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The House has begun debate on its budget resolution, with a vote expected later this week. And as supporters talk about this budget, there's one comparison you hear a lot.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio: "Every family in America has to balance their budget. Washington should, too."

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.: "You know, every family in America understands the necessity of a balanced budget."

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.: "This is how every family tries to live in good times and in bad. Your government should do the same."

But just how accurate is that analogy?

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Retirement ads are everywhere these days. The Villages lures retirees to come live, love and golf in Florida. USAA offers financial counsel to retiring military personnel. Hollywood stars such as Pat Boone and Tommy Lee Jones dole out all kinds of retirement advice in 30-second sermonettes on television and the Internet.

"Thousands of seniors have turned to One Reverse Mortgage to take control of their retirement," intones Henry "The Fonz" Winkler in one earnest spot.

Old actors don't retire; they just make retirement ads.

But the more talk there is of retirement — on TV, in pop-up ads, in news stories — the more you begin to wonder: What is retirement anymore anyway?

Backyard Hammocks

Time was, the official portrait of a retired American included a steady, dependable pension; leisurely mornings puttering about the house in soft slippers — maybe replacing the chain on the toilet tank ball or knitting a doorknob cozy; slow-driving from drug store to grocery to TV repair shop — back when TVs could be repaired. Afternoons were for penning letters to faraway friends and checking on the backyard hammock hooks.

Oh sure, there was plenty to do — foursomes of bridge and long weekend fishing trips. Perhaps for the more privileged — a beach house, a houseboat, that long-delayed trip to Mexico City.

No mas.

"I think the word 'retired' needs to be retired," says financial writer Kerry Hannon in her 2012 book, Great Jobs for Everyone 50+.

"Baby boomers are either continuing to work much longer or approaching work not as an afterthought, but as a pillar of their retirement plans," Hannon says, "as oxymoronic as that sounds."

Many older people are continuing to work — some out of choice, some out of necessity. "Unlike many of our parents," says Hannon, "most of us don't have pensions to fall back on to fund not-working for a decade or more."

She notes a few statistics: Between 2010 and 2020, people ages 55 and older are projected to be the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. labor force, according to the 2012–2013 Occupational Outlook Handbook, a jobs forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, according to recent findings by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, more and more workers say they are planning to delay retirement.

Planning For Retirement When Savings Fall Short March 27, 2013

The 11.7 million Americans searching for work got discouraging news Friday morning when the Labor Department said employers created only 88,000 jobs in March. The weak job growth comes at the same time benefits for the long-term unemployed are shrinking.

The smaller-than-expected increase in payrolls was a big disappointment, coming after a long stretch of much better results. Over the past year, employment growth has averaged 169,000 jobs a month.

April 5, 2013

The House has begun debate on its budget resolution, with a vote expected later this week. And as supporters talk about this budget, there's one comparison you hear a lot.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio: "Every family in America has to balance their budget. Washington should, too."

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.: "You know, every family in America understands the necessity of a balanced budget."

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.: "This is how every family tries to live in good times and in bad. Your government should do the same."

But just how accurate is that analogy?

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Lawmakers in Kansas passed an extensive anti-abortion measure Friday night, which Gov. Sam Brownback is expected to sign into law. The bill declares that life begins "at fertilization," prohibits abortions related to the baby's sex and blocks tax breaks for health care providers that perform abortions.

The House passed the bill 90-30, hours after the Senate approved it 28-10.

The Associated Press quoted Republican Kansas Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a supporter of the bill, as saying, "The human is a magnificent piece of work in all stages of development, wondrous in every regard, from the microscopic until full development."

The bill, called The Women's Right to Know Act, also requires doctors to provide controversial information to patients either seeking or inquiring about an abortion of a link between the procedure and breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute concluded in 2003 that abortion does not raise the risk for breast cancer, but physicians would have to address the issue as a "potential risk" for women seeking an abortion.

The Wichita Eagle reported that Rep. Annie Kuether, D-Topeka, responded to the bill's passage by saying the measure should be called "the Women's Right to Be Lied to Act."

The Women's Right to Know Act, or HB 2253, would make Kansas one of several states to add language that limits abortion practices while keeping Roe v. Wade in mind. The 1973 Supreme Court decision upholds the rights of women to obtain abortions in some circumstances, but allows states to put certain restrictions in place.

Gov. Brownback says he still has to review the law, but he is expected to sign it, allowing the new restrictions to take effect on July 1.

пятница

Every Midwestern city has garages full of four local teenagers playing rock 'n' roll and dreaming of the big time ... but Rockford, Ill., boasts the few that made it. Rick Nielsen formed Cheap Trick with three of his friends back in 1973 in Rockford and since then they've traveled the world and put out more than 16 albums.

Since Nielsen was in a band called Cheap Trick, we've invited him play a game called "BAAAAAAAA." Three questions about sheep tricks.

How did Dennis Rodman end up having dinner with Kim Jong Un in North Korea? It was the idea of Vice Media, which has grown from a counterculture magazine into a full-fledged youth media conglomerate.

Friday night, it premieres a documentary series on HBO, a kind of coming-out moment into the mainstream.

'I Wish We Were Weirder'

Vice Media's contradictions smack you in the face as soon as you step into its Brooklyn headquarters. You're just as likely to see rapper Snoop Lion walking in as you are journalist Fareed Zakaria.

In its glass conference rooms, you might see corporate-looking PowerPoints or staff looking earnestly at pictures of nude, tattooed women. A team from the tech website holds serious meetings about reporting on the Cannabis Cup in Colorado.

"Everyone [always says], 'Vice is so weird!' and I'm like, look, I wish we were weirder," says Vice's CEO and co-founder, Shane Smith.

He's a burly, bearded Canadian who has built Vice into a hipper version of a big media conglomerate. And the company is now succeeding where other media companies have failed.

"We do music, we do books, we do magazines, we do online, we do mobile, we do television, we do film. We do what everyone else does. We do it weirder, and we do it younger, and we do it in a different way and in a different voice," he says.

Young Attraction

In its nearly 20 years, Vice has gone from a small Canadian magazine to figuring out the holy grail of media: how to capture an international audience of aloof 18- to 24-year-olds.

In the office's edit rooms, young producers work on everything from a food series, to a film about Somali pirates, to interviews about electronic dance music.

Honda is moving its North American headquarters from California to Ohio. That's just the latest bit of good news for the Buckeye State and Honda, whose fortunes have been closely tied for decades now.

Honda has been an economic heavyweight here since it was lured to central Ohio in the 1970s. The company's footprint is big, and it continues to increase.

Honda's sprawling Marysville Auto Plant opened outside Columbus in 1982. Since then, it has grown to nearly 4 million square feet and now sits on a campus of 8,000 acres.

More than 4,000 employees build 1,900 vehicles here every day, including Honda Accords and several Acura models, and the company is adding 100,000 square feet to the plant to build a new hybrid.

That means more work for nearby engine and transmission plants, and for the more than 150 Ohio companies that sell parts to Honda.

A Broad Impact

Company spokesman Ron Lietzke says with Honda's Ohio operations in a continuing growth spurt, it makes sense to move the headquarters here.

"It will increase the speed of making decisions, it'll increase the speed of introducing new models, and it will improve our communications activities throughout the organization in North America," he says.

With more cars being built here and expanding global markets, Honda of America expects to soon become a net exporter of vehicles for the first time, sending cars to Asia and the Middle East. And as Honda goes, so goes much of the rest of central Ohio's economic development.

A Boon To Housing

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There were just 88,000 jobs added to private and public payrolls in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates.

But the nation's jobless rate still edged down to 7.6 percent from 7.7 percent. That dip wasn't for a good reason, though: Nearly half a million fewer people were participating in the labor force. That smaller pool meant the jobless rate could tick down even as job growth was weak.

The news was not in line with expectations. As we reported earlier, economists were expecting to hear that payrolls had grown by 200,000 jobs and that the jobless rate had remained at February's 7.7 percent.

We'll have more from the report and reactions to it as morning continues. Be sure to hit your refresh button to see our latest updates.

Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Bear In Mind, There Are Really Two Surveys.

This issue often comes up when BLS issues its report: The two headline numbers — the jobless rate and job growth — can seem to signal different things because they are based on separate surveys.

BLS derives the unemployment rate from a survey of households. Basically, it asks thousands of Americans a series of questions aimed at determining how many are and aren't working.

