Most Recent Posts

Immigrant and farm worker rights groups came from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, Calif. by the bus load this week. Bakersfield, in the state's Central Valley, is farm country, and immigration is a complex issue here.

The groups were converging on the home of the third-most powerful Republican in the House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.

Activists across the country are targeting a number of Republican members of Congress this summer, trying to pressure the House to take up the immigration reform bill passed in the Senate.

In Bakersfield, the protesters caravaned through the normally sleepy downtown, then held a rally and a march in the 100-degree heat to McCarthy's field office.

Maria Barajas, a 19-year-old recent graduate of Bakersfield High, welcomed the reinforcements.

"We've been coming here for the past, I'd say six months," she says.

Unlike the other protesters, Barajas wasn't holding a sign or beating a drum. She was just standing in a blue cap and gown.

"I want citizenship in order to go to a university."

Barajas moved to Bakersfield from Mexico with her parents when she was a little girl. The big farms here that produce much of the nation's fresh produce have long relied on immigrant labor — much of it illegal. Today Latinos make up half of Bakersfield's population.

Mayor Harvey Hall stood side by side with farm worker rights activists on stage at a rally earlier that day. "Our country needs a vibrant, strong and stable agricultural work force that is treated with dignity and respect," he told the crowd.

Hall is a Republican. In fact you'll find a lot of conservatives here who not only favor immigration reform, but also take a sympathetic tone when talking about people who are here illegally. Take Dean Haddock, who chairs the Kern County GOP.

"I don't want to really call it amnesty," Haddock says. "But if we come to a situation where we say, 'Look, we're glad you're here, we know you're here and we know you have needs and we know you've also produced and provided for our economy ... '"

Haddock wants to see a comprehensive immigration bill pass Congress. But he also says that the flow of illegal immigrants has to stop. The county has high unemployment, and a struggling economy. He says Bakersfield can't afford it anymore.

"The one thing that most Republicans, at least here in this area, see as the fix is securing the border," Haddock says. "Then we can go ahead and do all the other things of taking care of the people that we care about."

Make no mistake, Bakersfield and Kern County are still some of the reddest places in America. And unlike some congressional districts deeper into California's Central Valley, the area has a diverse economy, including Edwards Air Force Base and a big oil industry.

Bakersfield also has an influential Tea Party movement. Right now, McCarthy is getting just as much pressure from anti-immigration groups.

An ad running on local TV, paid for by a group called Californians for Population Stabilization, is one example. "Bakersfield Congressman Kevin McCarthy wants to bring in more immigrant workers to take jobs," the ad states. "He's even talking about legalizing 11 million illegal aliens making it easier for them to take jobs too."

While he's opposed to taking up the Senate's version of immigration reform, McCarthy does favor a step-by-step approach. That makes sense to Gene Tackett, a former Kern County supervisor turned political consultant. He says as House Majority Whip, McCarthy must fall in line with the Speaker.

"He may privately be working on that," Tackett says. "But he's not in a position to be able to push that because he's a soldier in this battle. He's not the general."

And anyway Tackett, a Democrat, says McCarthy's seat is safe, whether immigration reform passes or not.

McCarthy was in the Middle East and un-reachable this week while the pro-immigrant groups were marching to his office. Barajas says he has yet to speak to protesters. She has "deferred-action" status, which allows children who were brought here illegally to live and work in the United States for two years without the threat of deportation. Barajas says that's not good enough.

"I want to be a surgeon one day and what's the point of having this certificate, this degree that says I'm graduated, but I don't even have the citizenship to be out there and do what I want to do?"

Retiring in 2013 after 32 years as a member of the House of Representatives, Barney Frank took on his greatest challenge yet: joining Ask Me Another at the Wilbur Theatre in downtown Boston for an evening of trivia.

More From This Episode

Ask Me Another

Frankly, We Heart Boston

China says it plans to phase out the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, ending a controversial practice that reportedly supplies most of the country's transplant patients.

Huang Jiefu, a surgeon and former deputy health minister who is in charge of organ transplants, said that from November, China would scale back and eliminate the harvesting of inmate organs. Huang says it will be replaced by a nationwide voluntary donor system.

For years, Beijing denied that it routinely took organs from executed prisoners before finally acknowledging it a few years ago. The practice is widely regarded as unethical and has been a black eye for the Chinese medical establishment.

Although the number of executed prisoners is a state secret in China, human rights groups estimate that the country executes thousands of people each year.

The New York Times reports:

"By the end of 2012, about 64 percent of transplanted organs in China came from executed prisoners; the ratio has dipped to under 54 percent so far this year, according to figures provided by Mr. Huang."

Popular soft drinks, sports cars and other brands appear surreptitiously placed in the worlds of our favorite TV shows and films all the time. Soon enough, we may see them name-dropped in our books, too.

To help imagine some egregious-yet-hilarious examples of this, we invited a prolific writer to Ask Me Another: award-winning young adult author Lois Lowry. Lowry joins forces with a fellow book-loving contestant to play "Product Placement," a game in which they must combine the titles of famous literary works with the names of household products and companies.

