I’ve been quiet on here lately, but I’m excited to share that I’ll be DJing at Meow Wolf Denver on April 19 for Bicycle Day 2025 — an immersive art and music experience hosted by PORTAL, celebrating the psychedelic movement and the power of healing through sound.
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Worland, Wyoming (CNN) America's rural ambulance services, often sustained by volunteers, are fighting for their survival -- a crisis hastened by the impact of Covid-19.
More than one-third of all rural EMS are in danger of closing, according to Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association. "The pandemic has further stretched the resources of our nation's rural EMS."
In Wyoming, the problem is especially dire. It may have the smallest population in America, but when it comes to land, Wyoming is the ninth-largest.
In Washakie County, which lies in Wyoming's southern Bighorn Basin, it means a tradeoff for the nearly 8,000 residents living here: While there is vast open space, the nearest major trauma hospital is more than 2.5 hours away.
On a recent drive from Cody -- the closest town with an airport -- the land stretched endlessly while cattle and wildlife outnumbered people. The sole reminders of civilization were the occasional oil rigs pumping silently in the distance.
But for the residents, speedy access to emergency medical services -- paramedics and an ambulance -- can be a matter of survival.
It's a fact Luke Sypherd knows all too well. For the past three years, he has overseen Washakie County's volunteer ambulance service. But on May 1, the organization was forced to dissolve.
"We just saw that we didn't have the personnel to continue," Sypherd said. "It was an ongoing problem made worse by Covid with fewer people interested in volunteering with EMS during a pandemic and patients afraid of getting taken to a hospital."
A nearby hospital system, Cody Regional Health, has agreed to provide ambulance service for Washakie County, averting a crisis. But it's a problem playing out across rural America: Ambulance crews are running out of money and volunteers.
Phillip Franklin, the EMS Director for Cody Regional Health, said the crisis is a result of several problems.
"The majority of the ambulance service staff are not paid so if you don't have your volunteers, they can't run calls," Franklin said. "Another problem is that there's simply just not enough volume to keep ambulance service afloat and in the state of Wyoming, EMS is not essential, which means there's nobody responsible to fund these entities."
Sypherd said the funding model for EMS is fundamentally flawed, with most service providers reimbursed only if they take patients to a hospital or clinic. In rural areas like Washakie County, smaller populations mean fewer calls, and consequently, less money.
"You're reimbursed based on the number of patients that you transport to a hospital so you could get called 1,000 times a year and only transport 750 patients -- those other 250 calls you made no money on," Sypherd said.
Luke Sypherd has overseen Washakie County's volunteer ambulance service for three years, but on May 1, the organization was forced to dissolve.
The American Ambulance Association sent a letter earlier this month to the US Department of Health and Human Services asking the agency to earmark $1.425 billion in federal aid for its members, warning that emergency medical systems across the US are "on the brink of collapse."
"It is critical that we not let the financial hardship caused by the pandemic to permanently deteriorate our EMS systems, especially in rural areas where an ambulance service may be the only emergency medical service provider, and ensure that all Americans continue to have access to vital emergency 9-1-1 and medically necessary non-emergency ground ambulance services," the letter said.
According to the National Association of State EMS Officials, just eight states consider local emergency medical services "essential" by law, as they do for fire and police.
"That mandate means that somebody has to consciously think and plan and ensure that EMS is available," Sypherd said. "If you're in one of the states that doesn't mandate EMS as an essential service and your local ambulance provider shuts down because they lost funding or there weren't enough volunteers -- that means if you call 911 it might be that nobody shows up."
"When you look at what's happening here (in Washakie County, it) is just the tip of the iceberg," said Franklin. "There's other services throughout the state that are just one bad year away from closure."
American Medical Response has been serving Wyoming’s Fremont County - which is roughly the size of the state of Vermont. AMR says it can't afford to keep going after losing $1.5 million in revenue last year and announced it won't renew its contract when it runs out on June 30. No others have bid.
One of those is Fremont County -- home to the Wind River Indian Reservation. Fremont is roughly the size of the state of Vermont. An economic downturn and budget cuts prompted the county to privatize its ambulance service in 2016. But the private company, American Medical Response, says it can't afford to keep going after losing $1.5 million in revenue last year. AMR announced it won't renew its contract when it runs out on June 30. No others have bid.
"We just couldn't renew that current contract because it was set up for a financial failure," said Matt Strauss, Regional Director for AMR parent company, Global Medical Response.