In the other survey, it contacts public and private employers in an effort to determine how many jobs they have on their payrolls.

Update at 8:50 a.m. ET. Some Upward Revisions In Previous Months' Job Growth:

Though the March payroll employment figure was surprisingly low, BLS also on Friday revised up its estimates of growth in January and February.

Initially, it reported that 119,000 jobs had been added to payrolls in January. Now, it says there were 148,000 jobs added that month.

And it had earlier reported that 236,000 jobs were added to payrolls in February. Now, it says there were 268,000 jobs added that month.

It is possible, of course, that a month from now BLS will say there were more than 88,000 jobs added in March.

Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. Decline In The Labor Force:

According to BLS, there were 496,000 fewer people counted as being part of the labor force last month. And, the "participation rate" declined to 63.3 percent from 63.5 percent.

So, despite the weak job growth picked up in the agency's survey of employers, the jobless rate was nudged down to its lowest point since December 2008's 7.3 percent.

The always anxiously anticipated monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due at 8:30 a.m. ET and NPR's Yuki Noguchi says economists expect to hear that, as in previous months, there was "slow and steady" job growth in March.

Their forecast:

— Net growth of 200,000 jobs, down from the estimated 236,000 jobs added to private and public payrolls in February.

— A jobless rate of 7.7 percent, which would be unchanged from February.

Think of the tortoise and the hare, Yuki told host David Greene on Morning Edition. When it comes to the economy, the labor market is the tortoise — slowly moving along. On average, about 160,000 jobs a month have been added to payrolls in the past three years.

Meanwhile, the jobless rate that hit its recent peak of 10 percent in October 2009 has gradually moved down.

The hare — a part of the economy that's growing quickly — would be housing, Yuki added.

As for what's ahead on the jobs front, she said most of the possibly negative effects of the federal government's sequester (those automatic spending cuts that are kicking in now) won't be felt for months. For much more on how the sequester is affecting federal agencies, check the conversation David had this morning with six of NPR's correspondents.

Bloomberg News, by the way, says economists it has spoken to expect to hear there were 190,000 jobs added to payrolls last month — while the jobless rate stayed at 7.7 percent. Reuters' preview is in line with what Yuki's hearing: "The economy probably added 200,000 jobs last month, with the jobless rate steady at 7.7 percent."

We'll post on the news from the report right after it's released.

One other thing to bear in mind: Those figures from February (236,000 jobs added to payrolls and a 7.7 percent unemployment rate) might be revised in Friday's report.

четверг

Tina Brown, editor of the Daily Beast and Newsweek, joins NPR's Steve Inskeep again for an occasional feature Morning Edition likes to call Word of Mouth. She talks about what she's been reading and offers recommendations.

This month, as Brown prepares for her annual Women in the World Summit in New York City, her reading suggestions address just that: the role of women in the developing world.

The Two-Way

Malala, Pakistani Teen Shot For Demanding An Education, Heads To School In U.K.

Get recipes for Reata's Jalapeno-Cheddar Grits, Southern Shrimp And Grits, Pecan Grits Pie, Jen's Copycat Georgia Grits And Bits Pancakes (Or Waffles) and (above) Bacon And Cheddar Cheese Grits Casserole.

Update at 8:41 p.m. ET Sanford Wins Runoff

Former Gov. Mark Sanford, whose political career was derailed four years ago by his admission of an extramarital affair, has won the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat he once held, reports The Associated Press. Note at 8:10 a.m. Wednesday: Sanford won with about 57 percent of the vote. (We mistakenly said earlier that he won "by" about 57 percent.)

Earlier Tuesday, Sanford said that results from the primary would give a good indication whether voters have moved past his personal indiscretions.

Our original post continues below:

For Republicans along South Carolina's coastal low country, Tuesday is a chance to decide whether they want former Gov. Mark Sanford to represent them in Congress, just four years after he got caught up in a personal scandal.

Sanford is in a GOP runoff with attorney and former Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic for the right to face Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the May 7 special election. She is the sister of Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report.

The 1st District seat opened when the governor who succeeded Sanford in office, Nikki Haley, named Rep. Tim Scott to the Senate seat vacated by Jim DeMint in January. Sanford held the seat from 1995 to 2001, before becoming governor.

Sanford is trying to resurrect a political career that crumbled after his public and — for his wife, publicly humiliating — 2009 revelation of an extramarital relationship with a woman in Argentina. The affair came to light in bizarre fashion when the governor went missing for several days. The governor's office reported that he had gone on a solitary hike of the East Coast's 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail, but it soon was revealed that he actually was visiting his mistress. In defending his behavior at the time, Sanford declared that the woman was his "soul mate," which infuriated defenders of his longtime wife.

Since divorced, Sanford is now engaged to the former girlfriend.

At a debate last week in Charleston, Bostic warned Republicans that if Sanford were to become the GOP nominee, Democrats could use his past to capture a seat they haven't held for more than 30 years.

"A compromised candidate is not what we need," Bostic said.

But Sanford easily gathered the most votes in a crowded GOP primary two weeks ago, with Bostic finishing a distant second. Neither candidate topped 50 percent, which triggered Tuesday's runoff.

Sanford, who reportedly consulted with his former wife before diving back into politics, has stressed his fiscal conservatism while agreeing to discuss his past, at least in general terms. He ran a campaign ad in which he talked about learning "how none of us go through life without mistakes" and his belief in a "God of second chances."

"The events of 2009 absolutely represent a failure on my part for which there were and always will be at some level consequences," Sanford said at last week's debate. "But that does not mean because you've had a failure in your personal life, that you cannot step back into life again."

Bloomberg reports that the 1st District is the state's wealthiest, and an area of South Carolina focused more on fiscal than social conservatism, which could play in Sanford's favor.

The polls in the state close at 7 p.m. ET.

The problem with chili has always been this: When you try to eat it with your hands, you get terrible burns and weird looks from the snooty side of your family at the 2007 Chillag Family Reunion. Speaking of which — why don't you guys just go back to your solid gold houses and your Harvard "utensils" and leave me alone? I am who I am.

Anyway, the great Wiener and Still Champion in Evanston, Ill., has solved this problem with the Chili Bomb. It's chili, mixed with melted cheese, wrapped in cornbread and fried.

Robert: These are just like geodes, except the inside is in no way beautiful.

Miles: These go really great with a side of T-Boz and Left-Eye Bombs.

Eva: I could really get into basketball if instead of shooting a ball into a hoop, you tossed one of these into my mouth.

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Egyptian authorities are stepping up efforts against a popular TV comedian known as the "Egyptian Jon Stewart" and are now threatening to revoke the license of the private TV station that airs his weekly program.

As we reported Sunday, satirist Bassem Youssef was questioned for five hours over accusations he insulted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Islam.

Morsi's opponents say Youssef's questioning, along with arrest warrants issued against five anti-government activists accused of inciting unrest, demonstrate a campaign to intimidate his critics, The Associated Press reports.

On Monday night's episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart defended Youssef, who has been a guest on his Comedy Central show. He criticized Morsi and said it was undemocratic to prosecute the Egyptian comic.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Sheryl Sandberg's controversial new book on women and leadership, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, currently tops Amazon's best-seller list in "Business Management and Leadership" alongside Decisive (Chip Heath and Dan Heath), StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath), Give and Take (Adam Grant), The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas Stanley and William Danko) and The Power of Negative Thinking (Bob Knight and Bob Hammel) — all authored by men.

The demographics of this list reflect the broader trend that motivates Sandberg's manifesto: Women are woefully underrepresented in top leadership positions in business, government and beyond. Sandberg advises women to "lean in" to their careers, embracing ambition and resisting the tendency to hold back due to actual and anticipated challenges in negotiating work-life balance.

Sandberg's book has generated a spectrum of responses — some positive, some mixed and some outright hostile. Most common is the complaint that Sandberg seems to put the burden on women to change, rather than challenging the institutional, cultural and psychological factors that present extra challenges for women.