Enlarge image i

These headlines this morning make it sound like Europe's economy is up and running again:

— "Euro Area Exits Longest Recession on Record." (Bloomberg News)

— "Euro Zone Emerges from Recession." (The Wall Street Journal)

— "Euro Zone Economy Grew 0.3% in 2nd Quarter, Ending Recession." (The New York Times)

They're all based on the news that Eurostat, the keeper of economic statistics for the European Union, says GDP grew 0.3 percent within the EU's borders from the end of March through June.

The stories may turn out to be right. But, unfortunately, reports of the European recession's death are (to borrow from Mark Twain) greatly exaggerated.

As Olli Rhen, Eurostat's vice president, writes on his blog: "I hope there will be no premature, self-congratulatory statements suggesting 'the crisis is over.' " He calls the GDP report only another sign of "a potential turning point in the EU economy."

The quick conclusion by some economists and some in the news media that a slight rise in one quarter's GDP means a recession is over ignores how experts figure out when an economy is either in a significant downturn (a recession) or enjoying steady growth (an expansion).

In Europe, just as in the U.S., the official arbiter is a committee of economic researchers who look at much more than just quarterly GDP data. As the European Centre for Economic Policy Research says of its business cycle dating committee's work:

"First, we do not identify economic activity solely with real GDP, but use a range of indicators, notably employment. Second, we consider the depth of the decline in economic activity. Recall that our definition includes the phrase, 'a significant decline in activity.' "

Egypt suffered a day of terrible violence Wednesday, and the bloodshed was compounded by several developments that suggest more confrontations are ahead.

Egypt's security forces reasserted their authority on a number of fronts and gave every appearance that they would press ahead with a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups.

Here are several examples:

State Of Emergency: The interim government declared a state of emergency for a month, which includes a 7 p.m. curfew. Egyptians have a long and painful history with emergency laws and are sure to be skeptical about the timetable. The former president, Hosni Mubarak, maintained virtual martial law for three decades until he was ousted in 2011.

Mohammed Morsi, the elected president who was removed by the military on July 3, declared a monthlong state of emergency back in January, giving the security forces broad powers to arrest and detain people.

More On Egypt

The Two-Way

'Bloodbath' In Cairo As Troops Move On Morsi Supporters

There were 320,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance filed last week, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

Not only is that 15,000 fewer than had been filed the week before, it's also the lowest number for any single week since before the U.S. economy officially slipped into its most recent recession in December 2007.

According to historical data kept by the agency, the last time claims for jobless benefits were lower in any single week was in October 2007. The last time claims for a single week were within a couple thousand of last week's level was in January 2008, just after the recession began, when they totaled 322,000 one week and 321,000 the next.

During the recession, which officially ended in June 2009, claims reached a peak of 670,000 one week in March 2009. For most of the past two years, they stayed in a range of 350,000 to 400,000 per week.

Bloomberg News says the decline last week signals that "the U.S. job market continues to mend."

Reuters writes that the data are "hinting at a pick-up in job growth in early August." It also notes that:

"The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 4,000 to 332,000, the lowest level since November 2007."

"It's difficult to see a path out of this crisis, at least not without more people dying."

That's how NPR's Cairo bureau chief, Leila Fadel, ended her Morning Edition report Thursday. After Wednesday's deadly crackdown by the army on supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi — a crackdown that according to latest estimates left more than 500 people dead and 3,500 or so wounded — the fear is that there will be much more bloodshed.

"It's difficult to see a path out of this crisis, at least not without more people dying."

That's how NPR's Cairo bureau chief, Leila Fadel, ended her Morning Edition report Thursday. After Wednesday's deadly crackdown by the army on supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi — a crackdown that according to latest estimates left more than 500 people dead and 3,500 or so wounded — the fear is that there will be much more bloodshed.

Six years ago, the U.S. housing market plunged off a cliff. Now prices are bouncing back up — sharply in many markets.

That has some real estate analysts saying 2013 may mark the turning point — when pent-up demand will revive the housing sector and boost the broader economy.

The optimists say millions of Americans have been living with relatives or renting for years now, trying to ride out the Great Recession and the slow recovery. At this point, many are ready to buy homes of their own.

If that theory turns out to be right, the home-sales boom could lead to new jobs in construction, landscaping, drapery hanging, furniture making, lending and much more.

A Housing Resurgence?

The reasons for optimism are compelling:

— Census data show that the number of such multigenerational households of adults rose from 46.5 million in 2007 to 51.4 million by the end of 2009 — a 10.5 percent jump over just three years. That means millions of young adults are still living with their parents, and may be eager to move out.

— Rents are high. RealFacts LLC said that its most recent survey shows that out of 41 markets, rents were up in 39 and remained flat in two.

— Even as rents rise, homes remain affordable in most markets because prices are well below peak levels and interest rates remain low by historic standards.

— Overall household debt has declined to the lowest level since 2006, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That means more people are in better financial shape to buy a house.

In light of all those factors, "there's pretty clearly a lot of pent-up demand," said Andrew Paciorek, an economist with the Federal Reserve Board in Washington.

His research shows that between 2006 and 2011, the number of Americans forming new households was less than half what it would have been under normal economic conditions. That rate of household formation represented "the lowest five-year period on record — at least back to the 1950s or so," he said.

His economic model predicts that the housing market will continue to see a steady boost as Americans finally shake off the recession and get back to forming new households.

