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The Bureau of Land Management is auctioning off 18,000 acres of oil leases in California Wednesday. The state has one of the largest deposits of shale oil in the country. And it's attracting new attention because of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing – or fracking.

David Greene and Renee Montagne continue now with the latest installment of our series The Twelve Days of Deductions. It's Morning Edition's nod to the many deductions, credits and other tax breaks that political leaders are weighing as they continue their negotiations to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

David Greene has business news.

British bank HSBC has agreed to pay a record fine of $1.9 billion to settle an investigation by U.S. prosecutors. HSBC faced charges of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and facilitating prohibited transactions with nations like Iran and Cuba. For more, Robert Siegel talks with Jimmy Gurul, law professor at Notre Dame University.

President Obama has said it over and over — to help balance the federal budget, the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes. Republicans frame it a different way and say raising those taxes would hit small businesses, making them less likely to hire new workers.

The entertainment industry seems to give us only three things: sex, Justin Bieber and boxing.

Justin Bieber aside, don't producers know almost nobody cares anymore about boxing? But here we have Clifford Odets' period piece, Golden Boy, back on Broadway, and — achtung! — a musical of Rocky mounted in Germany.

Plus the usual same-old, same-old treatments are floating around. Eminem wants to make a boxing movie. Really. Worse, there are actual plans to have Sylvester Stallone fight Robert DeNiro in a boxing film. OMG — I am perfectly serious.

I say, please, can't we do sports movies for the sports fans who still exist and care? Yes, I know, as we say, that "in the full scheme of things" caring passionately about a mere sport is not important. And yes, sports fans are not necessarily the most discriminating. What is American parents' greatest nightmare? That they will spend $60,000 a year to send their son to Duke University, and then they will turn on the TV and see him half-naked, with his face painted blue, contorted, screaming at some poor guy from Wake Forest or Clemson shooting a free throw.

But most important, right now I wish the entertainment moguls would do a play or a film for the poor hockey fans, who don't have an NHL season because the owners have locked out the players and, as we know, there is no bipartisanship left in America today. Or, I guess, in Canada now, too.

Sports

Russia's Hockey Glad To Have NHL-Lockout Orphans

Antonio, Domingo and Pepe are old friends in their late 40s and 50s. All unemployed, they meet most mornings for coffee and cigarettes in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square and rant about the government.

The nation's civil service is a particularly attractive target. The men grumble about what they imagine is the life of a government worker — long coffee breaks, siestas and lots of paid time off.

"They earn much more than they're worth," Antonio says. "That's something that's got to change. They earn a lot, and they hardly do anything."

Jobs For Life

Spanish civil servants do earn a lot, compared with their private sector counterparts. Virtually all the best and brightest young graduates want to work for the government, and many are willing to stay on waiting lists for years — without pay — in hopes of snagging a position.

Civil servants took a recent hit when the government decided to cut their holiday bonuses this year, but even so, Spanish public workers are still the envy of their countrymen.

When Spain's economic crisis hit, the private sector immediately started shedding jobs and cutting wages. New labor reforms have made it even easier for companies to do so, and unemployment now tops 25 percent.

In contrast, most public employees still have jobs for life, says economist Gayle Allard of Madrid's IE Business School.

"They have had their wages frozen. Hiring has been frozen. But it's not the kind of severe adjustment you're seeing in the private sector," Allard says. "You hear people say, 'Wait a minute! In my company, we've cut all of our costs 30 percent. What's their problem? We're doing this, why can't they do it?' "

Strong Unions, Strong Numbers

One reason is the civil service's strong union contracts; another is the sheer number of civil servants in Spain. Bureaucrats, doctors, teachers and other public workers amount to 2.6 million people, more than 11 percent of the population. That makes politicians think twice about crossing them.

Spaniards also have a different attitude toward the state. The Pew Research Center recently found that while 6 in 10 Americans say they want to be free of interference from the state, more than 6 in 10 Spaniards say the opposite — that it's the government's job to make sure nobody is in need.

"It's a funny thing," says Allard. "I think Americans ... have a hard time understanding it, because we don't assign such a high value to security. But for Spaniards, that's really, really important."

Europe

Spain's Crisis Leads To Rise Of Grass-Roots Groups

The popular website Intrade allows its users to bet on the odds of almost anything — like whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will get ousted by a certain date, or whether the movie Argo will win best picture at the Oscars.

This week, Ireland-based Intrade announced that U.S. users will have to unwind their bets and shut down their accounts by the end of the year. That's after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Intrade for operating an unregistered exchange.