But another common refrain is that Sandberg fails to represent all women. As one of the richest and most powerful women in America, and one with a supportive husband, she has a few resources that most women lack — whether it's household help or another parent who can step in when she needs to miss dinner with the kids. Here are just two representative comments:

Sandberg has already gotten some flak from women who think that her attitude is too elitist and that she is too prone to blame women for failing to get ahead. (Not everyone has Larry Page and Sergey Brin volunteering to baby-sit, and Zuckerberg offering a shoulder to cry on.) Noting that her Facebook page for Lean In looks more like an ego wall with "deep thoughts," critics argue that her unique perch as a mogul with the world's best husband to boot makes her tone-deaf to the problems average women face as they struggle to make ends meet in a rough economy, while taking care of kids, aging parents and housework. (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times)

If you've earned a paycheck in recent years, you'll probably want want to know about this:

The Equifax credit reporting agency, NBC News reports, has collected 190 million employment and salary records on about one-third of U.S. adults and has sold some of the information "to debt collectors, financial service companies and other entities."

Robert Mather, who runs a small employment background company named Pre-Employ.com, tells the network that "it's the biggest privacy breach in our time, and it's legal and no one knows it's going on. ... It's like a secret CIA."

In an email to NBC News, Equifax says it complies with Fair Credit Reporting Act guidelines, that the companies buying the information "must have a permissible purpose" and that consumers give the companies the OK to get the data when they apply for credit. Presumably, the OK is in the fine print.

OK, we've checked the date, and it's April 2, but this story from the Pacific island nation of Samoa left us scratching our heads: Samoa Air says it's charging passengers based on what they weigh.

"We at Samoa Air are keeping airfares fair, by charging our passengers only for what they weigh," the airline says on its website. "You are the master of your Air'fair,' you decide how much (or little) your ticket will cost. No more exorbitant excess baggage fees, or being charged for baggage you may not carry. Your weight plus your baggage items, is what you pay for. Simple."

The policy was introduced in January, the Australia News Network reports.

"People who have been most pleasantly surprised are families because we don't charge on the seat requirement even though a child is required to have a seat, we just weigh them," airline CEO Chris Langton told Radio Australia. "So a family of maybe two adults and a couple of mid-sized kids and younger children can travel at considerably less than what they were being charged before."

The airline flies within the Pacific island nation of Samoa, as well as to other Pacific island nations.

Rates per passenger range from $1 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) on some domestic routes to about $4.16 per kilogram to American Samoa.

The news comes just days after an economist in Norway argued that charging airline passengers by weight would benefit them in the long run.

"To the degree that passengers lose weight and therefore reduce fares, the savings that result are net benefits to the passengers," Bharat P. Bhatt, a professor at Sogn og Fjordane University College, wrote in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management.

No U.S. airline has such a policy, but Southwest asks passengers who cannot lower armrests on a single seat to purchase another. It refunds the cost of the extra seat after travel.

[h/t Gawker]

Maybe you were hoping you'd never hear the phrase "fiscal cliff" again after Congress passed legislation Jan. 1 to address that tax-break-expiration deadline.

Sorry.

Three more cliff-type deadlines are fast approaching. They involve: 1) raising the federal debt ceiling 2) modifying automatic, across-the-board spending cuts and 3) funding the government to avert a shutdown.

The deadlines all hit between Valentine's Day and Easter, which means new rounds of chaotic congressional negotiations may start up just after the Jan. 21 presidential inauguration parade ends.

Indeed, President Obama's choice for his second-term Treasury secretary is a budget-battle warrior, Jack Lew. During his first term, Obama chose a banking expert, Tim Geithner, to head the Treasury Department. Now Obama needs a budget expert like Lew, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget, to lead the White House negotiations with Congress.

January 10, 2013

Boeing generated more cash than expected last year and reclaimed the top spot over rival Airbus as the world's biggest airplane maker.

But all that was overshadowed by the fact that its entire fleet of 787s is grounded after batteries on two of its planes either overheated or caught fire.

"For 2013, our first order of business, obviously, is getting the 787 back into service," Boeing CEO James McNerney says.

With the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration investigating the incidents, McNerney said repeatedly on a conference call he could not hazard any guesses about how and when the review would turn out. .

"I can't predict an outcome and I'm not going to," he says. "We're in the middle of an investigation. We're making progress on the investigation. We've got every expert in the world looking at this issue."

In the meantime, McNerney says, Boeing plans to keep building the planes on schedule.

"Business as usual, let's keep making planes and then let's ramp up as we've planned," he says.

But some are not so sure about continuing the assembly line.

"I'm skeptical, only because we don't know what we don't know," Scott Hamilton, an aviation industry consultant, says.

Without new information, he says it's impossible to gauge the potential impact of the 787's grounding on Boeing.

"We don't know what the problem is, we don't know what the solution is, we don't know what the design of the fix will be, we don't know how long the planes will be on the ground," Hamilton says.

The investigations have centered on the plane's new lithium-ion batteries — notable for both their power and volatility. Several media reports said airlines had returned large numbers of faulty batteries. In Wednesday's call, however, McNerney dismissed those issues as routine maintenance unrelated to the recent overheating incidents.

The Two-Way

Fuel Leak At Logan Airport Adds To Trouble For Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The Reuben has long suffered from two problems. Firstly, it often lacks the structural integrity to hold together as a sandwich. The second problem is that I am not constantly surrounded by a dozen of them.

The Reuben Egg Roll from Hackney's in Chicago solves the first problem, at least, stuffing corned beef, sauerkraut and swiss cheese in a crispy egg roll shell, Thousand Island on the side.

Ian: I feel like you meet this food, and you're like, "Wait, your name is Reuben?"

Mike: This makes me think we need more Chinese-Jewish fusion restaurants. I love PF Changsteins.

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As you make your way up the inside steps of its tower, there are portents of what's to come: religious music and signs with messages such as "Of thy sins shall I wash thee." That phrase evokes an ornery response from DeWitt, "Good luck with that, pal."

At the top of the lighthouse steps is a chair; you strap yourself in, and you're transported with a noisy blast to another world.

This moves the game along to what Aristotle considered the most important element of tragedy: the plot. You, as DeWitt, are getting paid to rescue someone. You're reeled into rescuing Elizabeth — a character who's been imprisoned since childhood — from a city called Columbia and return her to New York.

It may be a first-person shooter game, but the killing doesn't start when you get to Columbia — a floating city in the clouds.

You spend an hour of the game exploring streets and gathering supplies. The city is filled with quaint turn-of-the-century buildings. People seem to peacefully meander along the sidewalks, stopping at shops and cafes.

'Cluing You In'

But everything is laden with clues of a darker story that will bring this floating city to earth. There are preachers and statues of historical American leaders.

"This city is run by a prophet figure who created a new religion that worships the Founding Fathers of the United States," Levine says. He describes their religion as "a mixture of Christianity and a sort of Founder worship."

But what makes this different from a tragic play is that you aren't just watching Hamlet — or rather Dewitt. "You are him," Levine says. "So we have lots of ... cleaver ways of sort of cluing you in to who you are, and what your mission is and what your purpose in life is."

In Hamlet, the audience watches the prince struggle with the implications of taking violent action. In BioShock Infinite, you struggle with it.

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The shack's uneven and lumpy floor is made of hard-packed dirt. There is no indoor plumbing, and the nine residents shared a hole in the ground for their toilet.

"If it rains for like two or three days in a row, the water gets into my house," Keng, 39, says through an interpreter. "When it's flooded, the water level is high, above my ankle." Keng says her family had been living there for five years, and they were desperate to move to a better home.

But if they had walked into a regular bank in Cambodia, or just about any country in the world, and asked for a mortgage to buy a nicer house, executives mostly likely would have turned them away.

Keng and her husband both work. She makes and then sells rice soup at a street stall, while her husband sells clothes at another stall. But they don't meet one of the crucial requirements for getting a mortgage: They don't receive salary slips or other financial documents, so they don't have what bankers call "verifiable income."

Late last year, Keng heard about an unusual bank called First Finance, which was designed specifically to give mortgages to low-income people like her. She and her family could already imagine the new home they wanted to buy: a two-story house with indoor plumbing. It would cost about $20,000.

"I have always wanted to live in a nice, beautiful house, but with my business, with my small, very small business like this, I never expected I can afford to buy a house," Keng says.

A New Kind Of Bank For A Changing Country

The First Finance mortgage program in Cambodia was the brainchild of Talmage Payne, a 45-year-old American. His parents worked as eye doctors in Nigeria, so he grew up wanting to help low-income people in poor countries. When Payne graduated from college in the early 1990s, he moved to Cambodia to work with the refugees of the fighting between the government and Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

You'd be forgiven for thinking chicken Kiev got its start in the Ukrainian capital. After all, a hearty dish of chicken filled with butter, wrapped in bread crumbs, and deep fried is the perfect meal to withstand subzero temperatures and cold winds blowing across the Dniepr River.

