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When Cory Monteith died in July, the fact that it put Glee in a terrible position was certainly the least of the rotten outcomes.

But it did, in fact, put the show in a terrible position.

He was a core member of the cast, and hadn't been gradually fading from view like some of the original kids, so there was nothing to do but deal with it — and Thursday night, after starting the season with two Beatles tribute episodes, they did.

Called "The Quarterback," the episode picked up three weeks after Finn's funeral, so the cast was spared playing the news of his death. And Lea Michele, who was dating Monteith at the time he died, appeared only in the last act. The episode didn't explain how Finn died, and through Kurt, it explicitly disclaimed any interest in talking about it: "Who cares?" Kurt said to us.

As an episode of Glee, "The Quarterback" was sort of all over the place. Little plots involving Finn's jacket and a tree planted in his memory worked unevenly, and there were moments — which I think it would be profoundly uncharitable to identify — when performers seemed to be simply overmatched by the experience and seemed uncomfortable in character.

But it was, oddly enough, in the moments when the performers seemed to be peeking through that the episode did work. It was when the illusion that this was entirely a depiction of fictional characters mourning a fictional person receded that it did contain a graceful and very real sense of grief and tribute.

The show was somewhat transparent about all this; that's why the "Seasons Of Love" opener began with the newer cast members and then revealed those who'd been there since the beginning. And those older cast members looked, as you might expect, palpably more wrecked throughout. It felt real and yet not, as if they were both working behind the artifice of character and acknowledging it. It wasn't a secret that this was a remembrance for actors as well as characters — we knew, and they knew we knew, and we knew they knew we knew.

But this sense that you were watching two things at once was never more acute, of course, than when Michele appeared at the very end to sing Bob Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love." It's probably smart, and merciful, that she sang a love song and not a song about death and grief. Despite all the things that have pulled Glee off course at times, she remains a really talented singer, and it's a really lovely rendition. And you do know that you're watching both the character and the actress, and it is a little distracting, and that's okay, I think.

The Salt

Was Your Chicken Nugget Made In China? It'll Soon Be Hard To Know

Last weekend, a quiet block on the northwest side of Chicago appeared to be taken over by villagers from the mountains of southern Poland. That's because a Polish Highlander wedding was getting underway. But even before the couple arrived, there was a lot of pomp, circumstance — and moving of cars.

Any time now the bridal party will be arriving and Andy Zieba — father of the bride — is ringing doorbells, asking neighbors if they can please move their cars.

"Excuse me, ma'am? You don't know who's the Honda belong to?" he asks.

The anxious father needs to make room because five wooden carriages and 12 horses are headed to this block of modest frame bungalows. And one of the carriages is bringing the band.

Andy Zieba and his wife, Stella, are Grale — Highlanders who grew up in the southern, mountainous region of Poland. Some aspects of this wedding celebration will be traditional Polish, other aspects will be specific to Highlanders.

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пятница

When you invite guests over, you probably straighten up the house to make a good impression.

This week, the nation's capital is welcoming guests from all over the world. Thousands of finance ministers, central bankers, scholars and industry leaders are in Washington, D.C., for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

But instead of being impressed by the buffed-up home of the world's superpower, the guests are finding a capital in disarray. The federal government is still partly shut down and Congress has not yet agreed to avoid a debt default.

The disorder is prompting a lot of criticism of the United States, and concerns about U.S. economic leadership in the world.

If Congress does not end its political crisis, "it will have financial consequences that will apply not just to this country, but across the globe, given the strong inter-connectedness between the various economies," IMF chief Christine Lagarde said during a panel discussion on Thursday.

On Friday, even as they heard reports about U.S. lawmakers floating possible solutions and meeting at the White House, foreign officials remained worried and wary at the IMF gathering.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Treasury: New Debt Ceiling Fight Could Derail Economy

When Cory Monteith died in July, the fact that it put Glee in a terrible position was certainly the least of the rotten outcomes.

But it did, in fact, put the show in a terrible position.

He was a core member of the cast, and hadn't been gradually fading from view like some of the original kids, so there was nothing to do but deal with it — and Thursday night, after starting the season with two Beatles tribute episodes, they did.

Called "The Quarterback," the episode picked up three weeks after Finn's funeral, so the cast was spared playing the news of his death. And Lea Michele, who was dating Monteith at the time he died, appeared only in the last act. The episode didn't explain how Finn died, and through Kurt, it explicitly disclaimed any interest in talking about it: "Who cares?" Kurt said to us.

As an episode of Glee, "The Quarterback" was sort of all over the place. Little plots involving Finn's jacket and a tree planted in his memory worked unevenly, and there were moments — which I think it would be profoundly uncharitable to identify — when performers seemed to be simply overmatched by the experience and seemed uncomfortable in character.

But it was, oddly enough, in the moments when the performers seemed to be peeking through that the episode did work. It was when the illusion that this was entirely a depiction of fictional characters mourning a fictional person receded that it did contain a graceful and very real sense of grief and tribute.

The show was somewhat transparent about all this; that's why the "Seasons Of Love" opener began with the newer cast members and then revealed those who'd been there since the beginning. And those older cast members looked, as you might expect, palpably more wrecked throughout. It felt real and yet not, as if they were both working behind the artifice of character and acknowledging it. It wasn't a secret that this was a remembrance for actors as well as characters — we knew, and they knew we knew, and we knew they knew we knew.

But this sense that you were watching two things at once was never more acute, of course, than when Michele appeared at the very end to sing Bob Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love." It's probably smart, and merciful, that she sang a love song and not a song about death and grief. Despite all the things that have pulled Glee off course at times, she remains a really talented singer, and it's a really lovely rendition. And you do know that you're watching both the character and the actress, and it is a little distracting, and that's okay, I think.

Elizabeth Smart dominated headlines back in 2002. She was just 14 years old when she was kidnapped at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee. Smart was held captive for nine months. Mitchell forced her to act as his second wife, raped her nearly every day, and told her that the ordeal was ordained by God.

Smart's Mormon faith played a key part in her survival and spiritual health today. She says there were moments when she felt there was no one to turn to – except God. She writes about all of this in her new memoir My Story.

"When I was kidnapped and he was telling me all of these things, I remember what my parents said: 'You'll know a person by their actions.' And so even though he was sitting there telling me that he was a prophet, that I should be thankful for what was happening to me, I was really a lucky girl – I realized that he wasn't a good person. He was hurting me. He made me feel terrible," Smart tells NPR's Michel Martin. "And growing up believing that I have a kind and loving heavenly father, I couldn't believe that God had called him to do what he was doing to me."

Smart says that — even when she feared for her life — she never lost faith. "You don't just take what's given to you and say, 'Okay this is what we're supposed to do.' But that you pray about it, you think about it, and you find your own answer. That's what true faith is."

A central question for people of faith is why God allows bad things to happen. Smart says that her experience gives her a unique perspective on that issue. "Although I never asked to be kidnapped or for something like that to happen to me, I can find that goodness can still come out of it, and that I can be grateful for the opportunities that it's opened up to me that otherwise wouldn't have been."

As for Smart's captors, they have been sentenced to long prison terms without parole. Smart says she's not focused on what happens to them anymore, but that she forgives them. "I have let go of the past. I have let go of what they have done to me. And I've let go of them. They no longer have a part in my life, and I have no desire to see them. I have just moved on."

Smart says that one lesson she wants people to take from her story is the importance of treating sexual assault victims with compassion. "After being raped, I felt completely worthless. I didn't even feel like I was human anymore. And it is just so important to let these survivors know that they're not any less of a person. You don't love them any less. And that to pretend like it never happened, or to pretend like rape doesn't exist or that it only happens in the wrong parts of wrong – you're doing that survivor a disservice."

The kidnapping is not the final chapter of Smart's story. She is now married, and working as an advocate on children's issues. Smart says writing the book was a healing experience that helped her realize how far she has come. "All of us have the potential inside us to reach so much further and grow so much more than any of us think we can," she notes.

We had a complicated problem on our kitchen table in Jerusalem. A stack of homemade birthday thank-you notes, tucked in brightly colored envelopes, ready to be whisked off to friends in the U.S. And a commemorative packet of Israeli stamps in all sorts of different denominations, none of which added up to the 6.20 NIS (6 New Israeli Shekels, 20 agorot, or $1.74) it took to mail a letter or postcard from here to the States.

Postage Around The World

In the U.S., it costs $1.10 to send an overseas letter weighing up to 3.5 ounces (or approximately 100 grams). How does the rest of the world compare? Here's a roundup of what it costs for a U.S.-bound missive.

South Africa: 66 cents (up to 50 grams)

Russia: 88 cents (20g ); $2.19 (100g)

Brazil: 95 cents (50g)

Saudi Arabia: $1.07 (50g)

U.S.: $1.10 (approx. 100g)

Jamaica: $1.15 (15g, Caribbean, North and South America), $1.35 (Europe), $1.74 (rest of the world)

Ireland: $1.22 (50g)

Mauritania: $1.23 (100g)

Great Britain: $1.41 (10g); $5.59 (100g)

China: $1.63 (50g)

France: $1.90 (50g)

Japan: $1.96 (50g)

Australia: $2.46 (50g)

Denmark: $2.64 (50g)

Argentina: $2.75 (20g, within the Americas); $2.92 (outside the Americas)

Note: Converted to U.S. dollars on Oct. 8 and 9, 2013

Sachin Tendulkar, the man who is to Indian cricket what Babe Ruth is to baseball, says he'll retire in November after his 200th test match, ending a more than two-decade-long career in which he broke many of the sport's batting records.