Related NPR Stories

Housing Market Shows More Signs Of Life Aug. 10, 2013

Egypt suffered a day of terrible violence Wednesday, and the bloodshed was compounded by several developments that suggest more confrontations are ahead.

Egypt's security forces reasserted their authority on a number of fronts and gave every appearance that they would press ahead with a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups.

Here are several examples:

State of Emergency: The interim government declared a state of emergency for a month, which includes a 7 p.m. curfew. Egyptians have a long and painful history with emergency laws and are sure to be skeptical about the timetable. The former president, Hosni Mubarak, maintained virtual martial law for three decades until he was ousted in 2011.

Mohammed Morsi, the elected president who was removed by the military on July 3, declared a month-long state of emergency back in January, giving the security forces broad powers to arrest and detain people.

More On Egypt

The Two-Way

'Bloodbath' In Cairo As Troops Move On Morsi Supporters

Nobody, apparently. And maybe that's the thing: Bianco says she'd never done her "Total Eclipse" riff in public before, so everybody's getting their first look.

Plenty of New Yorkers (and tourists) have seen her diva mimicry, though, not least in the Times Square institution Forbidden Broadway, where she earned a Drama Desk nomination and honed her deadly accurate impressions of Kristin Chenoweth and Bernadette Peters. ("Never met either of them, but hope they understand that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.")

And she takes her solo show Diva Moments on the road from time to time; next up are dates in London, Sept. 6 and 7 at the Hippodrome.

The occasion for this "Total Eclipse" bit's debut was 54 Below's weekly Backstage night, a kind of open-mic hootenanny for theater types and madly ambitious fans. And yes, it was unrehearsed.

"I have a rough outline," Bianco says; she'd given host Suzie Mosher a list of diva names to shout out, and she knew she wanted to end with Celine Dion, "but the rest of it was sort of loosey-goosey."

But then Bianco seems like the game sort in general. Her NPR-adjacent experience involved Jeff Lunden, who'd written a song about Billy Crystal, who was the honoree at a gala at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Bianco, one of the two singers hired to perform, "had to sing it as if I were an old woman who grew up with Billy Crystal in Lawnguyland. So I think Jeff knew I wasn't afraid of funny voices."

Planet Money

European Union Wiz Me: A Show Tune About The Euro

When you hear the word "kebab" in America, you might think of skewers with chunks of chicken or beef and vegetables, marinated and grilled on coals or gas. But say "kebab" in the Middle East, and it means a lot of things — chunks of lamb or liver on skewers, or the more popular version of grilled ground meat logs found in Turkey, Iran and much of the Arab world.

If you spend enough time in the Middle East, you learn it can be hard to pinpoint the origins of things. Everybody claims to have invented hummus, flatbread and even yogurt. And don't even try to figure out who invented the kebab.

I talked to a historian of Arab medieval food on my last trip to Iraq. He told me the word is Arabic in origin and comes from the word keba, which means "to turn."

My guide to the Iraqi version of the kebab is Sami al Hilali, a longtime colleague, friend and really good cook.

Hilali says he uses a combination of lamb, beef, lamb fat, onions, parsley and spices, all ground up with his hands. He then molds the mixture onto skewers. The skewers are not the kind of skewers many Americans use — they're flat, wide and look sort of like a blunt sword.

When Hilali is ready to cook, he puts together about 18 skewers and heads outside. He uses a grill that's more like a 3-foot long trough with hardwood charcoal. He's oriented a fan to blow air over the coals and heat them up faster. The sparks are bright orange and look like fireworks.

Isra al Rubei'i, who is helping with the food, says the fan is a matter of practicality.

"Sometimes it's without a blower; using a manual fan would ... give it a more delicious flavor," she says. "But this is just to save time, you know, when you have many skewers to grill."

When the kebabs are cooked, Hilali prepares a plate with bread that will be their final resting place. Rubei'i says the bread is essential.

"The best part is the flatbread that is soaked in the fat coming out of a charred kebab skewer. You know they fight over this one," she says, laughing.

The Iraqi medieval food historian who shared the origin of the word kebab also told me another story about them: They appear in a book from the southern Iraqi city of Basra called The Book of Misers. It was written in the 9th century.

The miser in this story is a courtly man who invites people to his garden. He tells the guests, "Here's the stream, and here's the fire. Catch your fish and make your kebab."

It's the first known mention of the word. My friends nod, knowingly, as if to say, "You see? It all comes from Iraq." Then we get on with our eating.

I've had kebab all around the region — Arab kebab, Turkish kebab and Persian kebab. They're all different, and they're all pretty good. In the end, it doesn't really matter who invented kebab. What matters is that fire has touched meat, that the meat is good, and the company is even better.

This post is part of Global Grill, a summer series from All Things Considered that pulls apart the smoky flavors of grilled foods from around the world.

After several days of brutal criticism and commentary about the brutal way he fired a man during a conference call, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is now apologizing.

"I am writing you to acknowledge the mistake I made last Friday during the Patch all-hands meeting when I publicly fired Abel Lenz," Armstrong says in an email to AOL employees, which Mashable has posted here.

Armstrong adds that:

"We talk a lot about accountability and I am accountable for the way I handled the situation, and at a human level it was unfair to Abel. I've communicated to him directly and apologized for the way the matter was handled at the meeting. ...