Ukrainian chefs say they have the only authentic recipe for the dish, but they concede that chicken Kiev, despite its name, has a far more sophisticated provenance: It's French.

The French connection isn't as odd as it first appears. Viacheslav Gribov, head chef at Kiev's Hotel Dnipro, says that during the late 1840s, Russian royalty sent chefs to Paris to learn from the best. And they returned with a recipe for a dish they called Mikhailovska cutlet.

"The dish was made in Paris with veal," Gribov says, "but in Moscow, it was made with chicken. At that time, chicken was more expensive and considered more of a delicacy."

Chicken Kiev was served in posh dining rooms and later appeared on the menus of official dinners in the Soviet Union, but it needed American immigrants to make it popular.

In the years after World War II, chefs at white tablecloth restaurants, like the Russian Tea Room in New York, began putting the dish — renamed chicken Kiev — on menus to lure Russian and Ukrainian immigrants who had settled in that city in large numbers.

Back in Kiev, though, chicken Kiev wasn't common until visiting tourists began requesting it in the city's restaurants in the 1960s. "Chicken Kiev made Kiev famous," says Gribov.

Ukrainian chefs like Gribov have strict rules for the dish, and they decry variations. They say neither the Russian version stuffed with cheese, nor the American and British recipe calling for garlic and parsley, is the real deal. "This began as a dish for dignitaries meeting one another. You would never serve them garlic," he says.

Gribov should know. He's been serving the dish since 1978 to some of the world's biggest political heavyweights, including Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev and President Clinton.

But the authentic Kiev recipe, Gribov says, calls for only butter inside, and if done properly, a bit of butter remains unmelted when served. "We don't just learn how to make the dish; we also learn a special way of serving and cutting it to avoid butter splashing out," he says.

The Ukrainian version comes with a small bone sticking out that keeps the butter sealed inside. It resembles a conical corn dog and delivers the same satisfying fried, crunchy outside and soft center.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Kiev tourists made the dish popular, and locals quickly followed. But, like so many foods, chicken Kiev has fallen out of fashion. It's now a convenience item, relegated to some supermarkets and fast-food restaurants in the city, and has all but disappeared from Ukrainian menus.

"I'm worried that very few chefs know how to make it," says Gribov. "Young chefs are not being trained how to make chicken Kiev. I'm thrilled every time someone orders it."

These days, he says, Kiev's urban dwellers want exotic, international cuisine. "People order lasagna, pizza. They want Mediterranean or Asian food. Many people have never left the country and want to experience something foreign through food."

Ironically, one of those foreign places is seeing a revival of the dish. In London, there's a yearning for the comfort foods of yesteryear, and chicken Kiev is back on West End menus, with new ingredients, such as truffles and a mozzarella filling.

Gribov may prefer authentic chicken Kiev, but adding a fresh twist or two may be the key to keeping the dish alive.

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first U.N. treaty to regulate the estimated $60 billion global arms trade on Tuesday.

The goal of the Arms Trade Treaty, which the U.N. has sought for over a decade, according to The Associated Press, is to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime.

The vote on the treaty was 154-3, with 23 abstentions.

Iran, Syria and North Korea voted against the treaty, the same three nations that blocked the treaty's adoption at a negotiating conference last Thursday.

The 23 countries that abstained included a handful of Latin American nations, as well as Russia, one of the largest arms exporters. Russian envoy to the United Nations Vitaly I. Churkin said his country had misgivings about what he called ambiguities in the treaty, reports the Times, including how terms like genocide would be defined.

The New York Times had more detail on the treaty:

"The treaty would require states exporting conventional weapons to develop criteria that would link exports to avoiding human-rights abuses, terrorism and organized crime. It would also ban shipments if they were deemed harmful to women and children. Countries that join the treaty would have to report publicly on sales every year, exposing the process to levels of transparency that rights groups hope will strictly limit illicit weapons deals."

There were 385,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, up by 28,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration says.

The news follows Wednesday's report of slower-than-expected job growth in the private sector: The ADP National Employment Report estimated there were just 158,000 jobs added at businesses last month.

And the word that jobless claims have touched a four-month high comes just before Friday's anxiously anticipated report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It will release data on the March unemployment rate and job growth in both the public and private sectors.

According to Reuters, economists expect to hear that there were a relatively modest 200,000 jobs added to those payrolls last month and that the jobless rate remained at 7.7 percent.

All in all, Reuters adds, the latest jobs data suggest "the labor market recovery lost some steam in March."

Bear in mind that, as NPR's Louisa Lim has said, North Korea's regime is skilled at making threats. And, fortunately, the most ominous of those threats have not been followed by action in recent decades.

With those caveats in mind, here are Thursday's developments in the latest round of provocative moves by the communist state. From Beijing, Louisa tells our Newscast Desk that:

— South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin says North Korea has moved a missile with considerable range to its east coast. Kim told the South Korean parliament Thursday that the North Korean missile is not capable of hitting the United States. He said the missile could have been moved for testing or for drills. So far, according to Kim, there's no sign of military mobilizations that could suggest preparations for a full-scale conflict.

— North Korea has said it may shut down a joint industrial zone within its borders where companies from the South get some goods produced. And for a second day, South Koreans have been blocked from entering the Kaesong industrial zone.

Wednesday's headlines included:

— North Korea's Brinksmanship: Same As Before, More Dangerous Or Both?

— 'Best Jobs In North Korea' Pay $62 A Month; Now They're Diplomatic Pawns

— Responding To North Korea, U.S. Sends Missile Defenses To Guam

— Amid Threats, N. Korea's Neighbors Rethink Defense Policies

Robert Mueller became FBI director just days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, he's been the U.S. government's indispensable man when it comes to national security.

But Mueller's term has expired, and the clock is ticking on an unprecedented extension that Congress gave him two years ago.

The first time the Obama White House thought about a replacement for Mueller, back in 2011, officials threw up their hands and wound up begging him to stay. Congress passed a special law to allow it. Then Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa put his foot down.

"Extending a director's term was not a fly-by-night decision," Grassley said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "It also puts the president on notice to begin the process of selecting and nominating a new FBI director earlier than the last attempt."

Behind the scenes, that process is well under way.

The FBI director serves a 10-year term — designed to give that person insulation from partisan politics. But whomever President Obama chooses could become a big part of his legacy.

The administration approached D.C. federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, who said he didn't want the job, according to two sources familiar with the exchange. Other possible candidates, such as former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, recently started lucrative jobs in the private sector after spending decades in public service.

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The middle-income housing projects Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village sit on an 80-acre patch of Lower Manhattan. In 2006, they came to epitomize the lunatic excess of the housing boom when their 11,232 apartments sold for $5.4 billion. They were bought at a competitive auction by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty.

Charles Bagli covered the purchase for The New York Times. In his new book, Other People's Money, he tells the story of how the biggest ever real estate deal came together and then spectacularly came apart. Standing in the park at the center of Stuyvesant Town, Bagli tells NPR's Robert Siegel that these housing projects provided a place where people of moderate means could set down roots.

"There's first-, second- and third-generation families living here," he says, "and it was sort of a quiet oasis and, most importantly, an affordable oasis in an increasingly expensive Manhattan."

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What is the essence of a life? Is it our career accomplishments? Our devotion to friends and family? Our secret little talents and foibles? Is it, perhaps, our killer recipe for beef stroganoff?

That question underlies a controversy burning up the twitterverse in recent days over an obituary of Yvonne Brill published by The New York Times. Brill was a pioneering American rocket scientist in the 1940s — at a time when "leaning in" meant bending over the stove to prepare dinner for hubby. And yet, in its original form (it was later edited), the Times' obituary led off with a quite different description of Brill. It began:

"She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. "The world's best mom," her son Matthew said."

Park Slope is where Jim and Bob Burgess, the titular brothers in Strout's new novel, also found refuge when they came to New York. Down a quiet side street is a bar that Strout says is the kind of place where Bob Burgess might often be found. "It's a place where you come in, you can be friendly or you can just sit quietly. I could actually kind of see him sitting over there right now at that bar."

Just like Strout, Bob and Jim moved to New York from a small town in Maine. Their family had a certain notoriety in town — when they were children, their father was killed in an accident that everyone believes was Bob's fault. Even as adults, that event still haunts their lives.

"New York has provided them with a sense of being able to shake off the family tragedy that occurred when they were such young siblings and essentially have fled from," Strout says.