"All my life, I have had a dream of playing cricket for India. I have been living this dream every day for the last 24 years," Tendulkar said in a statement Thursday. "It's hard for me to imagine a life without playing cricket because it's all I have ever done since I was 11 years old. It's been a huge honor to have represented my country and played all over the world. I look forward to playing my 200th Test Match on home soil, as I call it a day."

The announcement, which was expected, marks the end of an era for Indian cricket. Tendulkar, along with the West Indies' Brian Lara, entertained the sport's fans with his batting prowess through much of the 1990s and 2000s. And though his powers waned slightly, his zeal for the game and his fans' enthusiasm for him did not.

For an excellent summary of Tendulkar's 24-year career, visit ESPNCricinfo. In this video, the website also chronicles why Tendulkar is so beloved in the cricketing world:

четверг

As the federal government shutdown drags on, a potentially pivotal group of House Republicans has entered the spotlight: the roughly 20 or so members who have publicly signaled their support for a so-called "clean" spending bill that would provide the funding necessary to reopen the government without strings attached.

There are various tallies of how many members fall into this camp. Our best estimate, based on recent statements and the lists compiled by several media outlets [here, here and here] is 21.

So what unites the 21 congressmen who are willing to break with GOP leadership?

First, there's a regional connection: most hail from either the Northeast, Virginia or Florida — in other words, some of the more politically competitive (or least Republican) turf in the nation.

In addition, more than half of these congressional Republicans represent districts with above-average percentages of government employees.

The recent electoral history in many of these seats suggests they're the kinds of places where a tough primary challenge is less of a threat than a tough general election fight — which isn't the case for the bulk of the House GOP.

All of the congressmen advanced through their primary elections comfortably in 2012 — in fact, more than half had no primary opposition at all.

Here's a list of the Republicans who would support a "clean" spending bill, and some background on how their congressional districts voted in recent elections:

Rep. Tim Griffin (Ark. 2)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 55%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 55%
Percentage of Government Workers: 20%

Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo. 6)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 49%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 52%
Percentage of Government Workers: 12%

Rep. Bill Young (Fla. 13)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 58%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 69%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 11%

Rep. Dennis Ross (Fla. 15)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 53%
Percentage of Government Workers: 14%

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla. 25)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 76%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 51%
Percentage of Government Workers: 10%

Rep. Erik Paulsen (Minn. 3)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 58%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 90%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 9%

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (N.J. 2)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 58%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 87%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 54%
Percentage of Government Workers: 17%

Rep. Jon Runyan (N.J. 3)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 54%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 52%
Percentage of Government Workers: 19%

Rep. Peter King (N.Y. 2)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 59%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 52%
Percentage of Government Workers: 17%

Rep. Mike Grimm (N.Y. 11)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 53%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 52%
Percentage of Government Workers: 19%

Rep. Richard Hanna (N.Y. 22)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 61%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 71%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 49%
Percentage of Government Workers: 20%

Rep. Walter Jones (N.C. 3)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 63%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 69%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 58%
Percentage of Government Workers: 22%

Rep. Tom Cole (Okla. 4)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 68%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 88%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 67%
Percentage of Government Workers: 22%

Rep. Jim Gerlach (Pa. 6)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 57%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 51%
Percentage of Government Workers: 9%

Rep. Patrick Meehan (Pa. 7)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 59%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 10%

Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa. 8)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 57%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 49%
Percentage of Government Workers: 9%

Rep. Charles Dent (Pa. 15)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 57%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 51%
Percentage of Government Workers: 10%

Rep. Rob Wittman (Va. 1)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 56%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 49%
Percentage of Government Workers: 24%

Rep. Scott Rigell (Va. 2)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 54%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 22%

Rep. Frank Wolf (Va. 10)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 59%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: Unopposed
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Romney 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 19%

Rep. Dave Reichert (Wash. 8)

2012 General Election Winning Percentage: 60%
2012 Primary Election Winning Percentage: 51%
2012 Presidential Election Winner: Obama 50%
Percentage of Government Workers: 16%

Election data from the CQ Voting and Elections Collection. Government worker data from the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.

CBGB

Director: Randall Miller

Genre: Comedy, drama, musical

Running Time: 103 minutes

Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content, drug use, and a scene of violence.

With: Alan Rickman, Malin Akerman, Stana Katic, Rupert Grint

Most Americans don't get the 4 to 6.5 cups of fruits and vegetables we're supposed to consume every day, per government guidelines. But companies that make juice, especially high-end, "fresh" juice, are ready to come to our rescue.

The relatively new "super-premium" juice marketers are pushing more than just pretty colors and sweet flavors. They're also trying to persuade Americans that getting fruits and vegetables from juice is convenient and pleasurable and will potentially alleviate your guilt about your unhealthy ways by blasting your system with "incredible nutrition."

Look no further than Starbucks' announcement this week that it has opened a $70 million, state-of-the-art "juicery" in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., where it plans to quadruple production of its Evolution Fresh juice, a brand it acquired in 2011.

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An estimated 7 million people have been shut out at 12 of the busiest and biggest U.S. national parks, costing parks and nearby communities about $76 million in lost visitor spending for each day the partial government shutdown drags on.

That's according to a report just out from the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, which derived its estimates from actual National Park Service visitation numbers from last October and an independent analysis of park economic impacts conducted by the nonpartisan group Headwaters Economics.

The report also concludes that more than 40,000 non-Park Service jobs are at risk in and outside these 12 national parks alone.

"These figures are mind-boggling, and they only begin to capture the full economic shock of locking up the crown jewels of America," says Maureen Finnerty, the Coalition's chair and a former superintendent at Everglades and Olympic National Parks.

Here are the calculations park-by-park for the first 10 days of the shutdown. (Figures apply to areas inside and outside the parks):

Acadia National Park, Maine

Lost visitors: 68,493

Lost visitor dollars: $5,263,013

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 3,147

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Lost visitors: 27,767

Lost visitor dollars: $656,986

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 375

Boston National Historic Park, Massachusetts

Lost visitors: 54,794

Lost visitor dollars: $2,032,876

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 904

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio

Lost visitors: 68,219

Lost visitor dollars: $1,545,205

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 599

Everglades National Park, Florida

Lost visitors: 25,083

Lost visitor dollars: $3,857,534

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 1,951

Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania

Lost visitors: 27,397

Lost visitor dollars: $1,796,712

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 1,051

Glacier National Park, Montana

Lost visitors: 60,273

Lost visitor dollars: $3,076,712

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 1,632

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Lost visitors: 120,000

Lost visitor dollars: $11,750,684

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 6,167

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee

Lost visitors: 257,534

Lost visitor dollars: $23,123,387

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 11,367

Olympic National Park, Washington

Lost visitors: 77,808

Lost visitor dollars: $2,912,328

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 1,395

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Lost visitors: 80,821

Lost visitor dollars: $4,821,917

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 2,641

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana

Lost Visitors: 98,630

Lost visitor dollars: $9,452,054

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 4,481

Yosemite National Park, California

Lost visitors: 106,849

Lost visitor dollars: $10,021,917

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 4,602

Zion National Park, Utah

Lost visitors: 72,876

Lost visitor dollars: $3,495,890

Non-NPS jobs at risk: 2,136

The two paintings are unmistakably by Vincent Van Gogh. Both show a street scene in the south of France, dominated by sturdy trees with limbs thrust upwards. Both show the same trees and the same houses and pedestrians — almost.

The Road Menders and The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Remy) were painted by Van Gogh in May 1889. They're so alike that they are sometimes called "copies." In fact, they're different: strikingly different in color, subtly different in detail.

These two works of art will be brought together on Saturday at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., along with others that showcase Van Gogh's habit of creating what he called "repetitions." They're variations on a theme, in one case as many as nine paintings or drawing of the same subject.

I learned of the exhibit by reading Henry Adams' article, "Seeing Double: Van Gogh the Tweaker," in last Sunday's New York Times. In writing about the two "Menders" paintings, Adams reports the differences between them and explains which one was created first and how we know. He also notes the tendency for some "overly vigilant scholars" to suspect that some of Van Gogh's copies were fakes.

Van Gogh's repetitions are not fakes — nor, I don't think, are they best called "copies." As the Phillips exhibit underscores, they are better understood as a vital expression of Van Gogh's artistic process. In letters to his brother Theo, Adams tells us, Vincent communicated that he "viewed the repetitions as an opportunity to improve and clarify his initial composition."