Transactions on the site have long resided in a gray area in the U.S., with little clarity as to whether they represent gambling, futures trading or something else that should not be regulated — leaving some questioning the legal basis for cracking down on so-called "prediction markets."

'More Accurate Than Pundits'

"Conceptually, to an economist, there's not a difference between betting and trading — apart from the fact that one sounds more polite than the other," says Justin Wolfers, who grew up in Australia working for bookies taking bets.

Now a University of Michigan professor who's studied Intrade, Wolfers says the site is not just a venue for winning and losing money. It also generates news as a byproduct, he says. That is, the odds on Intrade are almost always right.

"It tends to be more accurate than pundits, it tends to be more accurate than polls, and in the past it's even more accurate than very sophisticated poll-watchers like The New York Times' Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com," Wolfers says.

To use Intrade, members place bets on yes-or-no questions. Much like a stock, the price of placing a bet fluctuates based on demand. And when the outcome is determined, the payout is either $10 or nothing. If you win, your profit is that $10, minus the price you paid to place your bet.

According to Thomas Bell, a professor at Chapman Law School in California, the CFTC considers those transactions enough like pork belly futures — which fall under the commission's authority — to be shut down.

It's All Politics

They Call The Election A Horse Race; It Has Real Bettors, Too

The Labor Department's glad tidings Friday about the uptick in job creation last month might morph into bad news next month for many of the long-term unemployed.

December 7, 2012

It's the season of giving, especially when it comes to end-of-year charitable donations. But how do you know that your money is getting into the right hands? Host Michel Martin gets some useful tips on vetting charities from Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator.

Retailers are finding more ways to offer their customers financial products — mortgages, loans and the like. In the past, people looked to banks for this kind of product. But big-box stores are trying to find new ways of getting money to those who cannot use banks, or want to avoid them altogether.

Costco may be best known for pallets of bottled water or bulk toilet paper that can last a family an entire year. But earlier this year, it also added mortgages to its growing array of financial offerings.

Costco is not actually making the loans. Rather, it refers customers to its partner banks, with whom it has negotiated discounts on closing costs and interest rates.

Jay Smith, the director of business and financial services for Costco, says offering mortgages helps boost Costco's No. 1 profit center: annual membership fees.

"This is a great way to increase that value for membership," he says, "and that's why we're offering" loans.

Costco, which also offers auto and home insurance, is just one of the latest entrants in the alternative consumer finance market, an area some refer to as "shadow banking."

For some retailers, like Home Depot, branded credit cards and loan offerings are old hat. The home improvement chain established its credit and loan offerings almost at its inception. That's because it sells lots of big-ticket items, especially after disasters like Hurricane Sandy, when there is sudden demand for new credit.

Home Depot's vice president of financial services, Dwaine Kimmet, says the company recently sweetened its offers in part because other sources of credit have dried up.

"And customers just can't get access to capital, because there's just not equity in their homes, in many cases," he says.

Offering credit in a store also helps sales, of course. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, partners with other companies to offer checking accounts, check-cashing, money orders and a host of other services.

Alternative financial products appeal to a growing number of people, says Wal-Mart Vice President Daniel Eckert.

"I think there's also a group of the population that engages in these services, frankly because their needs are not being met by 'mainstream financial services,' and are unhappy about the value proposition or the costs," he says, adding that those customers "have found that this is a better way for them to manage and control their finances, and is more accessible to them."

In fact, in a recent report, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates banks, said a growing number of Americans are going outside the mainstream banking system to manage their money. More than 8 percent of U.S. households avoid traditional banks altogether.

Norma Garcia, a senior attorney for Consumers Union, says the fact that retailers see an opportunity in financial service products is a sign of the times.

"And it really should be a wake-up call for the banks that they are losing customers," she says. "And that they need to be more responsive to the needs of consumers."

Garcia notes the backlash against banks over increased overdraft fees and other charges. She says that although mortgages offered through Costco and checking accounts through Wal-Mart may offer some lower initial fees, Consumers Union is still studying the products to see whether they also come with notable drawbacks.

"What we have seen is that the protections vary considerably," she says. "It's not always apparent to the consumers what the risks might be with that product. In some cases there are activation fees, [or] there are dormancy fees if you don't use the product for a certain period of time."

Just because they might appear at the checkout aisle, she says, mortgages and loans are not — and should not be — impulse buys.