Jim is now a famous lawyer, married with three kids, and he and his wife live in one of the elegant townhouses that line the side streets of Park Slope. Bob lives nearby in a small shabby apartment on a busy street. He's divorced, drinks too much and likes to peek into his neighbors' lives as he sneaks a cigarette out his window.

First Reads

Exclusive First Read: 'The Burgess Boys' By Elizabeth Strout

Spaniards wary of trusting their life savings to their country's shaky banking system can now buy a mattress that has an armored safe equipped with a keypad combination lock hidden in one end.

The new product, Caja de ahorros Micolchon — Spanish for "My Mattress Safe" — went on sale three weeks ago, several months after the European Union approved loans of up to $130 billion to bail out troubled Spanish banks.

It's the brainchild of Paco Santos, who was laid off from Spain's biggest mattress manufacturer three years ago and has since started his own company, Descanso Santos Suenos, or DeSS. Reached by telephone at his offices in Salamanca, the 57-year-old salesman assured NPR that My Mattress Safe is no April Fool's Day joke.

"We're completely serious! And we've sold many, many of these mattresses," Santos said, declining to give specific sales figures.

But customers will need some savings up front. My Mattress Safe retails for about $1,120. The company also sells bed frames, conventional mattresses and bed coverings.

"I had a hunch that this new product would sell," Santos said. "You see, we've got big economic problems in Spain, and people have really lost confidence in the banks."

With the help of a son who works in public relations, Santos has launched a website and produced several YouTube videos in Spanish to market his special mattresses.

The plot gets going with a surprise phone call from the Burgess boys' sister, Susan, the sibling who stayed behind in Maine. She's divorced, works in an eyeglass store and lives in a dilapidated house that she barely can afford to heat in winter. Susan breaks the news that her teenage son, Zach, is being arrested and charged with a hate crime. It turns out Shirley Falls has become a resettlement area for Somali refugees, and Zach was caught rolling a frozen, bloody pig's head through the door of a storefront mosque. The "Somalians," as Susan and many of the other townspeople call them, are especially outraged because this violation occurred during Ramadan. Zach, a lonely boy who seems scared of his own shadow, says he doesn't even know what Ramadan is.

First Reads

Exclusive: 'The Burgess Boys' By Elizabeth Strout

From Berlin, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson tells us that:

An unexploded bomb from World War II was successfully diffused Wednesday. Its discovery Tuesday night near the city's main railway station forced trains to divert and snarled traffic in the German capital.

Weighing about 220 pounds, the aerial bomb was found at a construction site near railway tracks north of the station. Police evacuated more than 800 people from nearby apartment buildings and homes Wednesday morning as experts worked.

The main railway station is walking distance from the German parliament and chancellor's building, although those buildings were not affected. But some 50 trains had to be re-routed or cancelled, causing massive delays. Flights were grounded for 45 minutes at Berlin's Tegel airport while the bomb was diffused.

Thousands of unexploded WWII-era bombs are believed to be buried in Germany. In 2010, three people were killed when one accidentally exploded.

The day after last December's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School we wrote that:

"The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will surely spur pollsters to ask Americans again about guns, gun ownership, gun laws and the Second Amendment.

"If recent experience is a good guide, public opinion may not shift too much."

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Get recipes for Reata's Jalapeno-Cheddar Grits, Southern Shrimp And Grits, Pecan Grits Pie, Jen's Copycat Georgia Grits And Bits Pancakes (Or Waffles) and (above) Bacon And Cheddar Cheese Grits Casserole.

The federal criminal complaint against New York politicians arrested after an FBI sting was a reminder of how often real-life political scandals can read like the imaginings of Hollywood screenwriters. (Think $90,000 in cash in a congressman's freezer.)

Tuesday's allegations from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York will be just another log on the fire of the public's cynicism about politics and its practitioners. And in alleged conversations involving the implicated officials, those politicians sound pretty cynical themselves, according to the FBI.

Take Republican New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran. A one-time New York City cop who recently ran for Congress, he was arrested on charges of accepting bribes.

Among the allegations: that he accepted payment as part of a scheme to help a Democratic state senator — one who wanted to run for mayor of New York as a Republican — obtain the approval of certain GOP officials.

Halloran allegedly delivered this gem to a witness working with the FBI::

"That's politics, that's politics, it's all about how much. Not about whether or will, it's about how much, and that's our politicians in New York, they're all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can't do anything without the f——— money."

Sheryl Sandberg's controversial new book on women and leadership, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, currently tops Amazon's best-seller list in "Business Management and Leadership" alongside Decisive (Chip Heath and Dan Heath), StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath), Give and Take (Adam Grant), The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas Stanley and William Danko) and The Power of Negative Thinking (Bob Knight and Bob Hammel) — all authored by men.

The demographics of this list reflect the broader trend that motivates Sandberg's manifesto: Women are woefully underrepresented in top leadership positions in business, government and beyond. Sandberg advises women to "lean in" to their careers, embracing ambition and resisting the tendency to hold back due to actual and anticipated challenges in negotiating work-life balance.

Sandberg's book has generated a spectrum of responses — some positive, some mixed and some outright hostile. Most common is the complaint that Sandberg seems to put the burden on women to change, rather than challenging the institutional, cultural and psychological factors that present extra challenges for women.

But another common refrain is that Sandberg fails to represent all women. As one of the richest and most powerful women in America, and one with a supportive husband, she has a few resources that most women lack — whether it's household help or another parent who can step in when she needs to miss dinner with the kids. Here are just two representative comments:

Sandberg has already gotten some flak from women who think that her attitude is too elitist and that she is too prone to blame women for failing to get ahead. (Not everyone has Larry Page and Sergey Brin volunteering to baby-sit, and Zuckerberg offering a shoulder to cry on.) Noting that her Facebook page for Lean In looks more like an ego wall with "deep thoughts," critics argue that her unique perch as a mogul with the world's best husband to boot makes her tone-deaf to the problems average women face as they struggle to make ends meet in a rough economy, while taking care of kids, aging parents and housework. (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times)

Spaniards wary of trusting their life savings to their country's shaky banking system can now buy a mattress that has an armored safe equipped with a keypad combination lock hidden in one end.

The new product, Caja de ahorros Micolchon — Spanish for "My Mattress Safe" — went on sale three weeks ago, several months after the European Union approved loans of up to $130 billion to bail out troubled Spanish banks.

It's the brainchild of Paco Santos, who was laid off from Spain's biggest mattress manufacturer three years ago and has since started his own company, Descanso Santos Suenos, or DeSS. Reached by telephone at his offices in Salamanca, the 57-year-old salesman assured NPR that My Mattress Safe is no April Fool's Day joke.

"We're completely serious! And we've sold many, many of these mattresses," Santos said, declining to give specific sales figures.

But customers will need some savings up front. My Mattress Safe retails for about $1,120. The company also sells bed frames, conventional mattresses and bed coverings.

"I had a hunch that this new product would sell," Santos said. "You see, we've got big economic problems in Spain, and people have really lost confidence in the banks."

With the help of a son who works in public relations, Santos has launched a website and produced several YouTube videos in Spanish to market his special mattresses.

Health plan deductibles keep getting higher — the proportion of workers with a deductible that topped $1,000 for single coverage nearly tripled in the past five years, to 34 percent.

Since high-deductible plans often mean you pay more out of pocket for medical care, it might seem like a no brainer to sign up for a plan that links to a health savings account so you can sock away money tax free to cover your medical expenses. But there are good reasons to think twice before making that choice.

In order to get the tax advantages of a health savings account, the health plan it's linked to has to meet certain criteria. In 2013, for instance, an HSA-qualified plan has to have a deductible of at least $1,250 for single coverage and $2,500 for family coverage, and the maximum out-of-pocket limits can be no higher than $6,250 and $12,500, respectively, for single and family coverage.

But HSA-qualified plans have other limitations that consumers often aren't aware of. For one thing, even though the Affordable Care Act allows parents to keep their adult children on their policies until they reach age 26, they can't use funds from their HSA to pay for the child's care after age 24. That's because "dependent" is defined differently for HSA purposes than it is under the ACA provisions that extend dependent coverage to adult children.

In addition, except for preventive care, which is generally covered at 100 percent and is not subject to the deductible, consumers in an HSA-qualified plan may be on the hook for the entire cost of medical care, including doctor visits, medications, tests and treatments, until they reach their deductible. (They'll be charged the negotiated rate their insurer has agreed to pay providers for services, however, not the "rack" rate paid by the uninsured.)