At first, I concluded that what Van Gogh did with his repetitions was actually not all that extraordinary. To reach an accomplished level with some skill requires anyone to put in intensive hours of trial and error, success and failure. Musicians practice for hours a day; writers endlessly revise the pages they produce. But then I realized that Van Gogh's repetitions are not really about practice in the conventional sense. They're about looking at one's finished, visible-to-the-public product and deciding to do it again, almost the same, but not quite.

Maybe there's a cool life lesson here for all of us in our day to day lives. It's tempting to be highly self-critical once we ourselves have created something. We may scrutinize the final product intently. We may ask: is it good, bad or merely mediocre? We may wonder: why can't I get things right the first time? We could instead, though, embrace and take delight in an iterative process.

Think of what we do in the kitchen. We find a recipe for a fine pasta dinner, make it one night with this kind of tomato sauce and another night with that kind, tweaking the quantity and ratio of spices, the type and tang of tomatoes. Best of all is when we do this not only for the sake of our taste buds, but also for the in-the-kitchen fun of experimenting and sharing the results.

Gathering with friends to make music or dance, we may play again certain pieces, trace the same paths again with our bodies, over and over, but with slight variations each time. This shared exploration can become a way to create together fresh material as we go along.

Finished pieces of writing may also be reworked. In my writing-intensive science courses, where an assignment might be to respond in an essay to some peer-reviewed article or book, I find that many students expect that their first try is good enough. "I worked hard," they might say. "And I like the result." I ask them to think differently. When I require revisions in their "completed" work, it's not only to correct the grammar or fix scientific errors. It's also to issue an invitation: move those words around, reshape those sentences! Then you can appreciate what happens when a new mosaic of meaning emerges from the previous one.

The Phillips' celebration of Van Gogh's repetitions, beginning this weekend, is a catalyst for reflection. The expression of our own creativity needn't be all about intense striving to turn out a perfect, finished-forever product. Much of the joy is in seeing that what we make today becomes a basis for new things tomorrow.

Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, joins NPR's Steve Inskeep again for a recurring feature Morning Edition likes to call Word of Mouth. This month her suggestions are all about heroes — whether being heroic means doing something, or not doing something.

Revisiting Black Hawk Down

Brown's first selection is a Daniel Klaidman piece from The Daily Beast today, looking at a fateful U.S. military operation in Somalia from the vantage point of 20 years later. Eighteen American soldiers were killed in the Battle of Mogadishu when a rescue mission — one that was later dramatized in the Ridley Scott film Black Hawk Down — went terribly wrong.

"Of course it's now become a kind of mantra, that we don't want to have 'another Black Hawk Down' ... when people talk about intervention or going into a very risky place to rescue people."

In "Black Hawk Down's Long Shadow," Klaidman interviews many of the people who were part of the mission, drawing somewhat different conclusions than were arrived at in the movie inspired by the incident.

"The mantra of that movie, at the end, was 'It's not about politics, it's not about a mission, in the end it's about the man standing next to you,'" Brown says. "He's the guy that you fight for, he's the guy that you die for.

"But 20 years later, when Dan Klaidman goes back to interview many of the people who were part of it, it's more complicated than that. Yes, it was about their colleagues. But they do also want questions answered."

"They really want to know whether this was worth it," Brown continues. "Why [it was] that people died. Why we were there at all. And was this mission in vain? It's a very haunting thing for the people who lived and survived."

The article also looks at how the operation has affected the lives of the soldiers who were there.

Part of a series about small businesses in America

When it comes to job creation, politicians talk about small businesses as the engines of the U.S. economy. It's been a familiar refrain among politicians from both major parties for years.

'Not Just A Restaurant'

Economists say such job growth is all about new firms — startups — but not all of them. Most startups will actually fail. The second most likely outcome is that they'll start small and stay small. Just a tiny fraction start small and then grow fast, creating an outsize share of new jobs. One such company is Sweetgreen, which dishes out fast, fresh organic salads in compostable bowls at 20 locations on the East Coast.

Pedro Ceron manages the restaurant near Capitol Hill. He's worked for the company for a little more than a year and is one of about 570 people now employed by Sweetgreen. Six years ago, it was just a little shack of a shop in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, says co-founder Nicolas Jammet.

"It was 560 square feet, and most people told us that you couldn't open a restaurant in that space or that size. But we were college seniors, and we wanted to do it; so we did it," Jammet says.

“ [Government] loan programs, I would say, would be better targeted towards young businesses than small businesses per se.

Emblematic of the sense of hatred and distrust in the city, there was a bomb threat lodged against King, who came to speak in Dallas just a few months before Kennedy got there.

On the Mink Coat Mob Riot, a notorious confrontation between Lyndon Baines Johnson and a group of Dallas protesters four days before the 1960 presidential election

It was an amazing scene and one that's been exiled to the corners of history. It's really something we need to be mindful of. LBJ and Ladybird Johnson were attacked by a mob of Dallas' leading citizens during a campaign stop in downtown Dallas. In the lobbies of the two finest hotels in Dallas, it was a melee: people swinging signs at them, they were spitting at them, people were pulling hat pins out of their hats and trying to stab people. It became known as the Mink Coat Mob Riot ...

Some historians say that folks then voted for LBJ and Kennedy in sympathy and that put them both in the White House. The very thing that people in Dallas, some people in Dallas in this Mink Coat Mob — the finest citizens in the city — did not want to have happen.

On the nature of the Mink Coat Mob

It's those scary moments when you see a face coiled in rage. You see behind [LBJ] these faces twisted in anger and hate. Then, again, almost the unlikely nature [of the mob]: You look at the full frame and these are people who are dressed literally in mink coats, suits, ties, people taking a break for lunch during their business endeavors. It really looks like society unhinged. Something's gone horribly, horribly awry in Dallas.

“ Something's gone horribly, horribly awry in Dallas.

Starting a new job is always tough. You want early success to prove you really were the right pick.

That's especially true if you happen to be the first woman to hold that job. Ever.

So when President Obama on Wednesday nominated Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve, she might have had two reactions: 1) Yippee and 2) Uh-oh.

As Fed head, Yellen would have to guide interest-rate policy in a way that boosts economic growth without triggering inflation.

The pressures would be enormous. Example: Just as Yellen's appointment was being rolled out, the International Monetary Fund was warning that if the Fed were to mishandle timing of a gradual move to higher interest rates, it could cause $2.3 trillion in global bond portfolio losses.

So from Day 1 on the new job, any slip-up could trigger an economic calamity.

But when introducing her as his choice, Obama expressed confidence, saying she's "extremely well-qualified" and "renowned for her good judgment."

Most of her peers predict Yellen, 67, will be able to handle the pressure.

"Dr. Yellen is superbly qualified," said a letter signed by more than 500 leading economists who urged the White House to nominate her. "She has shown consistently good judgment in all her roles leading our nation's financial institutions and economic policy."

Even many economists opposed to White House policies have voiced respect for Yellen.

"Her forecasts, as it turns out, have been more accurate" than those who feared the Fed was being too loose with monetary policy, according to Stephen Oliner, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group.

For weeks, economists and bankers have been warning that there will be catastrophic consequences if Congress fails raise the nation's borrowing limit.

They say it will mean the nation will default on its debt, which could rock U.S. and global markets. The Treasury has warned that it will exhaust the "extraordinary measures" it has been using to keep paying the nation's bills by Oct. 17.

"To actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be — and I'm quoting here — 'insane,' 'catastrophic,' 'chaos,' " President Obama has said. "These are some of the more polite words. Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb."

But to a small group of Republicans in Congress, these warnings are just a lot of hype. They believe the country will not default, even if the debt ceiling is breached, and all the fuss about the debt limit is just fear-mongering.

"To suggest that we can't pay our debts — that's absolutely not true," says Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia.

The Republicans in this group have different theories about why the country is not going to default, but the conclusion is the same: Let Oct. 17 come and go without raising the debt ceiling, and America's going to be A-OK.

One common theory: The U.S. will have enough cash on hand to pay Treasury bondholders and everybody else for a long time.

"We can honor our Social Security claims," Gingrey says. "Social Security checks will go out. Medicare claims will be honored."

The problem with that theory is twofold. First, cash-flow: The money going out can be more than what's coming in on any given day. Second: The total going out is a lot more than what's coming in. In the last fiscal year, the U.S. ran a $600 billion deficit.

Economists say if the U.S. can't borrow more money after Oct. 17, a lot of people — including Social Security recipients — won't get paid.

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What A U.S. Default Would Mean For Pensions, China And Social Security

Most business interests would do anything to avoid a public fight with the most powerful man in the Senate.

Not Koch Industries.

The privately owned conglomerate of conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch is busy trading volleys with Majority Leader Harry Reid in the battle over the Affordable Care Act and the government shutdown.

What's unusual here is the word trading. It wasn't so many years ago that the Koch brothers and their company would have said nothing, just absorbed political slams without comment.

But that reticence has been steadily fading as political temperatures rise. And this week, when Reid accused the Koch brothers of leading a two-pronged campaign against the ACA and for a shutdown, it took less than a day for Koch Industries to punch back.

Philip Ellender, an executive at Koch Companies Public Sector llc, distributed a letter on Capitol Hill Wednesday, taking on what he called "false information presented about Koch [Industries] on the Senate floor by Senate Majority Leader Reid" the day before. Ellender expressed hope that Reid "and other politicians will stop misrepresenting and distorting Koch's position."

