if astronauts ever return to the moon. NASA has spent the past few years working toward a return by 2020, and has even talked of plans for a lunar base, but that program is currently under review by the Obama administration.

A Previously Unknown Process

Sunshine estimates that scraping off all the water molecules from a part of the lunar surface the size of a football field would yield less than a quart of water. "And it could be a lot less. I think our understanding is not great," she says. "You're certainly not going to turn around and shovel up a bit of lunar regolith and start drinking it," she says, referring to the dusty lunar dirt.

The water seems to appear and disappear during the course of the lunar day, as temperatures rise and fall.

Scientists still aren't sure what the source of the water is, although they suspect that hydrogen atoms in the solar wind might be hitting lunar minerals and reacting with the oxygen in them.

But they say it was amazing to find such a dynamic and completely unknown process occurring on the moon. "Nature surprises us, and in this case, the moon completely surprised us," Pieters says. "This is something we were not expecting."

When the Apollo astronauts brought back samples from the moon, those specimens did contain trace amounts of water, but it was assumed to be water from Earth that had gotten mixed in by accident.

U.S Navy Sailors Say They Were Hazed, Aboused

In the summer of 2005, at a U.S. Navy base on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, a young man was duct-taped to a chair, and then left in a kennel with dogs barking and feces all around. Later, he was forced to simulate sex acts on videotape.

He was not a detainee. He was a U.S. sailor: Joseph Christopher Rocha.

Rocha enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday in 2004. He remembers being excited about his first overseas assignment: to serve in Bahrain. He became a dog handler with one of the Navy's biggest kennels. But Rocha says once he got there, he entered a culture of hazing and abuse at the hands of his fellow service members that made him feel like the animal.

"I was hog-tied to a chair, rolled around the base, left in a dog kennel that had feces spread in it," Rocha says.

Rocha says six weeks into his deployment, when he made it clear he wasn't interested in the unit's parties with prostitutes, the chief master-at-arms, Michael Toussaint, and others on the base made him a target.

"I was in a very small, high-testosterone-driven unit of men," Rocha says. "I think that's what began the questioning, you know, 'Why don't you want to have sex with her? Are you a faggot?' "

Read More On The Youth Radio Site

Investigation: Sailors' Abuse Kept Silent in Navy Canine Unit

'Act More Queer'

The hazing escalated across the unit, he says. Incidents ranged from spraying down uniformed personnel with hoses to directing sailors to simulate sex acts on videotape. Petty Officer Shaun Hogan, who was stationed in Bahrain with Rocha, remembers a so-called training video that sailors were ordered to produce.

"Petty Officer Rocha and another junior sailor ... they were instructed to go into a classroom by Chief Michael Toussaint, who orchestrated the entire training. And Chief Toussaint asked them to simulate homosexual sex on a couch," Hogan says.

Hogan played a handler barging onto the scene with his dog. Rocha says Toussaint coached him on how to act in the video.

"Telling me I needed to be more believable, act more queer, have a higher-pitched voice, and make the sounds and gestures more realistic," Rocha says.

The hazing got worse, but Rocha was afraid reporting it would lead to an investigation into whether he was gay.

Fear Of Reporting Abuse

Youth Radio has interviewed six sailors from the canine unit. They all tell similar stories of abuse.

One sailor, who would talk on tape only if we changed her voice, remembers seeing a different sexually charged video. In it a female sailor was ordered to role-play as the lover of another female in the unit, who was handcuffed to a bed and appeared naked under the sheets.

I was hog-tied to a chair, rolled around the base, left in a dog kennel that had feces spread in it.

- Joseph Rocha

"My impression was, 'What on earth are these people thinking?' How is this going to be valid training for her to play — and I'm going to quote here, 'a bitchy lieutenant'? — It was very disgraceful," the female sailor said.

All six sailors Youth Radio spoke with were afraid to report the abuse. They say that Toussaint threatened to revoke their dog certification if they complained. And some feared the worst. They remembered his warning, "God help anyone who airs our dirty laundry."

