KVNF Mountain Grown Community Radio

Baby boomers have never needed more care to ease their pain and suffering. But there simply aren't enough specialists to get the job done.

There's a shortfall of as many as 18,000 physicians focused on palliative care and hospice care. Right now, there are 5,150 hospice programs and 1,635 hospital palliative care teams in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

The Federal Aviation Administration has decided to delay the closing of 149 airport control towers until mid-June.

The Obama administration said it needed to cut funding for the towers — mostly in small communities — because of $637 million in budget cuts mandated by law.

"This additional time will allow the agency to attempt to resolve multiple legal challenges to the closure decisions," the FAA said in a statement. "Extending the transition deadline will give the FAA and airports more time to execute the changes to the National Airspace System."

Prison violence is getting out of prison.

Authorities are looking into the possibility that white supremacist prison gangs may have been involved in a series of shootings of public officials in Colorado and Texas. If so, criminologists say, this would be part of a larger pattern of prison gangs extending their reach.

"Increasingly, these prison gangs are spilling out onto the streets," says Mark Potok, an editor with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

Pope Francis told his staff to take "decisive action" when it comes to cases of clerical sex abuse of minors.

In a statement, the Vatican said the pontiff ordered the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to "act decisively as far as cases of sexual abuse are concerned, promoting, above all, measures to protect minors, help for those who have suffered such violence in the past (and) the necessary procedures against those who are guilty."

A few years back, I attended a Keith Jarrett solo piano recital at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The hall, which seats nearly 3,000 people, was sold out.

Lead poisoning in kids is hardly the problem it used to be, now that we've stopped using lead in house paints and gasoline. But the lead that lingers outside and in old homes is still dangerous if kids are exposed to it.

Millions of Americans are still out of work, and they're getting hit even harder as unemployment benefits continue to dry up. Host Michel Martin speaks with NPR Senior Business Editor Marilyn Geewax about why benefits are being reduced. Mike Rivas has exhausted his unemployment benefits, and joins the conversation to talk about how he's getting by.

The first day of the latest talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group about the Persian nation's nuclear ambitions has ended with reports of a "shaky" start and Western diplomats saying they are puzzled by what Iran brought to the table.