Reid, citing a New York Times article that ran Sunday, had attacked David and Charles Koch and said the brothers and former Attorney General Ed Meese led other conservatives in "raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars" to fight the health care law and instigate the shutdown.

"By shutting down the government, and that's what happened, we're satisfying the Koch brothers and Ed Meese, but millions of people in America are suffering," Reid said.

Ellender's letter says that Koch Industries believes the ACA will increase deficits, bring down health-care standards and raise taxes. But he wrote that Koch Industries "has not taken a position on the legislative tactic" of linking the government funding resolution to a provision cutting off money for the ACA, "nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare."

But that still leaves the political groups backed by the Kochs — and they haven't been so hands-off. Americans For Prosperity, which the brothers have long supported, has campaigned hard to repeal Obamacare. And Heritage Action for America, which spearheaded the defunding effort, in 2011 got $500,000 from Freedom Partners, a business association that's part of the Koch network.

Just to add to the Koch confusion, Michael Needham, the head of Heritage Action, was asked Wednesday about that $500,000 contribution: It came from the Koch brothers, he said.

We had a complicated problem on our kitchen table in Jerusalem. A stack of homemade birthday thank-you notes, tucked in brightly colored envelopes, ready to be whisked off to friends in the U.S.

Postage Around The World

In the U.S., it costs $1.10 to send an overseas letter weighing up to 3.5 ounces (or approximately 100 grams). How does the rest of the world compare? Here's a roundup of what it costs for a U.S.-bound missive.

South Africa: 66 cents (up to 50 grams)

Russia: 88 cents (20g ); $2.19 (100g)

Brazil: 95 cents (50g)

Saudi Arabia: $1.07 (50g)

U.S.: $1.10 (approx. 100g)

Jamaica: $1.15 (15g, Caribbean, North and South America), $1.35 (Europe), $1.74 (rest of the world)

Ireland: $1.22 (50g)

Mauritania: $1.23 (100g)

Great Britain: $1.41 (10g); $5.59 (100g)

China: $1.63 (50g)

France: $1.90 (50g)

Japan: $1.96 (50g)

Australia: $2.46 (50g)

Denmark: $2.64 (50g)

Argentina: $2.75 (20g, within the Americas); $2.92 (outside the Americas)

Note: Converted to U.S. dollars on Oct. 8 and 9, 2013

Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot last year by Taliban militants for her advocacy of girls' education, has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by European lawmakers.

The 16-year-old, considered a contender for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, joins previous winners of Europe's top human rights award, including Peace Prize laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

The Associated Press says former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked NSA secrets to the media and "a group of imprisoned Belarus dissidents were also in the running for the 50,000-euro ($65,000) award," named after the late Soviet nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov.

"The European Parliament acknowledges the incredible strength of this young woman," said Martin Schulz, the president of the EU legislature. "Malala bravely stands for the right of all children to be granted a fair education. This right for girls is far too commonly neglected."

The AP says "Europe's three major political groups had nominated the schoolgirl in a show of united support for her cause."

Earlier this week, Yousafzai told the BBC that the way forward in Pakistan was to open a dialogue with her attackers.

Yousafzai campaigned actively for girls' access to school in the Swat Valley area of northwestern Pakistan, which has become a battleground in recent years between Pakistani forces and Taliban militants who oppose education for girls. On Oct. 9, 2012, her school bus was flagged down and boarded by gunmen who identified her by name and shot her in the head.

There's been a deadly fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh — the latest in a series of such tragedies and just six months after the worst disaster in the history of the global garment industry.

At least 10 people were killed at the Aswad garment factory outside the capital, Dhaka, early Wednesday. The immediate cause was not known. This factory, like others where tragedy has struck, produced clothes for a number of Western companies.

Here's more from The Wall Street Journal:

"Aswad Composite Mills has recently produced clothes for Western retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Loblaw Cos., the Canadian owner of the Joe Fresh label, and Hudson's Bay Co., according to several online shipping databases. Hudson's Bay said it last received a delivery from the factory in April and subsequently decided it would no longer place orders with the factory. A spokeswoman didn't elaborate on whether the decision was based on safety reasons. A spokeswoman for Loblaw said it was looking into the issue. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said it is 'working to understand the facts and will take appropriate action based on our findings.' She declined to elaborate."

One thing is certain: None of the key players in the federal spending impasse is very happy right now.

President Obama is expected to meet with House Democrats on Wednesday and other caucuses in the coming days, The Associated Press reports, amid hope that a deal can be made soon.

Here's a rundown of Wednesday's Morning Edition coverage on the partial government shutdown, which is bumping up against the debate over raising the debt ceiling.

— Correspondent Ari Shapiro logs Tuesday's tit-for-tat between the president and House Speaker John Boehner:

"The day began with a phone call between House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama," Shapiro says. "Each side put out a statement describing the conversation. And for once the parties agreed — the call changed no one's mind. A few hours later, Obama took to the White House briefing room and urged Republicans to end these crises."

— Correspondent Scott Horsley says that while Washington bickers over the shutdown and a possible default, the rest of the world is just as nervous as we are — maybe more so.

Economic historian and author Daniel Yergin tells Horsley: "The whole global economy, the whole system of payments and trade and investment — it all rests upon confidence. And at the center of that confidence is the United States. The very big rock of Gibraltar. And if it can't play that role, everybody's worse off, including the United States."

— Host Renee Montagne speaks with Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, a member of the Tea Party caucus who outlines the conservative wing's thinking. Labrador says he personally "would be willing to give the president a one-year [continuing resolution] and a lot of conservatives are there with me — which would be good for the president — in exchange for a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare."

"We're not the ones who wanted to shut down the government; we need to remember that," he says. "When the shutdown occurred a week ago, it was the Democrats that said the Republicans wanted to shut down the government. There wasn't a single Republican in the House [who] wanted to shut down the government. We wanted to keep the government open."

— Finally, host David Green spoke with Phil Glover, a corrections officer at the Johnstown Federal Prison in southwestern Pennsylvania and regional vice president for the Council of Prison Locals union, who says he and his colleagues are considered essential, but that as of Oct. 1, they won't be getting a paycheck.

"The next paycheck they get will be next week, and they will get a six-day paycheck for working two full weeks," Glover says.

Update at 4:39 p.m. ET. Recalibrating Assistance:

The State Department says the U.S. is "recalibrating" the assistance it provides Egypt.

The decision follows a review sparked by a series of attacks by security forces on supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi that ended in hundreds dead. A shipment of F-16 fighter jets was quickly suspended as were joint exercises planned with the Egyptian army.

In a statement, State spokesperson Jen Psaki said the U.S. will continue to have a relationship with the Egyptian government, but will continue to delay delivery of some large-scale military systems, as well as suspend some "cash assistance to the government pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government through free and fair elections."

The U.S., however, will continue to provide support to help "secure Egypt's borders, counter terrorism and proliferation, and ensure security in the Sinai."

Reuters adds some detail:

"The United States will withhold deliveries of Abrams tanks, F-16 aircraft, Apache helicopters and Harpoon missiles from Egypt as it cuts back on aid, a congressional source said.

"Washington also plans to halt a $260 million cash transfer and a planned $300 million loan guarantee to the Cairo government, the source said, after members of Congress were briefed by officials from the U.S. State Department about the administration's plans."

Part of a series about small businesses in America.

When it comes to job creation, politicians talk about small businesses as the engines of the U.S. economy. It's been a familiar refrain among politicians from both major parties for years.

'Not Just A Restaurant'

Economists say such job growth is all about new firms — startups — but not all of them. Most startups will actually fail. The second most likely outcome is that they'll start small and stay small. Just a tiny fraction start small and then grow fast, creating an outsized share of new jobs. One such company is Sweetgreen, which dishes out fast, fresh organic salads in compostable bowls at 20 locations on the East Coast.

Pedro Ceron manages the restaurant near Capitol Hill. He's worked for the company for a little more than a year and is one of about 570 people now employed by Sweetgreen. Six years ago, it was just a little shack of a shop in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, says co-founder Nicolas Jammet.

"It was 560 square feet and most people told us that you couldn't open a restaurant in that space or that size, but we were college seniors and we wanted to do it, so we did it," Jammet says.

“ [Government] loan programs, I would say, would be better targeted towards young businesses than small businesses per se.

Part of a series about small businesses in America.

When it comes to job creation, politicians talk about small businesses as the engines of the U.S. economy. It's been a familiar refrain among politicians from both major parties for years.

'Not Just A Restaurant'

Economists say such job growth is all about new firms — startups — but not all of them. Most startups will actually fail. The second most likely outcome is that they'll start small and stay small. Just a tiny fraction start small and then grow fast, creating an outsized share of new jobs. One such company is Sweetgreen, which dishes out fast, fresh organic salads in compostable bowls at 20 locations on the East Coast.