"On Friday I acted too quickly and I learned a tremendous lesson and I wanted you to hear that directly from me."

When the Israelis and Palestinians signed an interim peace agreement on the White House lawn in 1993 amid soaring optimism, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank numbered a little over 100,000.

As renewed peace talks open Wednesday in Jerusalem, the settlers now total more than 350,000. Their number is growing rapidly, a point driven home when Israel announced Sunday it was ready to build a new batch of houses in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — a move that angered Palestinians.

Two decades after those initial peace talks, all the core issues remain unresolved and the settlement question is one of several that appear even more intractable than when the negotiators first sat down to the table.

So have the two sides been moving closer to, or further from, a peace agreement over the past 20 years of frustrating, on-and-off talks?

"Many Israelis are doing very well, but they are living in a bubble and have gone into a sense of denial about the conflict. They no longer see it or hear it, and they can even pretend it doesn't exist," says Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. "On the Palestinian side, their ability to influence the Israelis is really very limited. It's not a good place for either side to be."

Enlarge image i

Steinway & Sons, the 160-year-old musical instrument maker, is set to change hands.

Last month, a private equity firm emerged as the company's likely buyer. But a mystery bidder — rumored to be hedge fund manager John Paulson — has swooped in at the last minute, and now looks likely to take control of one of the oldest manufacturers in the United States. Paulson made billions betting against the housing market at a time when many thought housing prices could only go up. His reported offer for the company is $458 million.

At first blush, what's going on with Steinway resembles buyout stories you may have heard before. There's a devoted factory workforce where you still count as a "new guy" after 16 years. Meanwhile, in an office far from here, the wizards of finance are concocting a takeover.

But here's where this story veers off-script: Steinway isn't struggling. It actually paid off its debts last month. And these workers aren't particularly worried about their jobs. Bruce Campbell has been on the job 25 years; he's what's called a "final voicer."

"I make the piano sound the way it's supposed to sound," Campbell explains. He says he's pretty sanguine about the buyout: "I'm confident that things will be the same, maybe even get better. We're it. Finest piano in the world."

Arnie Ursaner with CJS Securities says workers are right to be confident.

"This is not wood shop in high school," Ursaner says.

Ursaner is the only stock analyst writing reports on Steinway. He says the land Steinway sits on, in a dense urban neighborhood, is tremendously valuable — but so is the workforce. If you want to make top notch pianos, you have to be here.

"The skills involved in building a custom-made, handmade piano are unique," he says. "If you try to match up the two veneers in a piano, [at Steinway] the person who does that has been trained for ten years."

It's an example of an industrial business in a major American city that's actually doing well. So why is Steinway going private?

Ursaner says it all began around two years ago with an activist investor, David Lockwood, who thought the company should consider splitting the band instruments business — like trombones and tubas — from the piano business. That set in motion a strategic review, and in the end, a healthy company decided to sell itself.

"It has strong cash flow, had an excellent balance sheet, a very stable business," Ursaner says. "This was an opportunistic review of processes rather than a defensive one."

If the mystery bidder's offer of $38 a share is accepted, the company will be valued at close to half a billion dollars.

Like many workers, Bruce Campbell owns stock. He says, however, that he's unlikely to get life-changin payday out of the deal.

"I don't think anyone is gonna get rich off their shares," he says. "Just the big guys."

Still, he could more than double his money.

The sale of Steinway isn't a done deal yet. There's a deadline of midnight tonight for another bidder to make a higher offer.

The government's decision Tuesday to oppose the merger of US Airways and American Airlines stunned airline analysts, but many predicted the deal eventually will win go through.

"Given that other airline mergers were approved, this was a surprise," University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer said. Other major carriers already have been allowed to combine forces, so "it's illogical to oppose this merger. This move comes a day late and a dollar short," he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit generally is being seen as a negotiating tactic rather than an effort to kill the $11 billion deal.

"The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots" to allow for more competition within the industry, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, said in a written assessment.

The airlines suggest the suit will cause only a delay, not a derailment. In a letter to employees, American Chief Executive Tom Horton promised to vigorously defend the merger in a court process that "will likely take a few months."

The deal to create the country's largest airline was announced in February and appeared to be on track for a quick completion.

That's because in recent years, antitrust regulators have signed off on similar transactions. For example, the Obama administration approved the mega-mergers of United and Continental in 2010 and Southwest and AirTran Airways in 2011. The Bush administration approved Delta's merger with Northwest in 2008.

Given that US Airways already has made two round trips to bankruptcy court, and American has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, analysts assumed their combination would quickly win approval.

The Two-Way

Justice Sues To Block US Airways-American Airlines Merger

What's the busiest U.S. Consulate in the world? If you guessed in Mexico or China, you'd be wrong.

It's actually in Brazil, Sao Paulo to be exact. The consulate there is giving a record number of visas to Brazilians who want to visit the U.S. And that is giving a boost to the economies of cities like Miami.

On a recent day, Tiago Dalcien and his girlfriend stand outside the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo clutching their passports and other documents. He is a 30-year-old banker; his girlfriend is a doctor.

Like most of the 3,000 people a day who come to apply for a U.S. visa, it's their first time heading to the States, and they'll be hitting New York, and Orlando and Miami, Fla. They're going to go shopping, Dalcien says.