The expiration of Bush-era tax cuts. A patch to the alternative minimum tax. An increase in capital gains taxes.

As the "fiscal cliff" approaches, all of these are possible, but none certain. That uncertainty solicits many questions from anxious taxpayers. But, for accountants and financial planners, there are a few definitive answers.

Financial professionals who spoke with NPR say they are not strangers to uncertainty. When the Bush tax cuts were up for expiration two years ago, for instance, the feeling was similar.

"Every time there's a significant change in tax law, you have to retool and learn things," says Mark Burger, a CPA in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

But the fiscal cliff, with its host of associated changes, presents a challenge unlike anything the pros have dealt with in the past.

"The difference this year is the volume and the unprecedented amount of issues coming at the same time," says Ed Karl, vice president of taxation of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Related NPR Stories

Economy

Why A 'Fiscal Cliff' Failure Could Help The Economy

It's the season of giving, especially when it comes to end-of-year charitable donations. But how do you know that your money is getting into the right hands? Host Michel Martin gets some useful tips on vetting charities from Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator.

Tired of seeing young people unemployed or underemployed? Young people currently suffer from one of the highest jobless rates in the nation. Host Michel Martin speaks with Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute about solving youth unemployment through apprenticeships.

The Justice Department is expected to announce Tuesday that it has settled a money laundering case against HSBC. The British bank announced early Tuesday it has agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle allegations of money laundering.

Lines of communication remain open in an effort to avert the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff," according to the White House and House Speaker John Boehner.

If no deal is reached between now and the end of the year, would the consequences be that drastic?

To answer that question, let's imagine it's January and the nation has gone off the "fiscal cliff." You don't really feel any different and things don't look different either. That's because, according to Stan Collender, the cliff isn't really a cliff.

"It was a great communications tool but it was a misnomer from the beginning," he says. "The idea of jumping off the cliff and just having the economy go into the tanks immediately is just absolutely, positively, incontrovertibly incorrect."

Collender, a former congressional budget staffer, now works at Qorvis Communications.

"Yes, taxes technically will go up on Jan. 1. And yes, federal spending will be cut on Jan. 2, but you really won't start to see any real effects of that for a couple of weeks at the minimum and maybe not even until the end of the month," Collender adds.

He says the Obama administration would most likely instruct departments to delay the cuts for a little while to see if something can be worked out with Congress.

But what about taxes?

"For most people, it's life goes on," says Bob Meighan, vice president of TurboTax, the program some 25 million people use to prepare their taxes each year.

"We may see take home pay reduced to accommodate the increased tax withholding on your paycheck, as well as the additional payroll taxes. But there is already talk of deferring or delaying that until Congress decides what to do," Meighan says.

Even if higher payroll taxes and income tax rates show up in that very first paycheck, for most it won't arrive until mid-month says Edward Kleinbard a tax law professor at the University of Southern California.

"The first few days of 2013 are not going to radically change his or her life, but as the weeks go by, at some point, take home pay will go down noticeably," Kleinbard says.

The Congressional Budget Office has said that if the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts of the "fiscal cliff" are allowed to happen, the country would fall into recession in 2013. But budget maven Collender says it wouldn't be immediate.

"It's not as if the entire increase in taxes that would be included in the "fiscal cliff" would be taken out of your first paycheck. The real problem economically with the "fiscal cliff" is cumulative. That is, if we hit the cliff, we go over it and it stays in effect for the whole year," Collender says.

He adds the thing to look for immediately would be market reaction, a dive in stock prices.

But, Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago, isn't so sure that will happen.

"There's a changing perception that this is no longer a time bomb that will detonate," Ablin says.

He thinks that perception is already baked into stock prices. The image Ablin prefers to the cliff or the bomb is a pot of water. On Jan. 1, the burner is turned on. But the water won't start boiling for a while.

"Put it this way," Ablin says, "I lose sleep at night so my clients don't have to. I'm not losing a ton of sleep over this one — at least not yet. I start losing sleep if we are making no progress by let's say, the end of January."

So, if these guys are right, and there is no deal by the end of December, go ahead and enjoy your New Year's Eve. It would take a while for real consequences to play out.

The Orange Country Register in suburban Los Angeles is expanding its newsroom. Not only that — the owners are emphasizing print, not digital.

In the past few weeks, longtime Register editor Ken Brusic has hired some two-dozen positions: critics to review food, TV and cars, a society columnist and investigative reporters. He's still looking for a movie critic, a magazine writer and many more reporters.