Pedro Ceron manages the restaurant near Capitol Hill. He's worked for the company for a little more than a year and is one of about 570 people now employed by Sweetgreen. Six years ago, it was just a little shack of a shop in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, says co-founder Nicolas Jammet.

"It was 560 square feet and most people told us that you couldn't open a restaurant in that space or that size, but we were college seniors and we wanted to do it, so we did it," Jammet says.

“ [Government] loan programs, I would say, would be better targeted towards young businesses than small businesses per se.

среда

Janet Yellen got the official nod from President Obama Wednesday afternoon for the Fed's top spot. If Yellen's nomination is confirmed by the Senate, she'll be the first woman to head the Federal Reserve System and the most powerful central banker in the world.

But since she would be the first woman to get the job, just what exactly would her title be? Chair? Chairman? Chairwoman?

Yellen would replace Ben Bernanke, whose official salutation is chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

She's currently second in command as the vice chair, a position she took back in 2010. Only one other woman has had that role, and that was Alice Rivlin, from 1996 to 1999.

Yellen's current position is traditionally referred to as vice chairman. But according to a Fed representative, that title was altered to just vice chair for both Rivlin and Yellen.

So, on this historic occasion, it seems fair to guess that the title for the most powerful banker in the world would change as well. Right?

It's not entirely clear.

The Senate Banking Committee will be the first to take up Yellen's nomination. The chairman of that committee, South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson, released a statement Wednesday in support of the expected nomination.

Here's how it reads: "I commend President Obama on his selection of Dr. Yellen to be the first woman to serve as Federal Reserve Chairman."

Now let's take a look at the White House email that started all the chatter about the pending nomination. The language in the email reads: "Later in the afternoon, the President will announce his intent to nominate Dr. Janet Yellen as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System."

Notice the difference?

Well, maybe we can offer some clarification: According to a Fed representative, Yellen's new title would be chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Not long ago, when I got a PlayStation 3, the recommendations started rolling in: play this, play that, play my favorite game.

But a bunch of people said, with a sort of excited urgency — particularly people who know me — "Play Journey."

Journey is a PS3 exclusive from a game company called, yes, Thatgamecompany. It's won a bunch of awards from a bunch of different places — its music was even nominated for a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, where it competed with the scores of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Adventures Of Tintin, The Artist, The Dark Knight Rises, and Hugo.

Here's how the company describes it: "Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person's life passage and their intersections with others." As beautiful as the game is, that is not a description that excels in the area of specificity.

The basics are these: You appear on the screen in the form of a hooded and caped figure (I'd be lying if I denied that there was something nice about appearing in the form of what looked to me like a woman), alone in the desert. There's a mountain in the distance. That's where you're going. If you follow your nose, you wind up with a scarf that flaps behind you that can be charged up to give you flight.

And you just start traveling. Those dunes, those dunes ... you can walk on the sand, but when you're going downhill, you slide like a skier, leaving a little trail, making a ffffffft noise with your feet, flapping your cape. You skim the ground, you float, you leap. You trudge up a dune and peek over, then push past and slide again, steering between rock formations, ffffffffft, ffffffft, for long stretches. It is as close to understanding what being physically graceful would feel like as a not-so-graceful person is likely to get. (I ... well, I hypothesize.)

You look tiny sometimes. You feel tiny.

Enlarge image i

Disclaimer: A couple of years ago, I made a bucket list. As I've had a pretty rollicking life, my bucket contained a single experience: Sell a novel to a major house.

And now, Saint Martin's Press is to bring out my novel, Small Blessings, in July of next year.

Until writing and other things intruded, I was a fairly regular freelancer for NPR, reporting mostly on books and publishing. It was a lovely gig and taught me a lot about how the publishing industry functions, but almost nothing about what it's like to sell a novel and move it through the pre-publication process.

That, too, is a lovely gig. A really lovely gig, although it often feels a bit swampy, as in ... could someone please tell me if I'm doing this right?

This is the first in a series of posts about what goes on between finishing a manuscript in the privacy of your own writing space and seeing your book out there in a bookstore. We'll focus on stories behind the publication of some splashy first novels suggested to me by Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, Co founder, Editor in Chief of Goodreads.com.

We begin with agents.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that all literary agents in possession of good reputations must be in want of manuscripts they can fall in love with.

Most book sales to major houses still are made through agents. So why, in this uncertain age dominated by the hunt for the next blockbuster, do agents even mess with first-time novelists?

Because they fall in love.

Sam Stoloff is with Frances Goldin Literary Agency, a Greenwich Village shop that still has – as he puts it – "strong roots in progressive politics and a focus on books that matter." Sam reads a lot of manuscripts. "Like most agents," he says, "I'm always looking for great writing. It's rare, and precious. We're all readers, after all, and we're doing this because we love books. There's no high like starting to read a manuscript and going, 'Wow, this is really good.' I finish almost no full manuscripts, and fall in love with fewer. I can count the true loves on my fingers."

One such love for Sam was Helene Weckers' fantastical first novel The Golem and the Jinni, a tale of friendship between two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in New York at the very end of the 19th century.

Stoloff met Wecker through the MFA program at Columbia. "Helene was a student there," he says, "and I was on an agent panel, convened to talk about the mysterious wilds of publishing. Afterwards, there was a 'mixer' where students pitched their work. Helene described The Golem and the Jinni, and I was immediately intrigued. The book was mostly an idea then, but she sent me some pages, and I was hooked."

The process didn't end there. He says it took Wecker "years to cultivate her seed of an idea." Over that time, she'd share drafts in progress, and eventually formalized the relationship they'd already created through this trading of work and feedback.

And once he was working as her agent, Stoloff did what authors hope their agents will do: he sold the book. "I submitted the book widely, and conducted an auction with six or seven bidders, and the book went to HarperCollins, the highest bidder. I expected a very good deal [i.e. substantial six figures], and got it."

Sometimes the sale takes some extra incentive, both for publishers and for readers. Robin Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, has a cover that glows in the dark. As Sloan told David Greene on Morning Edition, "When you're making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you, and on your publisher, to make something that's worth buying in its physical edition." Sloan's focus on how print should be done in the digital age isn't surprising; pre-novel, he spent time working in both worlds as a short-story writing employee of Twitter, he co-created and co-hosts a blog called Snarkmarket, and he describes himself as a "media inventor" as well as a writer.

Sloan's immersion in the digital world extends into his work. He describes novel thusly on his web site: "This is a novel about books and technology, cryptography and conspiracy, friendship and love. It begins in a mysterious San Francisco bookstore, but quickly reaches out into the wider world and the shadowed past."

He's represented by former editor Sarah Burnes, now an agent with The Gernert Company, which she describes as "a boutique literary agency representing a full range of writers, from John Grisham to Alice McDermott." She represents only about 10 percent of the authors who submit.

So how did she come to represent Robin Sloan? The story involves marriage, numismatics, and self-publishing, so let's let Burnes tell it:

Robin sent several stories to a colleague, Chris Parris-Lamb, who thought I would love them, which I did. Robin had published the original story on the Kindle publishing platform (this was at the very beginning of that kind of "self-publishing") and had done very well with it. But he wanted to see whether there were opportunities to experiment with traditional publishing as well.

I did not know Robin but, as it happened, he followed my husband, Sebastian Heath, who at the time was at The American Numismatic Society. Among other projects, he was digitizing coins and putting them up in a visually-oriented database. (I'm probably butchering that, too.) Robin thought what he was doing was very cool and when we first met, he brought the database up as an example of the kind of thing he was interested in. I said, Um, that's my husband, and you are one of seventeen people who understand what he is doing! But I got some street cred from that. (Thanks, honey.)

The question for Robin was, why would he need a traditional agent and a traditional publisher? I made the argument that the distribution channels available to publishers — specifically, the independent stores and Barnes and Noble — are difficult for a single author to access, unlike the Amazon self-publishing platforms. Beyond that, critics and other media people are more willing to listen to a publicist or editor from a publishing house than they are to a single author who has not been vetted by an intense winnowing process (getting an agent, getting a publisher, getting the house to then pay attention).

Sean McDonald at FSG [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], Robin's eventual editor, had been following Robin on Snarkmarket for awhile, and he was always the frontrunner, but we did submit widely and there was an auction that followed. There were a number of editors interested but there was an equal number who said that they "didn't know how to position" the book. FSG positioned it as itself and that worked beautifully.

It is good to be the king.

That old adage holds, even though nowadays we call our chief executive "Mr. President."

After another long day of showdown over the shutdown, President Obama was able to dominate the headlines, break the tension and change the atmosphere in Washington. He could demonstrate everything that is different about being in the White House – as opposed to that other House where Speaker John Boehner lives.

The President could do all this just by putting out the word that he was about to appoint the most powerful central banker in the world. Extra added kicker: the appointee would be the first woman in history to hold the job.

Nice way to flex 'em if you've got 'em.

The announcement that Janet Yellen would move up from vice chair to chairman of the Federal Reserve was long awaited and, in recent weeks, all but certain. Still Yellen's final ascent also symbolized several things about this point in the Obama presidency that are important for the current standoff with House Republicans and Boehner, their titular leader.