One of the problems, according to Fremont County Commissioner Larry Allen, is the so-called payer mix. Many of the county's residents rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Indian Health Services, which reimburse ambulance providers at a lower rate. And without state or federal designation of EMS as an essential service, Allen said "there's no source of revenue to operate an ambulance."
"Because of the distance and the ruralness of this county, we just don't have people standing in line wanting to provide ambulance service," Allen said.
The Wind River Indian Reservation stretches across more than 2 million acres and is shared by two Native American tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. It has three tiny clinics but no ambulance services and relies on Fremont County for EMS.
"Right now the response time is pretty slow and it's going to be nonexistent," said Northern Arapaho tribal member Juan Willow. His grandfather struggled with health problems and Willow said there were many times when the family couldn't wait for an ambulance and had to find other ways of getting to the hospital. "Not everyone here has a car," he said.
It's a concern shared by Jordan Dresser, the chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribe.
"I think if we didn't have access to ambulances, death rates would be higher," said Dresser, adding that many tribal members don't have working vehicles and therefore can't take themselves to the hospital or clinics. "It's a matter of life and death for us."
Watch my story on CNN here
DANCE is my favorite way of moving through energy. I made a mix with all of my favorite tracks that got me through the pandemic.
Turn your lights down low and have a boogie:
The chance of an armed, foreign invasion on U.S. soil is slim. But if one of America’s NATO allies goes to war, the US could be forced to join the fight as well. NBC News Foreign Correspondent Lucy Kafanov visited Norway for the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War.
President Emmanuel Macron has announced a series of concessions in an effort to quell the unrest.
By Lucy Kafanov and Linda Givetash
PARIS — Protesters wearing their now-famous yellow vests held a minute's silence on the streets of the French capital Saturday morning for those injured and killed in clashes with police. It was a brief moment of quiet amid weeks of demonstrations that have roiled the country and seized global attention.
In Paris, armed officers patrolled eerily empty streets as authorities braced for the fifth consecutive weekend of nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron.
Some storefronts were boarded up, though others remained open to welcome Christmas shoppers.
An estimate 33,000 people took to the streets — less than half the number seen the previous weekend. The demonstrations were largely peaceful and clashes were contained.
Similar protests in recent weekends turned violent, with protesters smashing and looting stores and setting up burning barricades in the streets.Margot Haddad / NBC News
The "yellow vest" protests began last month against planned tax hikes on gas but have since morphed into a wider rebuke of Macron’s presidency and an expression of anger at his attempts to reform France's long-ailing economy.
Escalating riots forced Paris into lockdown, while violent clashes with police resulted in hundreds of arrests, along with many injuries and six deaths.
The number of fatalities increased Saturday when a driver died after colliding with a truck that had been stopped by a barrage of "yellow vest" protesters near the Belgian border.
In preparation for this weekend's demonstrations, 8,000 police were deployed across the city while thousands more were stationed across the country. Six people were arrested in the capital before 9 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET). That number had increased more than ten-fold within three hours.
Police were out in full riot gear while water cannons were on standby, ready to control unruly crowds.
Tear gas was fired at a small group of protesters near the Champs-Élysées while a handful of topless activists from the feminist protest group Femen encountered security forces near the president's residence, the Élysées Palace.
About a thousand people gathered by the city's opera house and another thousand gathered at the Arc de Triomphe, which was vandalized with spray paint in previous demonstrations. Despite occasional clashes, the crowd was relatively calm in comparison to recent weeks when an estimated 10,000 protesters flooded the streets.
Macron has announced a series of concessions in an effort to quell the unrest.
WATCH my report on the TODAY SHOW here:
The First World War was unprecedented in its scale and impact, forcing medicine to respond and evolve. At the American Hospital in Paris, doctors developed better anesthesia and a precursor to the modern ambulance, among other advances. When the war broke out in August 1914, Americans in France and at home joined efforts to restructure, equip and staff a 600-bed military hospital in the Lycée Pasteur building in Neuilly-sur-Seine, under management of the nearby American Hospital of Paris. Volunteers from the expatriate community and from the United States stepped forward to serve as doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers, funded through an unprecedented wave of giving. The American Hospital became the epicenter of these volunteer efforts, organizing the first motor-ambulance squad, setting up field hospitals and convalescent centers, and bringing modern medicine to treat terrible war wounds. NBC’s Lucy Kafanov reports for Nightly News.
Rioting erupted in the heart of the French capital Saturday, as protests against President Emmanuel Macron morphed into melees that left burning cars and shattered storefronts across one of the city’s most upscale neighborhoods.