Regular high-deductible plans, on the other hand, offer many more options. In addition to covering preventive care at 100 percent, some function like traditional plans, requiring only a copayment for doctor visits and medicines even before the deductible is met. Or they may offer a limited number of doctor visits with a copayment before people meet their deductible, says Carrie McLean, senior manager of customer care at eHealthInsurance.com, an online vendor.

Consumers need to evaluate the full spectrum of costs and benefits for HSA plans, but the advantages may have nothing to do with medical expenses, she advises. "The true benefit you get from these accounts is because you're putting money away and you get that tax [savings]," says McLean.

The government-controlled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, which needed a $116 billion federal bailout after the housing bubble burst in 2007, said Tuesday that it earned a record $7.6 billion in fourth-quarter 2012 and $17.2 billion for the year.

That allowed it to pay $11.6 billion in dividends to the U.S. Treasury Department last year, Fannie Mae says. Since 2008, it has "paid taxpayers $35.6 billion in dividends." Looking ahead, "we expect our earnings to remain strong over the next few years," Timothy Mayopoulos, president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Bloomberg News writes that:

"Washington-based Fannie Mae and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and package them into securities on which they guarantee payments of principal and interest. The two companies have drawn $187.5 billion from Treasury and have sent back more than $60 billion in the form of dividends, which count as a return on the government's investment and not as a repayment.

"Under the terms of an agreement with Treasury that went into effect this year, the enterprises will be allowed to retain only $3 billion in net worth. Any profits beyond that amount will go to taxpayers."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

The American Library Association and Barnes & Noble were among the groups named by conservative group Morality in Media in its "Dirty Dozen List" of "the top 12 facilitators of porn." The list states that the ALA encourages libraries to have unfiltered computers, and that the bookstore chain "is a major supplier of adult pornography and child erotica." The top spot, however, went to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for "refus[ing] to enforce existing federal obscenity laws."

Squirreled away in a recent Wall Street Journal article about a concert DVD by singer Alanis Morissette was this revelation: "She's focused at the moment on writing a book, which she calls 'transpersonal psychology meets autobiography, with a little humor thrown in, I hope.' "

The latest "Mysteries of the Vernacular" installment — charming video etymologies of English words — locates the word "clue" in the Minotaur's maze and Chaucer's England.

A new book by comedian Cleo Rocos, The Power of Positive Drinking, which comes out in May, claims that she and Queen singer Freddie Mercury sneaked Princess Diana into a gay bar in the 1980s by disguising her as a male model.

In The Guardian, John Dugdale takes apart "campus fiction," and, in particular, Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed: "Oates's bizarre, sprawling novel, in which the devil comes to Princeton in 1905, is especially saturated with other books, ranging from vampire and Stephen King shockers to the prototypical tale of a don driven mad, Goethe's Faust. Like other recent campus concoctions, it suggests a moratorium has long been overdue."

Jacob Harris, senior software architect at The New York Times, has developed an algorithm to find accidental haikus in the paper, from the mundane: "The one thing to be / careful about / is trimming the broccoli rabe," to the poetic: "The buzzing of a / thousand bees in the tiny / curled pearl of an ear."

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein ruled Monday on the most important question facing Stockton, Calif. — whether it could enter into federal bankruptcy protection.

Klein agreed that the city is, in fact, broke.

But he didn't decide the question of whether the city must renegotiate its pension obligations, as some of its creditors had hoped.

"He did put off for another day the question of whether the pension holders would have to be part of any debt reduction solution," says Robert G. Flanders Jr., who was the state receiver appointed to oversee the troubled finances of Central Falls, R.I.

It's possible that, as Stockton draws up its plans for getting its financial house back in order, it will revisit its pension obligations, though the city has been reluctant to do so.

Klein did not force the city's hand in this regard, though he made it clear this could remain an issue going forward.

"The pension question may be presented in a number of different ways," says James Spiotto, a municipal bankruptcy attorney in Chicago. "Why rule on something you don't absolutely have to rule on?"

Millions At Stake

Like many other cities, counties and states, Stockton's pension fund is millions of dollars in the hole. Typically, pension obligations have been held sacrosanct, even as bondholders and other creditors lose money in bankruptcy proceedings.

As is the case with most other California localities, Stockton's pensions are managed by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the country.

Gone Bust

The biggest municipal Chapter 9 bankruptcies in the U.S., and the approximate debt.

Jefferson County, Ala. (filed 2011) — $4,200,000,000

Orange County, Calif. (filed 1994) — $1,974,000,000

Stockton, Calif. (filed 2012) — $1,032,000,000

San Bernardino, Calif. (filed 2012) — $492,000,000

Vallejo, Calif. (filed 2008) — $175,000,000

— James Spiotto of Chapman and Cutler LLC

The newly elected pope's focus on the poor and the marginalized has instilled great faith among many Catholic women. They hope the papacy of Pope Francis will promote a leading role for women in the church.

A group of American nuns and Catholic women recently made a pilgrimage to Rome to make their requests heard.

They visited ancient sites that provide evidence of the important leadership role women played in the early centuries of Christianity.

The Two-Way

In Ritual, Pope Francis Washes The Feet Of Young Inmates, Women

A decision by India's Supreme Court to reject Novartis AG's bid to patent a version of one cancer drug could lead to more exports of cheap medicine from that country to "poor people across the developing world," the BBC writes.

NPR's Julie McCarthy tells our Newscast Desk that the ruling, announced Monday, ends a six-year legal battle that has been closely watched by pharmaceutical firms, humanitarian aid organizations and generic drug manufacturers.

She adds that:

"The case highlights the cost difference between foreign pharmaceutical firms looking to protect their investments and local generic competitors copying and selling drugs for a fraction of their original cost. Novartis' drug, known as Glivec, was a breakthrough treatment in the 1990s for leukemia. It costs about $2,500 a month. The generic version: a couple hundred dollars. When the Swiss drug-maker sought a new patent, Indian officials said it was not changed enough to qualify as a new drug."

This week, optimists had no trouble finding fresh evidence to suggest that the housing market is recovering.

On Thursday, they learned from a Realtors' report that existing home sales hit the highest level in more than 3 years. And earlier this week, a Commerce Department report showed homebuilding permits have been rising at the quickest pace since June 2008.

But not everyone is convinced that the sector's momentum has staying power. Skeptics point to reasons why the housing sector might falter, just as it has several times over the past six years.

If the optimists and pessimists had to face off in front of a judge, these are the exhibits they might enter as evidence:

The Optimists' Case

Your honor, don't be blinded by years of bad news. Look at these recent statistics:

— Home prices rose by more than 7 percent last year, according to the widely respected S&P/Case-Shiller Index.

— Builders have been hiring again, adding workers at a pace of 30,000 a month over the past five months.

— The Federal Reserve plans to hold interest rates at historically low levels for a long time, making homes more affordable.

— The number of underwater borrowers, i.e., those whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes, fell by almost 4 million last year to 7 million, according to JPMorgan Securities.

Economy

For Some Ready To Buy, A Good Home Is Hard To Find

There was a slightly larger-than-expected increase of 0.7 percent in consumer spending from January to February, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.

Higher gasoline prices, though, were much of the reason for the rise. According to the bureau, if spending is adjusted for inflation the increase was a more modest 0.3 percent — the same as in January. And higher energy costs were behind most of the inflationary pressures last month.

Consumer spending is closely watched because consumers buy about 70 percent of all the goods and services that companies produce — meaning they drive the economy.

Meanwhile, personal income shot up 1.1 percent.

It's still far too early to know whether Congress will actually be able to achieve a comprehensive overhaul to the nation's immigration laws. All that's certain at this stage is that lawmakers on both sides of the partisan divide, and in both chambers, continue to act as though they think they can.

With the news over the holiday weekend that organized labor and business groups reached agreement on the contentious issue of allowing more unskilled workers to enter the U.S. legally, a significant obstacle was moved from the path of a bipartisan group of senators seeking a deal.

A Senate group, the latest "gang" that has formed in that body to work on a thorny issue, is expected to make public its proposed legislation next week, when Congress returns from its holiday recess.

But as anyone who closely watched omprehensive immigration overhaul efforts in 2006 and 2007 can tell you, the Senate part of this is the relatively easy piece. They also know that all the progress could certainly stall, as it did seven years ago.