First, it reminded the world that someone is in charge of something in Washington and serving the continuity of the Federal Reserve and the American economy. This stands in contrast to the president's chief congressional antagonists, who are on TV saying it's not a problem if the United States runs out of borrowing authority and that default on U.S. debt is a scare tactic. (Boehner may not share either of those views, but given his situation he cannot denounce them, either.)

Second, the Yellen move demonstrated that Democrats are finally aware of the importance of unity and actually paying their dues to the club. Everyone knows Obama was intrigued with the idea of a different Fed nominee, his former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. But the brilliant and abrasive Summers had long since alienated much of Obama's power base in Congress and in the country. Democratic women in the Senate in particular were opposed. This time, the president got the message. And let's be frank, right now he needs a united Democratic Party more than ever before.

(For the moment, at least, that unity is holding. Even Democratic senators facing re-election in red states next year are sticking with Majority Leader Harry Reid on difficult votes. The contrast could not be more potent, as Hill Republicans in both chambers are as riven with dissent and disarray on strategy and tactics as at any time in modern memory.)

Third, the Yellen move showed that the president can still use his powers of office and matchless media access to change the game. In recent days, many Republicans have begun to convince themselves that the drubbing they took in the government shutdown war of 1995-1996 was strictly a matter of then-President Bill Clinton's charm and media savvy.

Without taking anything away from "Slick Willie," that outcome 18 years ago had at least as much to do with the inherent powers of the presidency and the tunnel vision of House Republicans.

The Yellen news came at the end of a day of sharp distinctions between the champions of the two parties. The president had staged the longest news conference of his five years in office, well over an hour, fielding questions from as far away as Australia. Not long after, Speaker Boehner came to a microphone in the Capitol looking and sounding tired. He read a statement imploring the president to negotiate, briefly responded to three questions and abruptly walked away.

Boehner has never been one for news conference jousting. He raises his voice in such settings as if addressing a crowd gathered at a picnic. And in the present moment he has less reason than ever to take questions.

Boehner after all does not want to repeat his claim that the House lacks the votes to pass a funding resolution, as he did over the weekend. That assertion brought howls of disbelief from all those willing to count votes in both parties. And when he says his Republican caucus is standing on principle, it's not clear whether that principle has to do with debts and deficits or last-ditch resistance to the Affordable Care Act.

Few would doubt that for Boehner himself the Big Deal is fiscal. But he cannot cut loose the GOP contingent that would shut down government functions – including the honoring of U.S. debt obligations – rather than be seen as accepting "Obamacare."

If he were to isolate that contingent, as many Republicans urge, Boehner would make himself vulnerable to their ire. It could happen in a closed-door GOP meeting or out on the House floor, where breakaway Republicans might join their votes with those of the Democrats in order to remove the Speaker in mid-session. That weapon hasn't been used in a century, but it's still there on the wall.

All this means that each day John Boehner wakes up as Speaker could be his last. And that too poses a stark contrast with the man in the White House.

The standoff is not going to end soon. But it will end. And certain facts remain. If you hold the high cards, the game eventually comes to you.

There's been a deadly fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh — the latest in a series of such tragedies and just six months after the worst disaster in the history of the global garment industry.

At least 10 people were killed at the Aswad garment factory outside the capital Dhaka early Wednesday. The immediate cause was not known. This factory, like others where tragedy has struck, produced clothes for a number of Western companies.

Here's more from The Wall Street Journal:

"Aswad Composite Mills has recently produced clothes for Western retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Loblaw Cos., the Canadian owner of the Joe Fresh label, and Hudson's Bay Co., according to several online shipping databases. Hudson's Bay said it last received a delivery from the factory in April and subsequently decided it would no longer place orders with the factory. A spokeswoman didn't elaborate on whether the decision was based on safety reasons. A spokeswoman for Loblaw said it was looking into the issue. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said it is 'working to understand the facts and will take appropriate action based on our findings.' She declined to elaborate."

Good morning, fellow political junkies. It's Day 9 of the partial federal government shutdown. Global financial markets at this point still appear to expect sanity to eventually prevail in the Washington fiscal standoff. We'll have to see if they're right.

The day's big news is expected to be President Obama's choice to head the Federal Reserve of the candidate thought to be his second choice since his first proved politically problematic.

Here are some of the more interesting politically related items that caught my eye this morning.

Economist Janet Yellen is President Obama's choice to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath and Peter Nicholas report. If confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to be the world's most powerful central banker. The bad news is she could also be the first U.S. Fed chief to have to pick up the pieces after a federal-government default on its obligations. Lawrence Summers, who was thought to be Obama's preferred candidate, won't have such worries, at least.

Some Senate Democrats are warning that the chamber's majority might be forced to change the rules to make it easier for the majority to advance a debt-ceiling raising bill to a floor vote if Republicans decide to filibuster it., Politico's Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report. That move would make the Senate's atmosphere even more toxic.

The vast majority of the federal government would remain closed if President Obama and Senate Democrats accepted the House Republicans' approach of reopening government in a piecemeal way, Derek Thompson vividly explains at The Atlantic.

Remember the immigration issue? It's kind of gotten lost amid the current fiscal fight. Supporters of an immigration overhaul want to make sure it's not forgotten, however. Hundreds demonstrated at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday with some being arrested, including several congressmen, reports NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.

It's easy to lose track of how many times, David Frum has stood athwart history to yell "stop" at his own Republican Party. His latest piece in The Daily Beast is a particularly good example of it.

Recruiting Democratic candidates to run for House seats in Republican districts has become relatively easier because of the government shutdown for which the GOP gets the greater share of the blame, Greg Sargent writes in the Washington Post's Plum Line.

Obama has a Kansas cousin with Tea Party leanings who plans to primary Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) reports Katrina Trinko in the The Corner blog at the National Review Online.

House members who workout in the private gym in the Capitol are being forced to reuse their towels because linen service is a casualty of the government shutdown, reports The Hill.

The latest House GOP gambit in the fiscal fight is ... wait for it ... a supercommittee.

But Republicans aren't calling it a supercommittee since that's the term for the failed panel that brought us the the sequester.

Instead, it's called the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. The special panel would have 20 members, evenly divided between the House and Senate, who would recommend a budget for fiscal 2014 (which began Oct. 1), and craft details of a new debt ceiling and spending cuts.

One problem with the idea: The proposal has practically no chance of passing in a Senate led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

President Obama was also dismissive in his Tuesday press conference.

"Now, there is already a process in place called the budget committees that could come together right now — Democrats have been asking for 19 months to bring them together — make a determination how much should the government be spending next year," he said. "And that's a process that's worked reasonably well for the last 50 years. I don't know that we need to set up a new committee for a process like that to move forward."

The legislation is the House Republicans' attempt to codify as much as possible their request for negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

And when Senate Democrats consign it to the ever-growing pile of House GOP bills they've killed, Republicans can point to that as yet another example of Democratic intransigence.

"A president of the U.S. should provide leadership and that includes negotiating with people, even someone you disagree with. And that is the mark of a leader, and that is why we're here today," Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the House Rules Committee chairman, said at a hearing considering the legislation.

What was odd about that was that nothing in the legislation even mentions the president, which Democrats at the hearing noted.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the committee's top Democrat, captured her colleagues' disdain for the idea.

"I expected better," she said. "Another supercommittee? For crying out loud. Look what happened to the last one. The last one just threw up its hands and said, 'We can't do another thing.' This is leadership?"

Well, yes, as the 14-term congresswoman knows better than most, in Washington, proposing a committee to solve tough problems does often pass for leadership.

Imagine a poker table.

At one seat, China's President Xi Jinping studies his cards. At another, Russian President Vladimir Putin is stroking his chin. Asian leaders fill the other seats, each trying to win the pot, which is filled — not with poker chips — but with jobs.

That's the kind of high-stakes game that played out this week in Indonesia, where global leaders got together to discuss trade relations. Their gathering ended Tuesday, and exactly who won what is not yet clear.

But this much is known: President Obama was not at the table.

And his absence, due to budget and debt tensions in Washington, was not good for American workers. Or at least that's the assessment of the president himself, as well as many economists.

'Important To Show Up'

Economists say the president needs to be in the game, but he missed his chances at the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"It's always important to show up" whenever global leaders are talking trade, said Bill Adams, senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

"Sweeping trade agreements are never settled at one meeting, but they are large and complex, so you need to keep working on them," he said. "You need face time with other leaders."

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Obama concurred.

"I should have been there," Obama said. "It's like me not showing up at my own party."

Many Asian leaders had hoped to end the APEC meeting with an announcement about advances in trade deals, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States. But those hopes fizzled, with some Asian officials saying they fear the TPP lost momentum because Obama was not there to push it.

Obama agreed, telling reporters, "I would characterize it as missed opportunities."

Advancing a megatrade deal is particularly important at this stage of the slow U.S. economic recovery, most economists contend. That's because growth spurts typically come from:

1.) fiscal stimulus (Congress spending money for new roads and bridges)

2.) monetary stimulus (the Federal Reserve making it easy and cheap to borrow) or

3.) favorable trade deals (U.S. companies getting access to new markets).