The demonstrations, among the most destructive to hit Paris in recent decades, signal the depth of public opposition to Mr. Macron as he moves to enact sweeping overhauls of the French economy. A protest movement of “gilets jaunes,” or yellow vests, has ridden a wave of popular discontent with the French leader to become the most potent threat yet to his young presidency.
While France is accustomed to sometimes violent protests in the working class suburbs of Paris, Saturday’s rioting occurred in the streets around the Champs-Élysées, a magnet for tourists and the wealthy. The area on Saturday would normally be thronged with holiday shoppers. Instead, stores closed en masse and boarded up their windows as they braced for the demonstrators. NBC’s Lucy Kafanov reports from Paris for the TODAY Show, Nightly News with Lester Holt and MSNBC:
The last American to win the world chess championship was a Brooklyn-bred grandmaster who stunned the world champion and took his title.
The next one may be, too.
Beginning this week, Fabiano Caruana, a 26-year-old grandmaster who has spent the last two decades fighting his way up the ranks to reach No. 2 in the world, is expected to lay serious claim to a title that has not been held by an American since Bobby Fischer won it from Boris Spassky in 1972.
Caruana will challenge the world’s best player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, at the World Chess Championships in London. NBC’s Lucy Kafanov reports on the World Chess Championships for the TODAY Show:
In Liverpool this weekend, we were treated to an unusual sight: Giants roaming the streets. This was puppetry of colossal proportions — brought to us by the French street theater company Royal Deluxe. It was the third time these gentle giants visited Liverpool, and the last the world will get to see them. We were lucky enough to experience the magic and the wonder — reminding us all to dream big.
Check out our story for NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt:
So excited to share this story with you all. I was lucky enough to travel to the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway for the TODAY Show.
How far would you go to find the perfect wave? Surfers from across the globe have been flocking to Unstad, Norway – deep in the Arctic Circle – drawn by the wild, rugged terrain, the perfect waves, and a totally different type of experience to that found in the crowded tropic surf spots.
Advances in wetsuit technology has opened some of the most frigid reaches of the world — Alaska, Antarctica, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden — to surfers seeking isolated adventures and unexplored waves.
Unstad is home to the world’s northernmost surf school, which takes visitors surfing all year round and has seen a big increase in the number of American surfers.
Plus, bucket list CHECK: I got to see the the awe-inspiring Aurora Borealis in action!
NBC’S LUCY KAFANOV UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. SEPTEMBER 2018
NBC’s Lucy Kafanov and her crew shooting the TODAY Show story about surfing in the Arctic.
NBC’s Lucy Kafanov braves the Arctic waters for the TODAY Show
NBC’s Lucy Kafanov surfing the Arctic waters for the Sunday TODAY Show with Willie Geist.
As President Donald Trump seeks to open the Arctic waters for offshore oil and gas drilling, there's a race unfolding for the remote region's mineral wealth. Russia's military is on the march in the arctic - its biggest push in the region since the fall of the Soviet Union. NBC's Lucy Kafanov is the first American journalist to get access to Russia's newly-formed arctic brigade on the northern frontier near the border with Finland.
Watch our story below or read more here: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-s-military-buildup-arctic-has-u-s-watching-closely-n753041
by ALASTAIR JAMIESON and LUCY KAFANOV
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-earthquake-rescuers-dig-survivors-death-toll-climbs-n637491
Lucy Kafanov NBC News Foreign Correspondent
As Myanmar's NLD-led government assumes the mantle of power, conditions deteriorate for the country's long-oppressed ethnic Rohingya community. My latest for Deutsche Welle:
Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric—including a proposal for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”—is resonating among hardline Buddhist nationalists who have increasingly sought to portray Muslims as an existential threat to the country’s Buddhist majority. They, like Trump, have tapped into a deep vein of anger and bigotry under the guise of protecting their respective countries from the threat of Islamic extremists.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the International Reporting Project.
She is the iconic face of democracy in a country crushed by more than a half-century of military rule — a former political prisoner, Nobel laureate and the head of the National League for Democracy party, which saw a landslide victory in November. But of all the titles granted to Aung San Suu Kyi in recent years, the president of Myanmar, for now, will not be one of them.
You can read my latest piece on Myanmar's fragile democratic transition here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/03/10/aung-san-suu-kyi-myanmar-burma-president/81587208/
© Lucy Kafanov
A Rohingya Muslim family mourns the death of their patriarch. Yan Thei village is located in a remote part of Rakhine state in Western Burma, about an hour from the ruins of Mrauk U. This village was the site of one of the worst massacres during the 2012 violence which saw most of the homes burned down by Rakhine mobs. Denied citizenship rights and access to education, medical care and the ability to earn a living, many Rohingya are trapped in a desperate situation. The family lacked the money to bribe the police in order to be able to spend a night at the hospital, leaving their father unable to get proper medical care for a kidney condition. He passed away inside his home a few minutes after my arrival.