"It's supposed to be this tight unit, we're supposed to be a family," another sailor said. "And when you get into it, I mean, the enemy's not outside the line, the enemy's within. ... Your enemy is your chain of command."

Investigation Finds Abuses

Finally, in 2006, one sailor broke through the silence and reported an assault. The Navy commissioned an independent investigation that uncovered the hazing and other abuses.

The investigation's findings, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and corroborated by Youth Radio's interviews, show the abuse was widespread in the unit, and in some cases sanctioned and instigated by its leadership.

The investigation found evidence to support accusations of physical assault on sailors and, in two instances, prostitutes on base. The documents also show systemic hazing through humiliation and unnecessary labor.

The incidents that occurred within the Military Working Dog Division at Naval Support Activity Bahrain do not reflect who we are as a Navy. They are considered an anomaly based on sailors who were improperly led.

- A Navy spokesman

The conclusions and recommendations of the investigation are redacted in the report. To fill in the blanks, Youth Radio called the Navy's regional spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Wendy Snyder. She said she couldn't give details of specific disciplinary actions. And that because the investigation took place more than two years ago, the records are no longer available.

"Whether they're shredded or destroyed, I don't know," Snyder said. "As far as I know, the investigation was completed, and the outcomes I don't know of those individuals involved."

Since then, a Navy officer familiar with the case has told NPR that the report recommended courts-martial for both Toussaint and another noncommissioned officer from the unit. The recommendation for courts-martial was never followed. Instead, the case was closed, and Toussaint received a "non-punitive letter of caution" — the military's equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

What's more, Toussaint has been promoted to the rank of senior chief petty officer.

Youth Radio asked Yale law professor Eugene Fidell, who is president of the National Institute of Military Justice, to review the investigation's Findings of Fact and give his opinion on the Navy's follow-up.

"It did seem to me [from the materials that were made available] that some criminal punishment under the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] was called for. It looked to me like rampant misconduct of a kind that was utterly incompatible with military service on behalf of our country," Fidell said.

Fidell served as a judge advocate and has made a career of reviewing military justice cases.

"I would expect anybody in pay grade petty officer and above to be held accountable," he said. "These people have responsibilities, they are supposed to be leaders, we depend on them, and if they're either engaging in this kind of misconduct or tolerating it, they need to be taught a lesson."

Guilt, PTSD and Suicide

Meanwhile, unit members interviewed by Youth Radio are still struggling with the aftermath of their experiences in Bahrain.

Hogan, the sailor who played the dog handler in the simulated-sex video, is now in the Navy Reserve. He says he's haunted by personal guilt.

"I was duty-bound to protect those under my command — Petty Officer Rocha [and] several others. I have a lot of regret for not having spoken up at the time and intervening."

As for Rocha, the Veterans Health Administration diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. When he heard there would not be a court-martial, he took it hard.

"It took a lot of courage to testify against Toussaint," Rocha said. "And then to be told that there was no need and there would be no trial!"

Rocha says he was devastated. He still can't quite describe the feeling.

"That kind of loss of gravity, of saying, 'What just happened?' That stuck with me," he says.

Shortly after hearing that news, Rocha made the hardest decision of his life. He ended his military career — out of fear that he'd face more abuse at a future deployment, and because he had come out as gay. Rocha's official statement read:

"I am homosexual. I am proud of my service and had hoped that I'd be able to serve the Navy and country for my entire career. However, I must be honest with myself, courageous in my beliefs and committed to my course of action."

On the basis of that statement, Rocha was officially discharged by the Navy.

Toussaint's second-in-command while he was in Bahrain was Petty Officer Jennifer Valdivia. Shortly after being told she would be removed from her position in the kennel because of the hazing investigation, she took her own life.

Another Investigation Ordered

As for Toussaint, Youth Radio tried repeatedly to reach him by phone, through e-mail and via social networking sites. His command confirms it forwarded our questions to him. We wanted to know his side of the story. He has not responded.

Toussaint is now senior chief with what's regarded as the most prestigious dog unit in the Navy, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, based in Dam Neck, Va.