A Key Economic Ingredient

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Nabisco has released a special edition of its classic sandwich cookie, just in time for Halloween: Oreos with candy corn filling. This beats the July 4 special, the Oreo filled with a live M-80.

Eva: I didn't even know candy corn and Oreos were dating ... now they have a kid?!

Robert: When I eat regular Oreos, I want a glass of milk. When I eat these, I want a glass of poison.

Enlarge image i

With J.D. Salinger in the news three years after his death (and the new documentary and biography must have that obsessively private author spinning in his grave), I'm reminded of my conversations in the 1970s about Salinger with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn.

For a few years, as host of All Things Considered, I'd phone Mr. Shawn with one question or another, on background (like Salinger, he never spoke to the press). I have no idea why Mr. Shawn took my calls. ATC, then, was heard in maybe three apartment buildings in Manhattan, so I doubt he was a listener (although the magazine did run a cartoon about me in 1978). It was probably just his natural good manners, even though he, too, was a very private, reclusive man.

In 1977, Esquire magazine published, for the first time in its history, an anonymous short story. In an editor's note, Esquire said the story was being run without signature neither because the magazine knew the identity of the author and did not want to reveal it, nor because the author wanted to remain anonymous. Rather, they were not sure who the writer was, but felt the story had such merit they wanted to publish it.

The piece, "For Rupert – With no Promises" smacked of Salinger, who hadn't published since the 1960s. It was full of references to Salinger characters, there was mysticism, Viennese logic – all Salinger absorptions.

I phoned Mr. Shawn to see if he thought Esquire had just published Salinger. When I said, "the only way I think this could be Salinger is if he'd had a hideous breakdown and hasn't written for years," Mr. Shawn laughed and assured me it was not a Salinger story, and that Salinger had indeed been writing (although not publishing) for decades.

It turned out that the Esquire Fiction Editor, Gordon Lish, had written "Rupert." Lish told me on the air that he thought the world needed to be reading Salinger, and if Salinger himself wasn't publishing, why not borrow his voice, and soothe his fans?

A questionable defense, to say the least.

But these days, with much excitement and anticipation of some new Salinger stories to be rolled out in the future, I realize I'd been told decades ago, by the most reliable source, that he was still writing. It's taken 36 years, but we'll soon be able to read some of what he was creating.

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The latest House GOP gambit in the fiscal fight is, wait for it...a supercommittee.

But Republicans aren't calling it a supercommittee since that's the term for the failed panel that brought us the the sequester.

Instead, it's called the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. The special panel would have 20 members, evenly divided between the House and Senate, who would recommend a budget for fiscal 2014 (which began Oct 1), and craft details of a new debt-ceiling and spending cuts.

One problem with the idea: The proposal has practically no chance of passing in a Senate led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

President Obama was also dismissive in his Tuesday press conference.

"Now, there is already a process in place called the budget committees that could come together right now — Democrats have been asking for 19 months to bring them together — make a determination how much should the government be spending next year," he said. "And that's a process that's worked reasonably well for the last 50 years. I don't know that we need to set up a new committee for a process like that to move forward."

The legislation is the House Republicans' attempt to codify as much as possible their request for negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

And when Senate Democrats consign it to the ever-growing pile of House GOP bills they've killed, Republicans can point to that as yet another example of Democratic intransigence.

"A president of the U.S. should provide leadership and that includes negotiating with people, even someone you disagree with. And that is the mark of a leader, And THAT is why we're here today," Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the House Rules Committee chairman, said at a hearing considering the legislation.

What was odd about that was nothing in the legislation even mentions the president, which Democrats at the hearing noted.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the committee's top Democrat, captured her colleagues' disdain for the idea.

"I expected better," she said. "Another supercommittee? For crying out loud. Look what happened to the last one. The last one just threw up its hands and said, 'We can't do another thing.' This is leadership?"

Well, yes, as the 14-term congresswoman knows better than most, in Washington, proposing a committee to solve tough problems does often pass for leadership.

The government is just 10 days away from defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that by Oct. 17, the department will likely have less money on hand than it needs to pay all its bills.

"The reality is that if we run out of cash to pay our bills, there is no option that permits us to pay all of our bills on time, which means that a failure of Congress to act would for the first time put us in a place where we're defaulting on our obligations as a government," Lew said on NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday.

House Republicans say there's a way to minimize the negative effects of a default. In May, the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have prioritized some of the payments the Treasury makes so the most important bills could get paid first.

The bill directed the U.S. Treasury to pay bondholders first if there wasn't enough money available to pay all the nation's debts. It didn't become law because it wasn't passed by the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner defended the idea on Bloomberg TV. "I think doing a debt-prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we're going to meet our obligations," he said.

When asked if that means paying China before U.S. troops, Boehner said it's no different than "in any other court proceeding."

"The bondholders usually get paid first," he said. "Same thing here."

But Mark Patterson, the chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury from 2009 to last May, dismisses the idea.

"I think if you ask anybody who has been secretary of the Treasury of either party going back many years, they would tell you that is a god-awful idea," Patterson says.

Ultimately, says Patterson, making payments to bondholders but delaying checks for seniors on Social Security, for instance, still undermines confidence in the commitment by the United States to meet its obligations.

"If we go into an internal debt crisis, if you will, where we're not paying Social Security beneficiaries who've paid into the system over the years, many of whom live check to check, then we are going to appear as a country that is in a whole lot of trouble and the world is going to view us that way," Patterson says.

He says that Treasury departments in both Democratic and Republican administrations have concluded that paying all of the nation's bills "on time, in full" is what makes investors, whether they're individuals or other countries, willing to lend money to the U.S.

The Two-Way

No End In Sight: Shutdown Showdown Enters Week 2

Imagine a poker table.

At one seat, China's President Xi Jinping studies his cards. At another, Russian president Vladimir Putin is stroking his chin. Asian leaders fill the other seats, each trying to win the pot, which is filled — not with poker chips — but with jobs.

That's the kind of high-stakes game that played out this week in Indonesia, where global leaders got together to discuss trade relations. Their gathering ended Tuesday, and exactly who won what is not yet clear.

But this much is known: President Obama was not at the table.

And his absence, due to budget and debt tensions in Washington, was not good for American workers. Or at least that's the assessment of many economists.

'Important To Show Up'

They say the president needs to be in the game, but he missed his chances at the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"It's always important to show up" whenever global leaders are talking trade, said Bill Adams, senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

"Sweeping trade agreements are never settled at one meeting, but they are large and complex, so you need to keep working on them," he said. "You need face time with other leaders."

Many Asian leaders had hoped to end the APEC meeting with an announcement about advances in trade deals, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States. But those hopes fizzled, with some Asian officials saying they fear the TPP lost momentum because Obama was not there to push it.

Advancing a mega-trade deal is particularly important at this stage of the slow U.S. economic recovery, most economists contend. That's because growth spurts typically come from:

1) fiscal stimulus (Congress spending money for new roads and bridges)

2) monetary stimulus (the Federal Reserve making it easy and cheap to borrow) or

3) favorable trade deals (U.S. companies getting access to new markets).

A Key Economic Ingredient

Options No. 1 and 2 are off the table, given that Congress is in no mood to spend more money, and the Fed already has pushed interest rates to historic lows. So the only booster shot would have to come from U.S. exports.

That's why the Obama administration is trying to pull together the TPP. The president's primary goal is to get 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region to make it much easier for U.S. companies to sell services in Asia without having to set up a physical presence there.

So companies engaged in, say, digital media, online retailing and health sciences, are excited about getting a better shot at Asian customers without having to open expensive foreign offices. The White House first announced outlines of the agreement back in 2011 when the APEC summit was held in Obama's old hometown, Honolulu.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Senate Democrats might introduce a measure to raise the debt ceiling, even as the debate over a a spending bill to re-start the federal government drags on.

The Associated Press reports:

"A spokesman said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could unveil the measure as early as Tuesday, setting the table for a test vote later in the week. The measure is expected to provide enough borrowing room to last beyond next year's election, which means it likely will permit $1 trillion or more in new borrowing above the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling that the administration says will be hit on Oct. 17."

The government is just 10 days away from defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that by Oct. 17, the department will likely have less money on hand than it needs to pay all its bills.

"The reality is that if we run out of cash to pay our bills, there is no option that permits us to pay all of our bills on time, which means that a failure of Congress to act would for the first time put us in a place where we're defaulting on our obligations as a government," Lew said on NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday.

House Republicans say there's a way to minimize the negative effects of a default. In May, the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have prioritized some of the payments the Treasury makes so the most important bills could get paid first.

The bill directed the U.S. Treasury to pay bondholders first if there wasn't enough money available to pay all the nation's debts. It didn't become law because it wasn't passed by the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner defended the idea on Bloomberg TV. "I think doing a debt-prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we're going to meet our obligations," he said.

When asked if that means paying China before U.S. troops, Boehner said it's no different than "in any other court proceeding."

"The bondholders usually get paid first," he said. "Same thing here."

But Mark Patterson, the chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury from 2009 to last May, dismisses the idea.

