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We're seeing multiple reports that:

— "J.P. Morgan has reached a $13 billion tentative settlement with the Justice Department." (The Wall Street Journal)

— "JPMorgan Chase has reached a $13 billion tentative deal with the Justice Department, said a person familiar with the negotiations." (CNBC)

— "JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reached a tentative resolution of all civil mortgage-related matters with the U.S. Department of Justice, a person familiar with settlement negotiations said." (Bloomberg News)

— "JPMorgan Chase & Co has reached a tentative $13 billion deal with the U.S. Justice Department to settle a range of mortgage issues, a source close to the talks said on Saturday. The settlement does not include any release from criminal liability for the bank, the source said." (Reuters)

NPR's Business Desk is working the story. We'll update as things develop.

At $13 billion, the settlement would be about $2 billion more than recent reports had predicted. As The Associated Press has written, JPMorgan had been:

"Said to be discussing an $11 billion national settlement with the Department of Justice over mortgage-backed securities. The securities lost value after a bubble in the housing market burst, helping to bring on the financial crisis."

On moving the action to Las Vegas

That was a marvelous accident, because initially, in the first two or three years of writing the book, it took place completely between New York and Amsterdam, and something was missing. And then, just absolutely by chance I happened to visit Las Vegas. And while I was there, I was in one of the casinos, I think it was the Bellagio, and there was an exhibition of French impressionists ... and when I saw that, bing bing bing bing bing bing bing, all sorts of things started to fire in my head. I began to think about money, about the movement of money, about how art is really very often connected with dirty money — it always has been — and about luck, and chance, and fate.

On the idea of "priceless" art

The word priceless is only really ever used in connection with two things, with art and with human life. No one ever speaks of a building as being priceless, or a car as being priceless. But human life is priceless, and paintings, they're the most valuable things we have, we lock them up in fortresses. They're under armed guard. And you know, there's a reason for that. When I was in Amsterdam, and was lucky enough to have a tour of the Rijksmuseum after hours, it was very eerie, because at one point the lights blinked out ... and the most extraordinary thing, I was standing in front of the wall of Vermeers, and it was as if they all were lit with a different kind of light from within ... you realized that these paintings were meant to be seen in candlelight, and that they gave off a light of their own. And you realize why these things have no price.

Days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell helped negotiate a deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, a prominent conservative group endorsed his primary challenger.

The Senate Conservatives Fund officially backed Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin Friday in Kentucky's 2014 Senate race, arguing he is "a full-spectrum conservative with the courage to stand up to the Washington establishment" while McConnell "has a liberal record and refuses to fight for conservative principles."

SCF has had McConnell in its cross hairs for months. In mid-September, the group launched a television advertising campaign attacking McConnell for not doing enough to defund the Affordable Care Act. It also ran radio ads in August calling on McConnell to oppose funding for Obamacare.

Bevin could use the financial support from SCF, which raised more than $16 million during the 2012 elections, if he hopes to pull off the upset. He brought in just $220,000 from July to September, while contributing $600,000 of his own money to the campaign. McConnell raised nearly $2.3 million during the same period and has more than $10 million on hand.

SCF, which has ties to former South Carolina senator and current Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, has made a name for itself supporting Tea Party challengers over Republican incumbents and establishment-backed candidates in Senate primary races.

The group appears to be revving up for the 2014 cycle with the shutdown now in the rearview mirror. On Thursday, the group backed Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel over six-term GOP incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran.

One of SCF's endorsements in 2012 went to Ted Cruz, who has become the leader of the fight to defund Obamacare in Washington, in his primary campaign against Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

As it dragged on in recent weeks, the debate about the budget, the debt ceiling and Obamacare felt like an epic battle.

But now that it's over, there's reason to think it was actually only another skirmish during the long period of partisan warfare Americans have become accustomed to.

The polls, the pundits and certainly Democrats all suggest that the GOP's Tea Party wing got its clock cleaned. After shutting down parts of the government for more than two weeks, Congress on Wednesday approved a spending bill that included essentially nothing from the Tea Party's wish list.

But conservatives sounded anything but resigned in defeat.

"While the political debate has ended for the moment, like any prizefight there are many rounds," Republican Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana wrote in USA Today. "We must continue to fight on."

Congress has set itself new deadlines for dealing with both the budget and the debt ceiling early in the coming year. And the new law calls for high-level budget negotiations to take place between the House and Senate in the coming weeks. But no one seems terribly optimistic that they'll come up with a package that will please all sides.