"It's so much cheaper than here. Brazil is incredibly expensive," he says.

Prices are so high because of taxes and import duties and protectionism. For instance, a seahorse glow toy that costs about $15 on Amazon in the U.S. costs $75 in Brazil. Futons start at $1,500. People have even been smuggling electronics from the U.S. to sell here.

Even considering the cost of the ticket — roughly $800 to $1,000 round-trip — Dalcien says, it's worth it to fly to shop in the U.S.

And more and more people are.

Enlarge image i

In Japan, a noren is a short curtain that hangs to the entrance of a little teahouse or restaurant. It is not solid, but made of strips, and so when you go through it, your hand goes first, then your arm, and the rest of you, but quickly the strips fall back into place, and it is as if a wisp, a ghost, a sprite has passed through.

I always visualized Ichiro Suzuki that way, slipping from Japanese baseball to our major leagues so effortlessly, barely stirring the air.

As he nears his 40th birthday, Suzuki has long since played more in the United States than in Japan –– nine seasons there, 13 here –– on his way to, surely, accumulating more hits than anyone who has ever stood in a batter's box. He's a handful short of 4,000 now, with better than 2,700 made in our American League. Beyond lie only Ty Cobb and Pete Rose, who holds the record with 4,256 — a total Suzuki could very well eclipse only two summers from now.

Enlarge image i

The government's decision Tuesday to oppose the merger of US Airways and American Airlines stunned airline analysts, but many predicted the deal eventually will win go through.

"Given that other airline mergers were approved, this was a surprise," University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer said. Other major carriers already have been allowed to combine forces, so "it's illogical to oppose this merger. This move comes a day late and a dollar short," he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit generally is being seen as a negotiating tactic rather than an effort to kill the $11 billion deal.

"The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots" to allow for more competition within the industry, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, said in a written assessment.

The airlines suggest the suit will cause only a delay, not a derailment. In a letter to employees, American Chief Executive Tom Horton promised to vigorously defend the merger in a court process that "will likely take a few months."

The deal to create the country's largest airline was announced in February and appeared to be on track for a quick completion.

That's because in recent years, antitrust regulators have signed off on similar transactions. For example, the Obama administration approved the mega-mergers of United and Continental in 2010 and Southwest and AirTran Airways in 2011. The Bush administration approved Delta's merger with Northwest in 2008.

Given that US Airways already has made two round trips to bankruptcy court, and American has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, analysts assumed their combination would quickly win approval.

The Two-Way

Justice Sues To Block US Airways-American Airlines Merger

The government's decision Tuesday to oppose the merger of US Airways and American Airlines stunned airline analysts, but many predicted the deal eventually will win go through.

"Given that other airline mergers were approved, this was a surprise," University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer said. Other major carriers already have been allowed to combine forces, so "it's illogical to oppose this merger. This move comes a day late and a dollar short," he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit generally is being seen as a negotiating tactic rather than an effort to kill the $11 billion deal.

"The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots" to allow for more competition within the industry, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, said in a written assessment.

The airlines suggest the suit will cause only a delay, not a derailment. In a letter to employees, American Chief Executive Tom Horton promised to vigorously defend the merger in a court process that "will likely take a few months."

The deal to create the country's largest airline was announced in February and appeared to be on track for a quick completion.

That's because in recent years, antitrust regulators have signed off on similar transactions. For example, the Obama administration approved the mega-mergers of United and Continental in 2010 and Southwest and AirTran Airways in 2011. The Bush administration approved Delta's merger with Northwest in 2008.

Given that US Airways already has made two round trips to bankruptcy court, and American has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, analysts assumed their combination would quickly win approval.

The Two-Way

Justice Sues To Block US Airways-American Airlines Merger

The city of London has ordered a company to cease tracking the cellphones of pedestrians who pass its recycling bins, which also double as kiosks showing video advertisements. The bins logged data about any Wi-Fi-enabled device that passed within range.

The company, called Renew, recently added the tracking technology to about a dozen of the 100 bins it had installed before London hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics.

"The idea," as the website Quartz wrote last week, "is to bring internet tracking cookies to the real world." The title of the Quartz post that first reported the tracking program was, "This recycling bin is following you."

That story generated concern in Britain, with privacy advocates saying the program went too far in tracking people's movements without their consent. Such systems could report new or repeat visits to an area and, if combined with data from trackers in stores and elsewhere, could form a detailed picture of a consumer's habits.

The system reportedly used technology from Presence Orb, whose website features the tagline "a cookie for the real world."

As Quartz reports, the practice of monitoring smartphones and similar devices isn't as regulated as online tracking. And unlike a computer logging an Internet cookie, most mobile devices do not record contact with tracking systems that detect and record the devices' attempts to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

From the BBC:

"The bins, which are located in the Cheapside area of central London, log the media access control (MAC) address of individual smartphones — a unique identification code carried by all devices that can connect to a network."

That reportedly ended Monday, when a spokesman for the city of London's local authority says, "We have already asked the firm concerned to stop this data collection immediately and we have also taken the issue to the Information Commissioner's Office. Irrespective of what's technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public."

In a statement issued Monday, Renew says the program was merely a trial of "a glorified counter on the street," which it is no longer conducting.