"I think if you ask anybody who has been secretary of the Treasury of either party going back many years, they would tell you that is a god-awful idea," Patterson says.

Ultimately, says Patterson, making payments to bondholders but delaying checks for seniors on Social Security, for instance, still undermines confidence in the commitment by the United States to meet its obligations.

"If we go into an internal debt crisis, if you will, where we're not paying Social Security beneficiaries who've paid into the system over the years, many of whom live check to check, then we are going to appear as a country that is in a whole lot of trouble and the world is going to view us that way," Patterson says.

He says that Treasury departments in both Democratic and Republican administrations have concluded that paying all of the nation's bills "on time, in full" is what makes investors, whether they're individuals or other countries, willing to lend money to the U.S.

The Two-Way

No End In Sight: Shutdown Showdown Enters Week 2

The U.S. Supreme Court returns to the campaign finance fray on Tuesday, hearing arguments in a case that could undercut most of the remaining rules that limit big money in politics.

It's been three years since the court's landmark Citizens United ruling, which let loose a new flood of campaign cash into the political process. In that 2010 case, a narrow conservative court majority upset a century-long legal understanding and declared for the first time that corporations are people entitled to spend unlimited amounts on candidate elections. Those independent expenditure limitations were one pillar of the campaign finance law.

On Tuesday, the second pillar — contributions to candidates — is before the court. The justices will hear arguments on one aspect of contributions: the aggregate limits on contributions to candidates and political parties.

Campaign Contribution Limits

The case was brought by Shaun McCutcheon, a successful Alabama businessman whose real love is conservative politics. In the 2012 election season, McCutcheon gave roughly $33,000 to 16 Republican congressional candidates and a similar amount to Republican Party committees. He wanted to give more, but a federal law caps the aggregate amounts that individuals can give to candidates and political parties. In 2012, those caps were roughly $46,000 for candidates and $70,000 for party committees.

Of course, McCutcheon could spend any amount he wants to by giving to independent groups that have proliferated since Citizens United. These groups raise millions of dollars to spend on candidate elections, but they do so independently and are not supposed to coordinate with the candidate campaigns. McCutcheon, however, doesn't want to give to independent groups; he wants to give directly to candidates and the Republican Party.

As he said in an interview with NPR, "It's just that sometimes it's more advantageous for the donor to donate directly to the campaign."

Just What Do The Limits Prevent?

That advantage is at the heart of the issue before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted the laws that still form the basic structure for campaign finance regulations. Part of that structure is the aggregate cap, which is intended to prevent circumventing limits on the amount that single donors can pour into campaigns.

The Supreme Court upheld an earlier version of the caps in 1976, and since then it has drawn a consistent line between expenditure limits on the one hand and contribution limits on the other. The distinction is based on the notion that large contributions to candidates pose the threat of "the actuality" and the "appearance" of corruption.

Law

Despite Shutdown, Supreme Court Opens Its Doors For New Term

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Thanks to the federal government's partial shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics skipped its monthly Big Reveal at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

There was no September employment report.

Without access to the BLS numbers, data junkies were left to scrounge around for lesser reports. Maybe if they could suck in enough small hits of other statistics, they could feel that old familiar rush?

Nope. Nothing can replace that BLS high.

"You do miss it," said Harry Holzer, Georgetown professor and former chief economist for the Labor Department. "I watch it closely. It's the single best number to explain what's going on" in the U.S. labor market, he said.

The BLS report surveys both employers and households. Also, it comes out monthly, rather than quarterly. Holzer said that frequency provides enough snapshots of wages and hours to create a kind of flowing documentary about jobs.

So here we are — with no new picture to advance the story.

But instead of dwelling on what we don't have, let's think of this as "Faux Friday" — a day offering plenty of data, just not from the BLS. Simply lower your standards, pop open a near-beer and let's go over the almost-important data that we did get this week:

— ADP's payroll report showed a gain of 166,000 private sector jobs for September — in line with what employers had been adding all summer.

— Initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 last week. That number, based on state data, was somewhat better than the expected 314,000 new claims.

— PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s Autumn Outlook survey of small and medium-size businesses showed 16 percent intend to add full-time employees during the next six months, while 8 percent plan to cut workers.

— The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said companies announced plans for 40,289 layoffs in September, down 20 percent from August.

— Glassdoor, an online site for jobs, released its quarterly Employment Confidence Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive. That showed only 15 percent of employees are afraid of being laid off, the lowest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Iran has arrested four people who it says were intent on sabotaging facilities in its nuclear program. The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran says the four are now being questioned.

"Some time ago, a number of people were arrested in one of the (nuclear) facilities when they were involved in planning activities," Ali Akbar Salehi said Sunday, according to Iran's state-run Tasnim News Agency.

Before their arrest, the suspects' activities had been monitored, Salehi said. He added that their interrogation is now under way.

"We let them do their activity to some extent, so that they would be arrested at the right time," he said, according to Tasnim.

He added that Iranian authorities had also identified "a number of other sabotage plots."

As for who Iran might hold responsible for the alleged plot, the AP reports that Salehi told the semi-official Fars news agency, "Hostile countries are not interested in finding [a] way out of [the] current situation and they are trying to block agreement on the nuclear case though acts of sabotage."

Decoding the possible meaning of that statement, the AP says, "In Iranian official terminology, hostile countries are usually a reference to Israel and the United States. But the attempts at historic diplomacy ... with Washington suggested the term was aimed at Israel."

Salehi also said that Iran has taken steps to protect itself from cyber attacks such as the Stuxnet virus, which struck the country's uranium enrichment facilities in 2010.

"We have carried out the necessary measures in this field, and since the outbreak of the Stuxnet virus, the Atomic Energy Organization has embarked on countering such malwares," he said, according to Tasnim. "To this end computer protection systems were upgraded, and we also separated the systems that were connected to the Internet."

The U.K.'s Oxford Internet Institute has put together an interesting illustration of the most popular websites around the world. Not surprising, Google and Facebook dominate the globe.

We're not quite sure what the data mean, if anything, but you can be the judge.

The institute, using data from the Web analytics site Alexa, crunched the numbers and came up with this: In North America and Europe, parts of South America, South Asia and Southeast Asia, Google is tops. But Facebook predominates in much of Latin America. North Africa is Facebook territory, but Internet users in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa are first and foremost Googling. Search engines in China (Baidu) and Russia (Yandex) predominate in those countries. Japan is another outlier with Yahoo! Japan.

Even so, as the Oxford Internet Institute notes:

"The power of Google on the Internet becomes starkly evident if we also look at the second most visited website in every country. Among the 50 countries that have Facebook listed as the most visited website, 36 of them have Google as the second most visited, and the remaining 14 countries list YouTube (currently owned by Google)."

In Syria, a team of international weapons experts has begun the process of destroying the country's chemical weapons arsenal.

"The inspectors used sledgehammers and explosives to begin the work," NPR's Deborah Amos reports for our Newscast unit. "They are on a tight deadline to destroy more than 1,000 tons of nerve gas and banned weapons within a year."

Personnel from the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons make up the team. On Friday, a U.N. spokesperson said the team hoped to begin onsite inspections and destruction of production facilities in the coming week.

The inspectors' progress comes as Syrian President Bashar Assad maintains his government did not use chemical weapons on its citizens. In recent weeks, a U.N. report found that the poison gas sarin was used in an attack that killed hundreds of civilians — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the incident a "war crime."

In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Assad admitted that he has made mistakes. And he said he would like for Germany to help mediate an end to Syria's civil war, which has lingered for more than two years. Amos reports:

"Stepping up interviews to Western news outlets, Assad told Der Spiegel magazine he wants negotiations, but [he] limited the partners. Not with rebels unless they put down their weapons, he said. Assad again denied his military had used chemical weapons, despite his pledge to allow a U.N. team to dismantle his arsenal."

Stock investors and business journalists unite each month for one shared, suspenseful moment — the 8:30 a.m. release of the Labor Department's employment report.

The unveiling of the report — so rich with data on job creation, unemployment, wages and hours — can be counted upon to set off a tsunami of tweets. Economists jump in with instant analysis and politicians fire off press releases with reactions.

That market-moving report was due this Friday.

But it won't come out — leaving Federal Reserve policymakers, investors and job seekers scratching their heads about labor-market conditions.

Because of the federal government's partial shutdown, the Labor Department is not releasing its most closely watched report. "An alternative release date has not been scheduled," the Labor Department said Thursday.

Economists will have to try reading tea leaves — or at least examining less-reliable private reports — to get a sense of what the job market did in September.

"You hate to have data delayed because that creates uncertainty," said John Canally, an economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm. Not getting that jobs report "deprives the markets of important information," he said.

Among economists, the monthly jobs report, compiled by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, is considered a "gold standard" report. It has a long history and a broad reach, including information from both employers and members of households.

On Thursday, economists did get one government-generated report with the release of data on initial claims for unemployment compensation. The first-time claims increased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 last week. Economists had forecast 314,000 new claims would be filed, so the report suggests the job market was a bit stronger than most people had thought.

The Two-Way

Treasury: New Debt-Ceiling Fight Could Derail Economy

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