"We haven't seen this kind of hiring since the early '90s," he says. That was before the digital age, when newspapers were still hugely profitable.

At the Register's headquarters, it sounds like a different era. The Register's presses whir nearly 24 hours a day.

They're printing more color, more pages: double the editorial section, two weekly high school sports sections and a new daily business section.

Brusic doesn't think people stopped subscribing to newspapers because they didn't want to read them. He thinks it's because publishers made too many cutbacks.

"They've been offering less and attempting, in some cases, to charge more for it. And people are smart. People won't put up for that sort of thing," he says. "So we're now offering more."

The Financial Puzzle

Brusic has been at the Register for more than two decades, much of which was marked by big layoffs.

Three years ago, the paper went into bankruptcy, but the changing economics of the industry were only part of the problem. The owners had saddled the paper with hundreds of millions in debt, and then cashed out.

The Two-Way

Murdoch's News Corp. Shuts Down 'The Daily'

When Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant, he set up manufacturing in San Francisco. The sweatshirt company focuses on the details and skips over the distributors. Winthrop tells host Guy Raz how making the clothing in America actually helps his bottom line.

A manhunt has been launched to find the mother of Nigeria's Finance Minister who was kidnapped on Sunday. Crimes like kidnapping, online scams, and corruption are lucrative enterprises in Nigeria. Host Michel Martin spoke with Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala days before the kidnapping, about the challenges involved in reforming Nigeria.

Robert Siegel talks to Ambassador Martin Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institute. They discuss Israel, and the complicated relations it has with the United States and its neighbors. He talks about what needs to come next to keep the tensions between Israel and other state players from spinning out of control.

The advantages to making products in the U.S. are starting to stack up — and companies are taking notice. Among them are Apple, which announced Thursday it plans to start producing some of its Mac computers here instead of in China, and General Electric, which is making big investments at home.

It's not just a matter of publicity, either. As the December issue of The Atlantic reports, companies are seeing real economic advantages to "insourcing," a reversal of the outsourcing trends that sent U.S. manufacturing overseas.

A New Approach

General Electric opened Appliance Park in Louisville, Ky., in 1951, but lately it has been making some changes there. In August, the company announced an $800 million investment in jobs, products and the manufacturing process itself.

Back in 2008, Rich Calvaruso gathered his team at Appliance Park and told them they had to rethink the dishwasher. As a "Lean" leader, Calvaruso's job is to figure out how to make things more efficiently. So he asked a team of factory workers, designers and marketers to put their heads together. They managed to cut down the time it takes to build the dishwasher by one-third.

The dishwasher's orientation was the key. When it was set up a certain way, operators down the line could do their work without spending time manipulating the washer itself.

Even though it now takes fewer people to make that dishwasher, not a single person was laid off. Calvaruso tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that those employees were freed up to work in other parts of the company.

Hoodies Made At Home

A Japanese university says researchers discovered a chemical compound which apparently wards off the virus responsible for respiratory infections such as pneumonia. The compound is found in hops — which means you can drink it up in your beer. But for any benefit, you'd need to drink about 30 beers.

A manhunt has been launched to find the mother of Nigeria's Finance Minister who was kidnapped on Sunday. Crimes like kidnapping, online scams, and corruption are lucrative enterprises in Nigeria. Host Michel Martin spoke with Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala days before the kidnapping, about the challenges involved in reforming Nigeria.

Hundreds of people gathered in September at Baltimore's harbor as the wind gusted off the water's edge. Nearly 50 of them were about to be sworn in as U.S. citizens. Some were young, some old. There were uniformed members of the U.S. military, parents and children. There were immigrants from El Salvador, China, Honduras and countries in between. They raised their right hands, recited the naturalization oath to the United States, and were declared fully American.

The national conversation on immigration reform has been stalled for years, and while President Obama says it's a top priority for his second term, Baltimore is moving ahead with its own agenda: It's courting immigrants in an effort to revitalize its shrinking population.

Baltimore was once a major port city and destination for people moving to America. In 1950, nearly a million people lived here. Since then though, Baltimore has become known for high crime rates and abandoned homes. The city's population has fallen to just half of what it was in the 1960s.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has a plan: She's looking to bring in 10,000 new families over the next decade, focusing on immigrants, a group that has helped other large cities grow. She's hoping new families will boost income and property tax revenue, helping to reignite the city's economy.