"I'm afraid that in the interest of a good headline and story there has been an emphasis on style over substance that makes our technology trial slightly more interesting than it is," company CEO Kaveh Memari said. He added that many of the capabilities reported in the media had not yet been developed, saying that the program had resulted in "extremely limited, encrypted, anonymous/aggregated data."

British privacy group Big Brother Watch welcomed London's move to end the program, but it added that such monitoring shouldn't have been done in the first place.

"Systems like this highlight how technology has made tracking us much easier," Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles tells the BBC, "and in the rush to generate data and revenue there is not enough of a deterrent for people to stop and ensure that people are asked to give their consent before any data is collected."

The broader vulnerability of cellphones was highlighted in an NPR report earlier this summer, when Laura Sydell explained "How hackers tapped into my cellphone for less than $300."

When Cecile Kyenge became the first black government minister in Italian history, the appointment was hailed as a landmark for diversity. But since Kyenge became integration minister, she has been the target of death threats and vicious racial slurs.

The debate highlights growing intolerance and what Prime Minister Enrico Letta has called a shameful chapter for Italy.

When he presented his Cabinet, Letta described Kyenge as a bridge between diverse communities. The 49-year-old ophthalmologist, long an activist in local politics for immigrant rights, was elected to Parliament on the Democratic Party slate.

Europe

'Super Mario' Challenges The Idea Of Who's An Italian

The Chicago sandwich comprised of gyro meat, roast beef, and corned beef goes by many names. This is one of many ways in which it's like the Devil, and Sean Combs. People call it the Gym Shoe, the Jim Shoe, or the Jim Shoo.

Ian: With a name this unappetizing, the sandwich had no choice but to be so delicious no one would mess with it. It's like A Boy Named Shoe.

Blythe: I thought I'd need my Reebok Stomach Pumps for this.

Enlarge image i

"It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally."

That's the reaction of spectator Perry Beam to Saturday's appearance at the Missouri State Fair in Kansas City of a rodeo clown wearing a mask meant to look like President Obama and what happened during his performance.

Videos that Beam took show some of the scene and capture some of what the rodeo announcer and another clown were saying. The Kansas City Star has posted two of the clips on its YouTube channel.

In one, the announcer says, "Obama's gonna have to just stay there ... Obama watch out for those bulls." Another voice can then be heard saying "I know I'm a clown, he just run [sic] around acting line one [and] doesn't know he is one."

In the other clip, a clown can be heard saying, "we're gonna smoke Obama ... Obama they're coming for you this time. Don't you move, he's gonna getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha!"

According to a post Beam later wrote on Facebook, one of the clowns also "ran up and started bobbling the lips on the mask and the people went crazy." And he says that:

"The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull. The crowd went wild. He asked it again and again, louder each time, whipping the audience into a lather."

On the corner of H and 12 streets, across from the auto parts store sits a decently sized Italian restaurant and bar called Vendetta. Inside, there's a wooden bar and brick walls salvaged from churches in upstate New York and Maryland, and authentic Italian advertisements line the walls. Upstairs, old restored Italian Vespas hang from the ceiling.

Enlarge image i

By the loading dock of Seattle's downtown library, librarian Jared Mills checks his tire pressure, secures his iPads and locks down about 100 books to an aluminum trailer the size of a steamer trunk. The scene is reminiscent of something you'd see in an action movie, when the hero is gearing up for a big fight, but Mills is gearing up for something very different.

"If you're not prepared and don't have a lot of experience hauling a trailer, it can be kind of dangerous," Mills says, especially when you're going downhill. "The trailer can hold up to 500 pounds."

Mills is part of Seattle Public Library's "Books on Bikes" program, which aims to keep the library nimble and relevant by sending librarians and their bicycles to popular community events around Seattle.

Sports

Randonneurs Are In It For The Ride, Not The Race

At a time when much of the world is mired in economic torpor, China still enjoys enviable growth rates. And yet there's no question that its economy is growing more slowly these days.

Just ask Yan Liwei, a salesman for a construction materials company, who was visiting a park in Shanghai this weekend.

"The number of new construction projects is declining somewhat. It's taking longer for many of our clients to pay us what they owe," Liwei says. "Many small and mid-sized developers are feeling a cash crunch."

This slowdown is partly due to the global economic downturn. But economist Michael Pettis of Peking University believes there's something more fundamental taking place. Pettis says China is at a stage in its economic growth that every fast-growing country eventually reaches.

Three decades ago, China was badly underdeveloped and to catch up with other countries. It had to pour vast sums of money into roads, bridges, office buildings and factories, and this meant dizzying rates of growth. But eventually Pettis says all this building reaches a point of diminishing returns.

"When that happens the investment ends up becoming not so much wealth creating, but in many cases wealth destroying," Pettis says. "In other words, the increased productivity generated by that investment is less than the cost of the investment."

At this point, Pettis says countries like China need to fundamentally change their growth strategy. They need to stop building all those roads and shopping malls.

"So if you want to rebalance the economy, you have to sort of kill the engine of all of that growth," he says.

Pettis says that if China is to keep growing, its growth has to come from consumption. It needs to make a whole lot of policy steps that will make it easier for Chinese people to spend money — like raising wages — or eliminating residency laws that penalize people who move.

Pettis says this kind of fundamental change in economic direction is very difficult to pull off.