"I view this as another skirmish, and there will probably continue to be more," says Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a news and opinion site. "What it shows, especially [at the moment], is there's a wide split among the Republican Party."

A Fractured Party

One reason to think there willl be more rancor ahead: festering Republican divisions. Conservatives who wanted more out of the budget deal did nothing to conceal their unhappiness. A clear majority of the House GOP conference — 144, to be exact — voted Wednesday night against legislation that reopened the government and averted a debt default.

Many continued to sound warnings about the dangers of a national debt that will soon exceed $17 trillion, while putting the blame on President Obama for being intransigent.

"With this ... deal, Washington Establishment wins, rest of America loses," tweeted GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

Republicans have also turned their fire on one another, using terms such as "lunacy" and "no intelligence" in describing their colleagues.

Those were comments from California Rep. Devin Nunes of California and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, respectively, who were critical of their own party's confrontational strategy. Republicans who favored taking a harder line have loudly complained that they were undermined by such commentary coming from their own ranks.

"It'd be a good idea if they stopped referring to other Republicans as Hitler appeasers because they opposed the strategy they put forward, which failed," Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a longtime GOP activist, told National Review.

How To Reach Agreement

In theory, Republicans should be able to put this ill will behind them. Debate will turn from the shutdown strategy to questions of tax and spending levels — ground on which nearly all Republicans will be able to find agreement.

But the GOP argument has never been about numbers so much as about tactics. Republicans agree that the Affordable Care Act is a bad law and that the federal government should spend less money.

The question has been how far to push those beliefs when faced with a Democratic Senate and president. "Compromise is not treason," GOP Rep. Richard Hanna of New York, who supported the latest budget deal, said in a statement.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is already saying that another government shutdown is off the table. Meanwhile, more pragmatic Republicans still want their Tea Party colleagues to wake up and count the votes and realize they picked a battle they couldn't win.

As yet there's no sign, despite the plunge the party has taken in the polls, that harder-line conservatives are feeling very much tempered.

"Their emotional and electoral sustenance is coming from people who agree with them," says Andrew Rudalevige, a government professor at Bowdoin College in Maine.

"They can read the [national] polls, sure, but those are not their people," he says, referring to their generally conservative districts. "I don't think there's any reason to think the Tea Party folks are ever going to change."

Calling And Climbing Bluffs

Even assuming Boehner wants to take his party in some different direction, he has less leverage than leaders of the past. He doesn't have as many earmarks to give, and the threat of booting recalcitrant members off committees only seems to rile up their like-minded peers.

"The question is, can you have any negotiation here if you have, even on the debt thing, 144 members voting no, a clear majority of your caucus?" says Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas.

For their part, Democrats appear emboldened by having taken a "no ransom" line against the GOP and its demands. President Obama has said repeatedly he's "happy" to negotiate anything with Republicans, but it's not at all clear that Democrats will want to give Republicans much more of what they want.

"Every time we contrast our priorities with Republican priorities, voters side with our priorities," Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told NPR's Renee Montagne Thursday.

Democrats will be further emboldened by the fact that they were ultimately able to block the GOP, says Lewis Gould, author of Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans.

The Tea Party Republicans may have an even greater desire to come away with something to show from the next confrontation, he says, but they've already overplayed their hand.

"They've sort of had their bluffs called," he says. "The next time would have to be, 'We are going over the edge no matter what — no business community and nothing else is going to stop us from going over.' "

Former House Speaker Tom Foley, who led the chamber from 1989 to 1995, has died, according to his family. He was 84.

The Associated Press says Foley's wife, Heather, confirmed that the Washington state Democrat died at his Washington, D.C., home.

He had reportedly been in ill health in recent months.

The AP says:

"Foley became the first speaker since the Civil War to fail to win re-election in his home district.

"The courtly politician lost his seat in the 'Republican Revolution' of 1994. The Democrat had never served a single day in the minority. He was defeated by Republican Spokane lawyer George Nethercutt.

"Foley served as U.S. ambassador to Japan for four years during the Clinton administration. But he spent the most time in the House, serving 30 years including more than five as speaker."

As it dragged on in recent weeks, the debate about the budget, the debt ceiling and Obamacare felt like an epic battle.

But now that it's over, there's reason to think it was actually only another skirmish during the long period of partisan warfare Americans have become accustomed to.

The polls, the pundits and certainly Democrats all suggest that the GOP's Tea Party wing got its clock cleaned. After shutting down parts of the government for more than two weeks, Congress on Wednesday approved a spending bill that included essentially nothing from their wish list.

But conservatives sounded anything but resigned in defeat.