Not only is the Senate controlled by a Democratic Party that's more cohesive on the immigration issue, but even conservative Republican senators — who of course represent an entire state — are likely to have many constituents who back changes to immigration law.

That's less true for many Republican House members, whose greatest fear may be a primary challenge from a contender to the right of them on illegal immigration. (It was during the Republican primary season last year when Mitt Romney, attempting to win the GOP nomination, talked of illegal immigrants and "self deportation.")

So, it's significant that the Republican-controlled House also has a bipartisan group of lawmakers meeting without much publicity to seek common ground on immigration. As with the Senate gang, the House bipartisan group is expected to unveil its ideas shortly after Congress returns next week.

Republican House members are reportedly being brought up to speed on the immigration issue because, as Bloomberg reports, the last time Congress seriously considered such legislation, "more than half of today's House Republicans weren't even elected."

White House press secretary Jay Carney sounded an optimistic note Monday:

"I would say, broadly, that we are encouraged by the continuing signs of progress that we are seeing in the Senate and the Group of Eight. ... However, we're not there yet. This process is still under way in the Senate. Legislation still has to be drafted, written. And we will evaluate the specific aspects of that legislation when it's produced."

понедельник

Borscht and vareniki are on the menu at Taras Bulba, a restaurant named after Nicolai Gogol's Ukrainian folk hero. It's one of many Russian-owned businesses in Limassol, Cyprus.

Approximately 30,000 Russians live in this city — about a quarter of the population. There are Russian hair salons, supermarkets, schools and even a radio station.

Limassol's mayor, Andreas Christou, studied mechanical engineering in Moscow and speaks Russian fluently. He says Russians came to the city in droves after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"They came here because Cyprus had a reputation as a serious and reliable business center," Christou says. "This reputation was well-known."

Cyprus offered a low corporate tax rate, stable banks and rule of law. Today, Russians hold about one-quarter of all deposits in Cypriot banks — approximately 24 billion euros — roughly $30 billion.

But Michalis Papapetrou, a Cypriot lawyer with many Russian clients, says the wealthiest Russians don't live in Cyprus and do not deposit most of their money here.

"Russians and other foreigners, they form Cyprus companies and through this vehicle, they carry back their money to their countries for investment," Papapetrou says.

Many of those who do have their money here, Papapetrou says, did not expect the eurozone to make the surprise decision to use bank savings to subsidize the bailout.

"I have a client here from Russia that has a deposit in the Bank of Cyprus of 100 million," he says.

The bank is the country's largest lender and just announced that depositors with more than 100,000 euros could lose 60 percent of their deposits as part of the bailout deal. With such a hit to their wealth, Papapetrou expects some clients to flee.

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A decision by India's Supreme Court to reject Novartis AG's bid to patent a version of one cancer drug could lead to more exports of cheap medicine from that country to "poor people across the developing world," the BBC writes.

NPR's Julie McCarthy tells our Newscast Desk that the ruling, announced Monday, ends a six-year legal battle that has been closely watched by pharmaceutical firms, humanitarian aid organizations and generic drug manufacturers.

She adds that:

"The case highlights the cost difference between foreign pharmaceutical firms looking to protect their investments and local generic competitors copying and selling drugs for a fraction of their original cost. Novartis' drug, known as Glivec, was a breakthrough treatment in the 1990s for leukemia. It costs about $2,500 a month. The generic version: a couple hundred dollars. When the Swiss drug-maker sought a new patent, Indian officials said it was not changed enough to qualify as a new drug."

But Alex Bentley, an anthropologist at the University of Bristol involved in the research, says that no one expected much when they set their computers to search through one hundred years of books that had been digitized by Google.

"We didn't really expect to find anything," he says. "We were just curious. We really expected the use of emotion words to be constant through time."

Instead, in the study they published in the journal PLOS ONE, the anthropologists found very distinct peaks and valleys, Bently says. "The clarity of some of the patterns was surprising to all of us, I think."

With the graphs spread out in front of him, Bentley says the patterns are easy to see. "The twenties were the highest peak of joy-related words that we see," he says. "They really were roaring."

But then there came 1941, which, of course, marked the beginning of America's entry into World War II. It doesn't take a historian to see that peaks and valleys like these roughly mirror the major economic and social events of the century.

"In 1941, sadness is at its peak," Bently says.

Which he found interesting, because the books the computers searched in the Google database included an incredibly wide range of topics. They weren't just novels or books about current events, Bentley says. Many were books without clear emotional content — technical manuals about plants and animals, for example, or automotive repair guides.

"It's not like the change in emotion is because people are writing about the Depression, and people are writing about the war," he says. "There might be a little bit of that, but this is just, kind of, averaged over all books and it's just kind of creeping in."

Which brings us to the most surprising finding of the study: We think of modern culture — and often ourselves — as more emotionally open than people in the past. We live in a world of reality television and blogs and Facebook — it feels like feelings are everywhere, displayed to a degree that they never were before. But according to this research, that's not so.

"Generally speaking the usage of these commonly known emotion words has been in decline over the 20th century," Bentley says. We used words that expressed our emotions less in the year 2000 than we did 100 years earlier — words about sadness, and joy, and anger, and disgust and surprise.

In fact, there is only one exception that Bentley and his colleagues found: fear. "The fear-related words start to increase just before the 1980s," he says.

So what does this tell us? Should we trust it? Could it be that our own sense of ourselves, and how emotionally open we are, is somehow wrong? Bentley says he has no explanation. "We were just so surprised at this result that we just wanted to publish it to show people," he says. "It's such a fascinating thing; I'm excited just to hear other people's interpretations of this data."

"Certainly the general strategy is a really promising way for us to think about emotions in history," says James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has also done language studies on big databases like this. But such analyses are complicated, he says, and it may still be "a little early to know" whether the use of emotional words has actually declined.

Still, Pennebaker believes that this method — mining vast amounts of written language — is incredibly promising.

For psychologists, he says, there are only a handful of ways to try to understand what is actually going on with somebody emotionally.

"One is what a person says," Pennebaker explains, "kind of the 'self report' of emotion. Another might be the physiological links, and the third is what slips out when they're talking to other people, when they're writing a book or something like that."

For years, psychologists like Pennebaker have worried that self report does not always accurately reflect what's going on with someone, and physiological measures are hard to get.

That's why this language analysis seems so promising to him – as a new window that might offer a different, maybe even more objective, view into our culture. Because, he says, it's difficult for people today to guess the emotions of people of different times.

"Our current emotional state completely biases our memories of the past and our expectations for the future," Pennebaker says. "And, using these language samples, we are able to peg how people are feeling over time. That's what I love about it as a historical marker. So we can get a sense of how groups of people— or entire cultures — might have felt ten years ago, or 100 years ago."

A kind of emotional archaeology, from traces left behind by words.

The United States has sent two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to take part military drills in South Korea, a move that is meant to show U.S. commitment to the defense of the region from its North Korean neighbor, a Pentagon spokesman told the Associated Press.

Also on Monday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye appeared to give her country's military permission to strike back at any attack from the North.

According to the New York Times, Park told the South's generals that she considers the threats from North Korea "very serious."

"If the North attempts any provocation against our people and country, you must respond strongly at the first contact with them without any political consideration.

"As top commander of the military, I trust your judgment in the face of North Korea's unexpected surprise provocation," she added.

NBC news had this detail about the deployment of the U.S. fighter jets:

"The U.S. military command in South Korea announced the deployment of the fighter jets in a statement.

"[North Korea] will achieve nothing by threats or provocations, which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in Northeast Asia," it said.

The exercise, called Foal Eagle, is meant to reinforce "the U.S. commitment of its most advanced capabilities to the security of the Republic of Korea," according to the statement.

The stealth aircraft were deployed to the Osan Air Base in South Korea from Japan to engage in bilateral military drills."

A Pakistani army officer named Col. Zeshan is giving a tour of a jihadi rehabilitation center secreted in the hills of northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley.

"This place was also captured by the Taliban," he says, walking me around the heavily guarded complex. "The army took over this place from them ... when the war was going on."

“ When they are provided an opportunity to come back to the society where they have a livelihood and a family, what's the point in going back to [the Taliban]?

The day after last December's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School we wrote that:

"The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will surely spur pollsters to ask Americans again about guns, gun ownership, gun laws and the Second Amendment.