I've spent the past month reporting across Myanmar, thanks to a generous grant from the International Reporting Project. Please stay tuned for more photographs and stories in the coming weeks.
YANGON, Myanmar — After more than five decades of isolation and repressive military rule, Myanmar on Monday swore in hundreds of lawmakers in its first freely elected parliament.
The inaugural session marked the start of a new era for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, which has been under army control since 1962.
It follows a Nov. 8 election that saw Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party win two-thirds of available parliamentary seats and effectively rout the country’s military leaders. Suu Kyi won a landslide election in 1990 that was later annulled by the military.
Myanmar still faces a long road to full democracy. The military retains 25% of seats in parliament, giving it a veto over constitutional changes. It also still controls key sectors of the economy and ministries such as defense, interior and border affairs. In addition, the army can take over the government under emergency legislation.
It was the nightmare scenario analysts warned about ever since Russia formally entered the Syrian conflict: Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday, dramatically escalating tensions between the NATO member country and Moscow while raising the prospect of further chaos in the Middle East.
“There was plenty of time from the first warning to the shot being fired for this to run up and down the chain of command,” said Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University in New York state. “I don’t think this was an accident. I think this was a game of chicken that went wrong.”
You can read the rest of my story for Vocativ here: Turkey And Russia: True Frenemies When It Comes To Syria
Once one of Europe's most contested frontiers, the Oder bridge links the eastern German city of Frankfurt with its twin on the Polish side, Słubice.
The Christian Science Monitor assigned me an interesting story from the German-Polish border, examining how residents were reacting to Poland's recent rightward political shift following that country's elections. It's an incredibly fascinating place -- with tensions and rivalries that date back to centuries of conflict.
You can read the story here: With rightward tilt, will Poland pick a new fight with Germany?
The marshy Oder River separates the eastern German city of Frankfurt an der Oder from its twin on the Polish side, Slubice, but there are no border checkpoints here and crossing from one country to the next is as easy as walking across a concrete and steel bridge.
Wars, contested borders and economic disparity had once made bitter enemies out of residents on each side of the Oder, but following Poland’s entry into the European Union and the subsequent dismantling of borders, the twin cities have emerged as a symbol of German-Polish reconciliation and European unity.
But residents worry that Poland’s rightwing shift in last month’s general election could bring that cooperation to an end.
The vote resulted in a landslide victory by the right-wing eurosceptic Law and Justice Party (PiS), whose leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is well known for his staunchly anti-German views. Now, there are growing fears in both Frankfurt and Slubice that the party’s sweep to power could revive historical grudges and bring lingering resentments to the surface.
Slubice was part of Frankfurt until Hitler’s defeat in 1945, when the victorious Allies redrew Germany’s eastern border along the Oder River, handing Poland nearly 40,000 square miles of German land. Millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from their homes, replaced by new Polish settlers.
In the Communist era, Poland and East Germany became forced allies in the Soviet bloc, but residents of Frankfurt and Slubice remained deeply suspicious of each other and movement between the two cities was restricted.
When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, so too did the barriers across the Oder. But the relations were largely transactional: Germans would cross over to Poland to stock up on cheap cigarettes and gasoline, while Poles would buy higher quality products in Germany.
A woman bikes across the Oder bridge from Germany’s Frankfurt into Slubice, where lower prices for goods draw German shoppers eager for a discount.
Cars with German and Polish license plates wait in Slubice traffic to cross the Oder bridge to Frankfurt. Many come to Poland to stock up on cheap cigarettes and discount fuel.
The strict checkpoints on the German and Polish border have been dismantled following Poland’s entry into the European Union and later, the visa-free Schengen zone.
Cigarette shops are the first thing you see in Poland's Slubice.
A woman returns to Germany after a shopping trip in Poland's Slubice.
In my latest story for Newsweek, I examine Germany's reaction to the devastating attacks in Paris and whether they are likely to affect Berlin's open-door policy towards refugees.
You can read the story here: In Germany, Shock, Sympathy and New Debate Over 'Open Door'
I also contributed some reporting to Bill Powell's excellent cover story for the magazine, Paris Attacks Show 9/11 Changed Everything and Nothing. If you have a few spare minutes, it is worth a read.