"While the political debate has ended for the moment, like any prizefight there are many rounds," Republican Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana wrote in USA Today. "We must continue to fight on."

Congress has set itself new deadlines for dealing with both the budget and the debt ceiling early in the coming year. And the new law calls for high-level budget negotiations to take place between the House and Senate in the coming weeks. But no one seems terribly optimistic that they'll come up with a package that will please all sides.

"I view this as another skirmish, and there will probably continue to be more," says Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a news and opinion site. "What it shows, especially [at the moment], is there's a wide split among the Republican Party."

A Fractured Party

One reason to think there'll be more rancor ahead: festering Republican divisions. Conservatives who wanted more out of the budget deal did nothing to conceal their unhappiness. A clear majority of the House GOP conference — 144, to be exact — voted Wednesday night against legislation that reopened the government and averted a debt default.

Many continued to sound warnings about the dangers of a national debt that will soon exceed $17 trillion, while putting the blame on President Obama for being intransigent.

"With this ... deal, Washington Establishment wins, rest of America loses," tweeted GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

Republicans have also turned their fire on one another, using terms such as "lunacy" and "no intelligence" in describing their colleagues.

Those were comments from California Rep. Devin Nunes of California and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, respectively, who were critical of their own party's confrontational strategy. Republicans who favored taking a harder line have loudly complained that they were undermined by such commentary coming from their own ranks.

"It'd be a good idea if they stopped referring to other Republicans as Hitler appeasers because they opposed the strategy they put forward, which failed," Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a longtime GOP activist, told National Review.

How To Reach Agreement

In theory, Republicans should be able to put this ill will behind them. Debate will turn from the shutdown strategy to questions of tax and spending levels — ground on which nearly all Republicans will be able to find agreement.

But the GOP argument has never been about numbers, so much as about tactics. Republicans agree that the Affordable Care Act is a bad law and that the federal government should spend less money.

The question has been how far to push those beliefs when faced with a Democratic Senate and president. "Compromise is not treason," GOP Rep. Richard Hanna of New York, who supported the latest budget deal, said in a statement.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is already saying that another government shutdown is off the table. Meanwhile, more pragmatic Republicans still want their Tea Party colleagues to wake up and count the votes and realize they picked a battle they couldn't win.

As yet there's no sign, despite the plunge the party has taken in the polls, that harder-line conservatives are feeling very much tempered.

"Their emotional and electoral sustenance is coming from people who agree with them," says Andrew Rudalevige, a government professor at Bowdoin College in Maine.

"They can read the [national] polls, sure, but those are not their people," he says, referring to their generally conservative districts. "I don't think there's any reason to think the Tea Party folks are ever going to change."

Calling And Climbing Bluffs

Even assuming Boehner wants to take his party in some different direction, he has less leverage than leaders of the past. He doesn't have as many earmarks to give and the threat of booting recalcitrant members off committees only seems to rile up their like-minded peers.

"The question is, can you have any negotiation here if you have, even on the debt thing, 144 members voting no, a clear majority of your caucus?" says Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas.

For their part, Democrats appear emboldened by having taken a "no ransom" line against the GOP and its demands. President Obama has said repeatedly he's "happy" to negotiate anything with Republicans, but it's not at all clear that Democrats will want to give Republicans much more of what they want.

"Every time we contrast our priorities with Republican priorities, voters side with our priorities," Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told NPR's Renee Montagne Thursday.

Democrats will be further emboldened by the fact that they were ultimately able to block the GOP, says Lewis Gould, author of Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans.

The Tea Party Republicans may have an even greater desire to come away with something to show from the next confrontation, he says, but they've already overplayed their hand.

"They've sort of had their bluffs called," he says. "The next time would have to be, 'We are going over the edge no matter what — no business community and nothing else is going to stop us from going over.'"

A 15-year-old schoolgirl is at the center of an emotional debate in France over the country's immigration policies.

Leonarda Dibrani was taken away by police during a field trip with her school class last week and deported along with her parents and five siblings to Kosovo. Many French are outraged at the way she was seized. And whether the deportation was legal or not, many say the action runs contrary to French human rights values.

Thousands of high school students took to the streets of Paris and other French cities for a second day Friday to demand that Leonarda be allowed to return to France.

"We claim to be a country of human rights and asylum, yet we send a young girl back to a country she doesn't even know and where she has no future," says Yusef Bonmain, an 11th grader who was taking part in the protests.

The case has echoes of the debate in the U.S. over immigration and the status of those who came to the country illegally as children and have little or no connection to the land of their birth.