"If recent experience is a good guide, public opinion may not shift too much."

A small herd of European bison will soon be released in Germany's most densely populated state, the first time in nearly three centuries that these bison — known as wisents — will roam freely in Western Europe.

The project is the brainchild of Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. He owns more than 30,000 acres, much of it covered in Norwegian spruce and beech trees in North Rhine-Westphalia.

For the 78-year-old logging magnate, the planned April release of the bull, five cows and two calves will fulfill a decade-old dream.

But the aristocrat's neighbors aren't all thrilled about his plan to release wisents, which have been living in an enclosure on his property for three years. They are slightly taller than their American cousins and weigh up to a ton. Questions remain about who will foot the bill if the European bison damage property or injure someone.

"We were skeptical because we weren't given enough information," says Helmut Dreisbach, a cattle farmer and vice chairman of the Farmers' Association of Siegen-Wittgenstein. "How will the animals react? Will they stay in a particular area or will they move onto working farmland?"

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When fortunes rise in the housing industry — as they currently are — it tends to lift sales for other businesses, too. Home construction, sales and prices are all improving. And according to many analysts, the market is gaining steam.

For nearly two decades, Scott Gillis has owned his own moving company, Great Scott Moving in Hyattsville, Md. Moving high season is just around the corner, which means Gillis is hiring.

"I'm doing it right now, I'm calling up all my old employees. Basically, I'm doing as much as possible 'cause I'm anticipating we're having a good summer," Gillis says.

That's in contrast to several years ago, when Great Scott moved more people into rental apartments than houses — as its sales and staff plunged by a third. Gillis says things have improved. But they're still very hard to predict.

'The Mood Is Much Better'

"I think the mood is much better than it was five years ago. I think we are heading in a better way," he says. "But nobody knows the forecast."

The federal spending cuts known as the sequester don't help. And there are pockets of housing weakness. Still, overriding all that, he says, is a sense that things are fundamentally better and improving.

"When you start seeing larger offices going to smaller offices, it's an indicator that everybody's cutting back. Now I see offices getting larger. And that's usually a good indicator," Gillis says.

Part of what's driving the urge to move is that people are spending again.

"This housing market recovery is a tremendous boost to the economy," says Lawrence Yun, a chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

More On The Housing Industry

Business

Technology Upends Another Industry: Homebuilding

I was out of the house, as it happens, for most of the first half of yesterday's Louisville-Duke game, and when I got home and looked at Twitter, before I turned on the TV, there was a huge stack of stuff to read, and the first thing that caught my attention about the game was this:

The amazing thing is that the other Louisville players are freaking out, but Ware's disturbingly calm.

— Daniel Fienberg (@d_fienberg) March 31, 2013

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Research from scholars at Aberystwyth University in the U.K. suggests that William Shakespeare was prosecuted for evading taxes and for hoarding grain during a famine and then reselling it at inflated prices. Jayne Archer, A co-author of the study, told The Sunday Times [paywall protected] that "there was another side to Shakespeare besides the brilliant playwright — as a ruthless businessman who did all he could to avoid taxes, maximise profits at others' expense and exploit the vulnerable — while also writing plays about their plight to entertain them." As many have pointed out, this gives new meaning to those lines from Shakespeare's Coriolanus: "They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain."

A new biography of Derrida asks, "What would a biography of Jacques Derrida have to look like to be a Derridean biography?" File under: questions best left unanswered.

Alexander Nazaryan writes about Thomas Pynchon's novel V. for The New Yorker: "I advocate surrender to Pynchon; letting your mind toss on the wild currents of his language is a lot more enjoyable than treating his novels like puzzles, wondering where the pieces fit: Who is Rachel Owlglass? Why are we in Egypt?"

Proust's notebooks capture his exacting self-editing process.

Half of a Yellow Sun author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie complained about V.S. Naipaul to the London Evening Standard: "I've become very tired of this nonsense where he's supposed to be the best writer in the world. ... God bless him, I wish him well, but I think that just because you're an old man who's nasty doesn't mean that we shouldn't actually take your work apart." Her words weren't quite as cutting as those of Derek Walcott in his poem "The Mongoose": "I have been bitten, I must avoid infection/Or else I'll be as dead as Naipaul's fiction."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is the story of the many lives of Ursula Todd, an Englishwoman who dies in dozens of ways in this inventive novel. It also made NPR's Scott Simon cry.

James Salter, as Katie Roiphe recently pointed out in Slate, is a literary powerhouse who very few people have heard of. His latest novel, All That Is, about a WWII veteran who returns home, just might fix that.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could soon issue a final ruling that aims to force oil companies to replace E-10, gasoline mixed with 10 percent ethanol, with E-15.

This move could come just as widespread support for ethanol, which is made from corn, appears to be eroding.

Mike Mitchell was once a true believer in ethanol as a homegrown solution to foreign oil imports. He owns gas stations, and he went further than most installing expensive blender pumps that let you choose E-15, E-20 and all the way up to E-85.

The result was a variation on the old adage, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

"We're environmental people, and we kind of jumped on the bandwagon early and it bit us," Mitchell says.

Many car companies, especially the Detroit Three, have been making vehicles that can use the higher blends of ethanol for more than a decade. They're called "flex-fuel" vehicles.

Most people who own those cars still use the lowest ethanol blend they can find, because ethanol negatively affects gas mileage.

Philip Verleger, an economist who tracks the oil industry, says when Congress approved the Renewable Fuels Standard in 2007, foreign oil imports were rising.

Then came tar sands and new ways to drill for oil.

"The oil crisis is going away," Verleger says. "We have plenty of oil. We have too much oil."

Verleger says the switch to E-10 was driven by the Clean Air Act, to reduce smog, and it worked pretty well.

The switch to E-15, however, is being driven by the renewable fuels mandate, which directs the EPA to require a greater volume of ethanol in gasoline every year, pretty much, no matter what.

Even some environmental groups don't like that mandate, because corn ethanol requires so much energy and water to produce.

"The need for the ethanol program is gone," Verleger says, "but the thing is ... once you get something it's very hard to undo it."

Oil companies say they're absolutely not going to put E-15 into the marketplace, and if they're forced, they'll take their product elsewhere.

"It's my opinion that refiners have very limited choices in order to comply," says Andy Lipow, an oil industry consultant, "and one way to comply is to export ever-increasing amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel, or otherwise just simply shut down the refineries."

That's a bluff, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the corn ethanol industry. Its President, Bob Dinneen, says the EPA should call that bluff.

Dineen says this is the way Congress envisioned the mandate working: more and more ethanol over time in a gallon of fuel, and less and less petroleum.

"This is about market share," Dinneen says. "This is about their profitability; it's not any more complicated than that."

The problem is that the mandate applies only to the oil companies, not the people who blend the ethanol into the gas, and not the gas stations that buy the blended product.

There's that "horse to water" problem again. Since half of all gas stations are completely independent of the oil companies, they could just keep ordering lower ethanol gas, and they probably will.

Even though the EPA says E-15 is safe for any car built after 2001, car companies insist it's not.

"There is no guarantee that fuel will work properly in your vehicle," says Brent Bailey. Bailey heads a research group that has done 20 studies on the effects of higher ethanol blends on non flex-fuel cars. He says while most cars will probably be fine, it's "a little bit like Russian Roulette."

"You may have plenty of blanks out there, but then there might be some damage in certain cases," Bailey he says.

While that might make for an interesting experiment, oil companies, car companies, and gas stations are worried about class action lawsuits.

The petroleum industry is doing everything it can to postpone a showdown. If the EPA approves the increase, and if the refineries comply, E-15 may show up in your local gas station some time next year.

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After nearly five hours of questioning, the satirist known as the "Egyptian Jon Stewart" was released on bail Sunday.

Bassem Youssef is charged with insulting Islam and President Mohammed Morsi. He's among the most prominent critics of Egypt's Islamist president to be called in for questioning recently, prompting concerns that the president is cracking down on his detractors and members of the opposition.

Youssef is a doctor-turned-celebrity who came by his star status by lampooning public figures and the media. Politicians of all stripes are regularly skewered on his weekly show, "ElBernameg," or "The Program," and that's made him both popular and not, as the AP reports:

"The fast-paced show has attracted a wide viewership, while at the same time earning itself its fair share of detractors. Youssef has been a frequent target of lawsuits, most of them brought by Islamist lawyers who have accused him of 'corrupting morals' or violating 'religious principles.'"

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