But this may not be the end of the story.

Since Youth Radio began reporting this story, Rear Adm. David Mercer has ordered a review of the outcomes of the investigation into abuses at the Bahrain kennel. Mercer is in charge of naval installations in Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia.

Also, a Navy spokesman issued this statement:

"The incidents that occurred within the Military Working Dog Division at Naval Support Activity Bahrain do not reflect who we are as a Navy. They are considered an anomaly based on sailors who were improperly led."

On Tuesday, Youth Radio learned that yet another review of the investigation has been ordered, this time by the chief of naval operations, the Navy's highest-ranking officer and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The deadline for that report is Oct. 6.

This story is the work of reporter Rachel Krantz of Youth Radio, a news organization based in Oakland, Calif., that teaches journalism to young people. Youth Radio broke the story on its Web site and its team worked with NPR staff to develop the story for National Public Radio.

America armed, but guns not necessarily loaded

NEW ORLEANS – Bullet-makers are working around the clock, seven days a week, and still can't keep up with the nation's demand for ammunition.

Shooting ranges, gun dealers and bullet manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation — even though nothing specific has been proposed and the president last month signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

Gun sales spiked when it became clear Obama would be elected a year ago and purchases continued to rise in his first few months of office. The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System reported that 6.1 million background checks for gun sales were issued from January to May, an increase of 25.6 percent from the same period the year before.

"That is going to cause an upswing in ammunition sales," said Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association representing about 5,000 members. "Without bullets a gun is just a paper weight."

The shortage for sportsmen is different than the scarcity of ammo for some police forces earlier this year, a dearth fueled by an increase in ammo use by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We are working overtime and still can't keep up with the demand," said Al Russo, spokesman for North Carolina-based Remington Arms Company, which makes bullets for rifles, handguns and shotguns. "We've had to add a fourth shift and go 24-7. It's a phenomenon that I have not seen before in my 30 years in the business."

Americans usually buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, according to the National Rifle Association. In the past year, that figure has jumped to about 9 billion rounds, said NRA spokeswoman Vickie Cieplak.

Jason Gregory, who manages Gretna Gun Works just outside of New Orleans, has been building his personal supply of ammunition for months. His goal is to have at least 1,000 rounds for each of his 25 weapons.

"I call it the Obama effect," said Gregory, 37, of Terrytown, La. "It always happens when the Democrats get in office. It happened with Clinton and Obama is even stronger for gun control. Ammunition will be the first step, so I'm stocking up while I can."

So far, the new administration nor Congress has not been markedly antigun. Obama has said he respects Second Amendment rights, but favors "common sense" on gun laws. Still, worries about what could happen persist.

Demand has been so heavy at some Walmarts, a limit was imposed on the amount of ammo customers can buy. The cutoff varies according to caliber and store location, but sometimes as little as one box — or 50 bullets — is allowed.

At Barnwood Arms in Ripon, Calif., sales manager Dallas Jett said some of the shortages have leveled off, but 45-caliber rounds are still hard to find.

"We've been in business for 32 years and I've been here for 10 and we've never seen anything like it," Jett said. "Coming out of Christmas everything started to dry up and it was that way all through the spring and summer.

Nationwide, distributors are scrambling to fill orders from retailers.

"We used to be able to order 50 or 60 cases and get them in three or four days easy, it was never an issue," said Vic Grechniw of Florida Ammo Traders, a distributor in Tampa, Fla. "Now you are really lucky if you can get one case a month. It just isn't there because the demand is way up."

A case contains 500 or 1,000 bullets.

At Jefferson Gun Outlet and Range in Metairie just west of New Orleans, owner Mike Mayer is worried individuals are going to start buying by the case.

"If someone wants to shoot on the weekend you have to worry about having the ammunition for them. And I know some people aren't buying to use it at the range, they're taking it home and hoarding it."

With demand, prices have also risen.

"Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," said Donald Richards, 37, who was stocking up at the Jefferson store. "And worth every penny."