French media are reporting that the Dibrani family came illegally to France from Kosovo about five years ago because they are Roma, sometimes referred to as Gypsies, and faced discrimination and few opportunities there.

This week, French television networks caught up with Leonarda back in Kosovo and have been broadcasting interviews with her.

"I was so ashamed," she says of being taken away by police in front of her classmates. "Everyone was asking me what I'd done. I was crying. This isn't my home here [in Kosovo]. My home is in France. I'm scared to go out here, and I don't even speak the language."

Criticism Of President, Prime Minister

Immigrants' rights groups and even members of the governing Socialist Party are extremely critical of the expulsion.

"Explain yourself, Mr. President," read Friday's front page of the left-leaning newspaper Liberation.

Under fire, Prime Minister Jean Marc Ayrault ordered an investigation into the incident. Speaking to parliament, he said, "If children's rights or human rights were violated, Leonarda and her family will be welcomed back to France."

President Francois Hollande, who preached a kinder, gentler approach to immigration than his hard-line predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been trying to distance himself from the incident.

But evictions of Roma have continued unabated during Hollande's presidency.

The main target of anger is the ambitious, young Interior Minister Manuel Valls. He sparked controversy a few months ago when he told Le Figaro newspaper that the 20,000 Roma living in France did not want to assimilate, for cultural reasons.

But activists point to the fact that Leonarda spoke perfect French and had assimilated. The far left has called for Valls to resign. Valls says the family had been living in France illegally for several years.

In Kosovo, Leonarda's father, Reshat Dibrani, told French television news reporters Thursday that the family had never been to Kosovo before and were actually from Italy. He said he lied in hopes of getting asylum in France.

Depending on the findings of the inquiry, the Dibrani family may get to stay in France after all.

After successfully staring down congressional Republicans in the shutdown-debt ceiling fight, President Obama's pivot to immigration is a move with almost no downside risk.

Which makes it perfect as the next vehicle for the president to use to cause congressional Republicans major indigestion.

Obama said last year before being reelected that he hoped the Republican "fever" of opposition to him would break during his second term. But if the just completed standoff is any indication, that temperature is still spiking.

The immediate shift to immigration could be Dr. Obama's way of trying to effect a cure.

What the White House and immigration advocates working with it hope is that the political loss Republicans suffered in the recent fiscal fight will make GOP leaders desperate to show that the party can govern.

"One can hear the debate within the GOP which is, 'Do we continue confrontational tactics that make us look bad? Or do we find a way to pragmatically govern and work more cooperatively with Democrats to do so?' " said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy group.

Even during the shutdown, groups backing the overhaul of the nation's immigration laws never hit the pause button. They continued to stage demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere.

They were supported by House Democrats who, amidst the shutdown and fears of the debt default, introduced an immigration overhaul bill in a news conference that drew less attention than it might have otherwise because of approaching fiscal Armageddon.

Sharry explained the strategy: "We just want to be ready if [House Republicans] decide that it's in their political self-interest to govern responsibly and, when necessary work with Democrats to pass legislation, that immigration reform will be first up. So we think we've got a shot. The central question is whether we're dealing with a rational political party or not."

Obama was certainly acting as though the House Republicans would view it in their self-interest when he said on Thursday:

"The majority of Americans think this is the right thing to do. And it's sitting there waiting for the House to pass it," Obama said, referring to a Senate-passed immigration bill. "Now, if the House has ideas on how to improve the Senate bill, let's hear them. Let's start the negotiations. But let's not leave this problem to keep festering for another year, or two years, or three years. This can and should get done by the end of this year."

It's official: Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is the latest GOP incumbent to get a primary challenge from the right.

State Sen. Chris McDaniel announced Thursday he'll try to unseat the six-term veteran in 2014, the day after Cochran voted for the compromise to end the government shutdown and avert a debt default.

McDaniel's move wasn't completely unexpected. What's interesting, however, is the firepower behind it — influential national conservative groups such as the Senate Conservative Fund, the Club for Growth and the Madison Project are all supporting the Tea Party-aligned challenger's candidacy.

"I respect him. I grew up admiring him," McDaniel said at his announcement event.

But he criticized Cochran's vote for the deal to reopen the government after being shutdown for 16 days. Cochran was one of the senators to vote 81-18 to temporarily lift the nation's borrowing limit through early February and keep the federal government funded until January 15.

"I've got 17 trillion reasons not to compromise," McDaniel said.

Cochran, who will turn 76 later this year, has held the seat since 1978. He's the top Republican on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry committee and sits on the powerful Appropriations committee. He's not tipped his hand as to whether he'll seek re-election.