Zakaria al-Saghir is one of those new immigrants. He's originally from Iraq, and moved to Baltimore County with his wife and their three kids in September. Today he's in a small discussion group at Baltimore's International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps newcomers learn the ropes in the U.S. He's seated in a semi-circle with five other immigrants as their trainer, Sara Bedford, goes over everything from properly shaking hands, to filing taxes.

Enlarge Acacia Squires/NPR

Hundreds gather in Baltimore's harbor Sept. 22 to witness the naturalization of nearly 50 new Americans.

It's widely known as the fiscal cliff, but some prominent Republicans have been calling it a "debt crisis." Economists agree such a crisis may be coming, but it's not here yet. Demographic changes are forcing a reckoning of how to pay for what people want from their government.

President Barack Obama traveled to Redford, Mich., on Monday to carry on his campaign to cut a budget deal with House Republicans that includes raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. He spoke to workers at a diesel facility.

The Orange Country Register in suburban Los Angeles is expanding its newsroom. Not only that — the owners are emphasizing print, not digital.

In the past few weeks, longtime Register editor Ken Brusic has hired some two-dozen positions: critics to review food, TV and cars, a society columnist and investigative reporters. He's still looking for a movie critic, a magazine writer and many more reporters.

"We haven't seen this kind of hiring since the early '90s," he says. That was before the digital age, when newspapers were still hugely profitable.

At the Register's headquarters, it sounds like a different era. The Register's presses whir nearly 24 hours a day.

They're printing more color, more pages: double the editorial section, two weekly high school sports sections and a new daily business section.

Brusic doesn't think people stopped subscribing to newspapers because they didn't want to read them. He thinks it's because publishers made too many cutbacks.

"They've been offering less and attempting, in some cases, to charge more for it. And people are smart. People won't put up for that sort of thing," he says. "So we're now offering more."

The Financial Puzzle

Brusic has been at the Register for more than two decades, much of which was marked by big layoffs.

Three years ago, the paper went into bankruptcy, but the changing economics of the industry were only part of the problem. The owners had saddled the paper with hundreds of millions in debt, and then cashed out.

The Two-Way

Murdoch's News Corp. Shuts Down 'The Daily'

The advantages to making products in the U.S. are starting to stack up — and companies are taking notice. Among them are Apple, which announced Thursday it plans to start producing some of its Mac computers here instead of in China, and General Electric, which is making big investments at home.

It's not just a matter of publicity, either. As the December issue of The Atlantic reports, companies are seeing real economic advantages to "insourcing," a reversal of the outsourcing trends that sent U.S. manufacturing overseas.

A New Approach

General Electric opened Appliance Park in Louisville, Ky., in 1951, but lately it has been making some changes there. In August, the company announced an $800 million investment in jobs, products and the manufacturing process itself.

Back in 2008, Rich Calvaruso gathered his team at Appliance Park and told them they had to rethink the dishwasher. As a "Lean" leader, Calvaruso's job is to figure out how to make things more efficiently. So he asked a team of factory workers, designers and marketers to put their heads together. They managed to cut down the time it takes to build the dishwasher by one-third.

The dishwasher's orientation was the key. When it was set up a certain way, operators down the line could do their work without spending time manipulating the washer itself.

Even though it now takes fewer people to make that dishwasher, not a single person was laid off. Calvaruso tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that those employees were freed up to work in other parts of the company.

Hoodies Made At Home

When Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant, he set up manufacturing in San Francisco. The sweatshirt company focuses on the details and skips over the distributors. Winthrop tells host Guy Raz how making the clothing in America actually helps his bottom line.

As the National Hockey League lockout drags into its 86th day, which featured news that more games have been cancelled including the All-Star game, some of the league's biggest stars are getting plenty of action back in their home countries.

In Russia, major NHL players such as Alex Ovechkin and Yevgeny Malkin are giving a boost to the fledgling KHL—the Kontinental Hockey League.

Russian NHL players are scattered throughout the KHL teams that still carry names from the Soviet era when Russia dominated world hockey.

Ovechkin plays for Dynamo Moscow, the team that gave him his professional start. He's joined by his Washington Capitals teammate, Center Nicklas Backstrom.

They've made a happy man of Andrei Safronov, Dynamo's general manager: He calls Ovechkin "our hero," and says that he and Backstrom have been playing the kind of spectacular hockey that draws crowds.

On a recent night, Dynamo played a traditional rival, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl from an industrial city about 160 miles northeast of Moscow. Lokomotiv is bolstered by two more NHL players, goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who comes from the Colorado Avalanche, and Artem Anisimov, from the Columbus Blue Jackets.