"The transition period for every country that's gone through [this] process has been politically very difficult," he says. "And quite frankly very few countries have gotten through this phase successfully."

The good news is that China knows it has a problem, and is trying to do something about it says economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University and the Brookings Institution.

China has tightened credit to slow down the construction of all those office buildings and shopping malls. But Prasad says that with the global economy so vulnerable China can't afford to try anything too risky.

"The Chinese government is facing this very delicate balance," Prasad says. "They know that the way they're growing right now is creating some problems, but if they slow down the growth all of those problems come and hit them in the face right away."

Prasad says there's another problem. A lot of Chinese companies depend on the flow of easy credit to stay afloat, and he says they're likely to fight any effort to change the system. In fact, the reform efforts have led to vicious infighting among political and business interests.

"The system as it is structured right now works really well for the large state-owned enterprises, the large banks and for many provincial governments," he says. "These are all politically very powerful. So they have every incentive to maintain the status quo and not change anything."

In the face of this opposition, China seems to have backtracked a bit and recently eased credit conditions again. Economist Todd Lee of IHS Global Insight doesn't believe China's leaders have shown the resolve they need to tackle the big problems.

"What they really need to do is push through the next wave of significant structural reforms and they haven't done that," Lee says.

Still, China has navigated its way through the global economy with considerable success in recent years. Now it needs to find a way to change course and do so once again.

D-Day soldiers landing on Omaha Beach. A naked Vietnamese girl running from napalm. A Spanish loyalist, collapsing to the ground in death. These images of war, and some 300 others, are on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in an exhibition called WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. Pictures from the mid-19th century to today, taken by commercial photographers, military photographers, amateurs and artists capture 165 years of conflict.

One of the best-known war pictures of all time was taken by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal in 1945. Five Marines and a Navy corpsman, raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima.

"It's such an important and historic photograph, but I don't know who any of those guys are," says documentary photographer Louie Palu — who found inspiration in the iconic Rosenthal image. "I wanted to meet the guys in that photograph. I wanted to know the name, the age, how young or how old they looked. I didn't want it to be an anonymous set of people raising a flag."

So when Palu was embedded with troops in Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2008, he made close-up portraits of the men. One of Palu's portraits became the signature image of this war photography show:

Enlarge image i

[General plot/premise discussion within; no major spoilers regarding big developments.]

One of the great threats to any film is that the people who are making it live too much inside it. Just as you learn to navigate a city without looking at signs, they learn to navigate the world they've built so well that they forget to make it comprehensible and important for people who have just arrived.

That's particularly true with a film like Elysium, which is intended to serve as a diorama inside which writer/director Neill Blomkamp – whose 2009 first feature, District 9, was a surprising Best Picture nominee – will comment on income inequality. There's nothing wrong with science fiction to make a point; it's quite standard. District 9 itself is a politically charged film about the abusive segregation of disfavored populations and the inevitability of their rebellion — not a surprising topic for Blomkamp, who was born in Johannesburg. But when an entire world is constructed to make a point about a filmmaker's vision of social justice, what ultimately matters is not the sociological parallels of the world that's constructed, but what then happens inside it.

In Elysium, Blomkamp constructs his mid-22nd-century Earth, perhaps not post-apocalyptic as much as post-laissez-faire, in which unchecked overpopulation and disease exacerbated by economic collapse have devastated the entire planet, but the very wealthy have retreated to a space station called Elysium. There, they live in splendor without having to have day-to-day contact with the impoverished suckers they left behind. They get their labor cheap back on Earth while being waited on by pliant robots, and they fiercely guard the borders, which in this case means that they beef up their air defenses against undocumented shuttles. Perhaps most important, they hoard access to magically evolved medical care pods, which can mend the broken and heal the sick. Down on Earth, the poor crowd into hospitals where harried doctors tell them this is not Elysium – people can't just be cured.

Are you picking up what Neill Blomkamp is laying down here? Because he's laying it down with a trowel.

And that's okay. Blomkamp doesn't lack ideas about building a world with parallels to what he understands to be the modern Western economy. He constructs the spinning Elysium, full of perfectly manicured lawns (the robots do the mowing, it would seem) and mysterious marks that distinguish and guard the privileged. He throws in interesting details about what has happened in the next 150 years in his Los Angeles, including that it's a primarily Spanish-speaking population and that contact with the government has almost entirely eliminated the human element – as seen in a fine, creepy exchange with a mechanized parole officer.

There are a million stories to tell about Elysium, and about the structural impossibilities of segregating the rich and protecting them forever. Hearing this setup, all kinds of questions leap to mind: Is there resistance on Earth? Is there guilt on Elysium? Does anyone up there consider coming down here? Do kids on Elysium appropriate the music of Earth? How do these two parallel worlds of human beings relate to each other, beyond the official structure?

The story Blomkamp chooses to tell, unfortunately, doesn't really have anything to do with what's interesting about Elysium. Our protagonist is Max (Matt Damon), a factory worker who finds himself in a medical emergency requiring that he get to one of the pods on Elysium. But getting there means doing a favor for a mercenary, so the movie diverts into a goofy MacGuffin plot that's all about getting the MacGuffin so that he can give it to the guy so that he can get on the shuttle so that he can heal, which means he spends perhaps the central third of the movie doing something he doesn't really care about so he can go do something he does care about. The first act crisis sort of ... goes away, after seeming like it's going to be the driver for the rest of the plot.