This is a comeback season for Lokomotiv, still in mourning after an airplane crash in September of 2011 killed 37 team members, coaches and support staff. It's been a strong comeback, with Lokomotiv now in second place in the league's western conference, right behind Dynamo.

Ovechin seems to have mixed emotions about being back in Moscow.

Last month, he told Russia's RT English-language television that it was good to be home with loved ones and his old crowd, even though he's working as hard as ever:

"The only problem with what I have in Washington..." Ovechkin said, "I miss my friends and family, but again, you professional, and if you have a time to relax you have to use it."

More recently, he complained in an interview on his blog about what he sees as the lack of interest in hockey in Moscow. He said Dynamo has been playing to unfilled arenas, and said he's still hoping to get back to Washington in time to lead the Capitals to the Stanley Cup.

Fans in Russia say it's true their league is still building a fan base.

The Kontinental Hockey League was founded four years ago, out of the remnants of the Russian Super League. Most of its teams are Russian, but it includes clubs from Belarus, Ukraine and four other countries.

Many clubs have been struggling to amp up their attendance.

Fan Aleck Shakoff says the NHL stars lend some excitement to the season, but he said the league is gaining momentum, even without the outside talent.

"Maybe not this year, but maybe in a few years, of course we will be able to compete with NHL stars," he said. "Definitely. You'll see."

But Shakoff can't resist asking an American reporter the same question many Russian fans keep raising: "And what about lockout? What you think, what it will be completed?"

The latest collapse in NHL talks means that that some of the NHL players, including Ovechkin, will be part of a Russian all-star team at the Euro Hockey Tournament in Moscow this week.

The Labor Department's glad tidings Friday about the uptick in job creation last month might morph into bad news next month for many of the long-term unemployed.

December 7, 2012

As part of an advance by Syrian rebels, they captured a village this fall near the northern border with Turkey called Khirbat al-Joz.

Syrian families who had fled to Turkish refugee camps returned back to see what had happened to their homes and farms. Many found charred ruins — a village devastated by war.

Now, the villagers are rebuilding. And with the help of Syrian activists, they are trying to set a small example of a secular, democratic place.

New Uniforms For A New Police Force

It's a cold and rainy day, but that doesn't dampen the celebration at the police station when Syrian activist Razan Shalab Alsham arrives with 20 brand new police uniforms.

She's part of a group called the Syrian Emergency Task Force that raised money for the project.

These are local men who joined rebel brigades to free their village from the control of President Bashar Assad's regime. Now, they say, they want to be a civilian police force to back the civil council that runs things here.

Enlarge Deborah Amos

Razan Shalab Alsham, in bright blue, works for the Syrian Emergency Task Force. She helped provide uniforms for the new civil police force of Khirbet al-Joz.

The wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying Mexican-American singing superstar Jenni Rivera was found in northern Mexico on Sunday and there are no apparent survivors, authorities said.

Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said that "everything points toward" it being the U.S.-registered Learjet 25 carrying Rivera and six other people from Monterrey en route to Toluca, Mexico. The plane had gone missing after takeoff early Sunday.

"There is nothing recognizable, neither material nor human" in the wreckage," Ruiz Esparza told the Televisa network.

Authorities had not confirmed that Rivera was among the dead.

Jorge Domene, spokesman for Nuevo Leon's government, said the plane left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after Rivera gave a concert there and aviation authorities lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes later. It had been scheduled to arrive in Toluca, outside Mexico City, about an hour later.

Also aboard the plane were her publicist, lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew.

The 43-year-old who was born and raised in Long Beach, California, is one of the biggest stars of the Mexican regional style known as grupero music, which is influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchera styles.

Television

Media Outlets Adapt To Growing Hispanic Audience

We asked listeners what they wanted to know about efforts to head off the package of tax hikes and spending cuts set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2012. Today, we get answers from Scott Horsley, Tamara Keith and John Ydstie.

President John Dramani Mahama won Ghana's election, despite complaints from the country's main opposition leaders. Host Michel Martin speaks with journalist Kojo Oppong Nkrumah about the election and how democracy is working in the West African country.

Over the weekend, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi rescinded most of a temporary order that elevated his powers above judicial review. But he did not concede on demands to postpone a vote on a new constitution.

Over the next 12 days, Morning Edition will take a closer look at the biggest federal tax deductions: how they came about, who benefits and how they might be affected by fiscal cliff negotiations. Renee Montagne and David Greene begin our reports with the casualty loss deduction.