Into this, we throw a beautiful woman he knew as a child, who now has an adorable daughter of her own. And you'll never guess: the daughter is sick. The daughter needs help! Help the adorable daughter, you rich jerks!

Meanwhile, up on Elysium, a political plot that wouldn't make the cut on a CBS Wednesday night drama about a mayor's office is unfolding. The president (Faran Tahir) is beefing with his defense secretary, who is unfortunately played by Jodie Foster in a misguided performance that never fastens on a characterization other than a hard-to-place accent. It seems that even though they seem to observe some sort of parliamentary process in meetings, Elysium is run by a computer program, and she can reprogram it to make her the president. (...What?) And the guy who can write that program for her is the rare Elysian citizen dispatched to Earth to make a factory run better (...What?). Also working for her is a mean weaponized dude down on Earth with a samurai sword, who the president has angered her by deactivating. (...What?)

Between Max's medical emergency, the mundane political struggles of the Elysian government, the sick daughter, the MacGuffin, and the guy with the samurai sword, we're in pretty deep, and we haven't even gotten to the part where Max gets guerilla surgery that equips him with a metal exoskeleton.

Essentially, Blomkamp has built a really interesting parallel society, a backdrop in which to tell some kind of a cool story about haves and have-nots and what happens to deprived populations over time. But then the story he actually tells is utterly pedestrian, both incomprehensible and silly, thuddingly obvious at times and totally mystifying at others. By the time you reach the conclusion, you already know everything that's going to happen, almost shot for shot, beat for beat, music choice for music choice.

There's a sharp distinction between the care that seems to have gone into building this world – imperfectly, but thoughtfully, to create a sort of alive, defiant allegorical space in which to make an argument — and the care that went into the story and the characters. The creation of that space is not the story. As fully realized as Middle Earth or the Enterprise or Walnut Grove or Westeros may be, a built world is just a built world. However important the point you want to make, you rise or fall on what happens on the stage you've built, not on how immersive an experience that stage creates. And it's that action that fails this really ambitious, sometimes imposing piece.

By the loading dock of Seattle's downtown library, librarian Jared Mills checks his tire pressure, secures his iPads and locks down about 100 books to an aluminum trailer the size of a steamer trunk. The scene is reminiscent of something you'd see in an action movie, when the hero is gearing up for a big fight, but Mills is gearing up for something very different.

"If you're not prepared and don't have a lot of experience hauling a trailer, it can be kind of dangerous," Mills says, especially when you're going downhill. "The trailer can hold up to 500 pounds."

Mills is part of Seattle Public Library's "Books on Bikes" program, which aims to keep the library nimble and relevant by sending librarians and their bicycles to popular community events around Seattle.

Sports

Randonneurs Are In It For The Ride, Not The Race

D-Day soldiers landing on Omaha Beach. A naked Vietnamese girl running from napalm. A Spanish loyalist, collapsing to the ground in death. These images of war, and some 300 others, are on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in an exhibition called WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. Pictures from the mid-19th century to today, taken by commercial photographers, military photographers, amateurs and artists capture 165 years of conflict.

One of the best-known war pictures of all time was taken by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal in 1945. Five Marines and a Navy corpsman, raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima.

"It's such an important and historic photograph, but I don't know who any of those guys are," says documentary photographer Louie Palu — who found inspiration in the iconic Rosenthal image. "I wanted to meet the guys in that photograph. I wanted to know the name, the age, how young or how old they looked. I didn't want it to be an anonymous set of people raising a flag."

So when Palu was embedded with troops in Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2008, he made close-up portraits of the men. One of Palu's portraits became the signature image of this war photography show:

Enlarge image i

A leap of faith that sent an Arizona family bound for the South Pacific in a sailboat has returned them in an airplane after a harrowing ordeal at sea that saw them adrift and nearly out of food in one of the remotest stretches of ocean on the planet.

Hannah Gastonguay, 26, and her husband, Sean, 30, were fed up with abortion, homosexuality, taxes and the "state-controlled church" and so "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us", she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. With them were Sean's father and the couple's two daughters, one 3 years old and the other an infant.

A few weeks into their ultimately 91 days at sea, the Gastonguays encountered "squall after squall after squall" that damaged their boat. Originally on a heading for the archipelago nation of Kirabati near the international dateline, they changed course to the nearer Marquesas Islands, but were unable to reach them either.

Along the way, they apparently suffered damage to their mast and, unable to set a foresail, made little westward progress.

Down to "some juice and some honey," and whatever fish they could catch, a passing Canadian cargo ship tried to help out with supplies, but when it came alongside, it did even more damage to the tiny sailboat.

Eventually, the family was picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel.

"The captain said, 'Do you know where you're at? You're in the middle of nowhere,'" Ms. Gastonguay told the AP.

From there, the five were transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and, three weeks, dropped off in Chile.

Gastonguay told the AP that she never thought the family was going to die: "We believed God would see us through."

In Chile, police prefect Jose Luis Lopez told the newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias:

"They were looking for a kind of adventure; they wanted to live on a Polynesian island but they didn't have sufficient expertise to navigate adequately," he said.