"Senator Cochran has indicated that he will determine his plans regarding the 2014 election cycle later this year," said Cochran Communications Director Chris Gallegos.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cochran had $773,953 cash-on-hand through the end of June — one of the lowest amounts of any senator who's up for re-election in 2014.

The Mississippi seat is considered safely Republican, so the winner of the June 2014 primary will be a heavy favorite in the general election.

Part 5 of the TED Radio Hour episode Haves And Have-Nots.

About Jacqueline Novogratz's TEDTalk

Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen Fund, shares stories of how "patient capitalism" can bring sustainable jobs, goods, services and dignity to the world's poor.

About Jacqueline Novogratz

Jacqueline Novogratz is redefining the way problems of poverty can be solved around the world.

She is a leading proponent of financing enterprises that can bring affordable clean water, housing and health care to poor people so that they no longer depend on traditional charity and aid.

The Acumen Fund, which she founded in 2001, has an ambitious plan: to create a blueprint for alleviating poverty using market-oriented approaches.

Rather than handing out grants, Acumen invests in fledgling companies and organizations that bring products and services to the world's poor.

Novogratz places a great deal of importance on identifying solutions from within communities rather than imposing them from the outside.

In her book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories which emphasize sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.

Part 5 of the TED Radio Hour episode Haves And Have-Nots.

About Jacqueline Novogratz's TEDTalk

Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen Fund, shares stories of how "patient capitalism" can bring sustainable jobs, goods, services and dignity to the world's poor.

About Jacqueline Novogratz

Jacqueline Novogratz is redefining the way problems of poverty can be solved around the world.

She is a leading proponent of financing enterprises that can bring affordable clean water, housing and health care to poor people so that they no longer depend on traditional charity and aid.

The Acumen Fund, which she founded in 2001, has an ambitious plan: to create a blueprint for alleviating poverty using market-oriented approaches.

Rather than handing out grants, Acumen invests in fledgling companies and organizations that bring products and services to the world's poor.

Novogratz places a great deal of importance on identifying solutions from within communities rather than imposing them from the outside.

In her book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories which emphasize sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.

Now that the government has reopened, attention turns to the next phase of the spending fight, a battle that is far from over.

The bill that President Obama signed early Thursday provides only a temporary respite to the partisan tussles that have perennially plagued budget process. The government stays open through Jan. 15 and the federal borrowing authority is safe until Feb. 7. After that, all bets are off.

As NPR's David Welna reports on Morning Edition, even before then, another deadline looms for producing a compromise budget: Dec. 13 (a Friday).

So far, he says, there have been some encouraging bipartisan noises.

House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan announced that the 29 House and Senate members appointed this week to a conference committee were determined to end the budget impasse.

"We're going back to regular order," he says. "This is the budget process, the House passes a budget, the Senate passes a budget, you come together to try and reconcile the differences. That's the way we're supposed to do things."

Meanwhile, Sen. Patty Murray, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, is in agreement.

"Chairman Ryan knows I'm not going to vote for his budget, I know that he's not going to vote for mine," she says. "We're going to find the common ground between our two budgets that we both can vote on, and that's our goal."

The Washington Post lists the members of the "bipartisan, bicameral group" here.

However, some odds makers are expressing doubt.

CBS Marketwatch says "the committee ... is a disparate group that has some pundits proclaiming low expectations."

"Pantheon's Ian Shepherdson isn't optimistic about getting a long-term budget deal by Dec. 13.

'We think the chance of reaching a long-term budget deal by December 13 is very slim,' he said in a note. 'Congress has been down this road before; indeed, the sequester was triggered by the failure of the bipartisan budget committee to reach agreement in the fall of 2011. If anything, the positions of the parties have become more entrenched since then.'"

Amnesty International is urging Iranian authorities not to go ahead with the execution of a convicted drug smuggler after the man survived a botched hanging last week.

The 37-year-old man, identified as Alireza M, was found alive in a morgue after he was hanged at a jail in the northeast Iranian city of Bojnord.

A news release from Amnesty International says:

"According to official state media, a doctor declared him dead after the 12-minute hanging, but when the prisoner's family went to collect his body the following day he was found to still be breathing.

"He is currently in hospital, but a judge reportedly said he would be executed again 'once medical staff confirm his health condition is good enough.' "

A handful of German and Polish residents at a nursing home in the Polish mountain town of Szklarska Poreba play a Scrabble-like game using blocks with large letters.

The seniors are tended to by Polish workers who offer a steady supply of smiles, hugs and encouragement.

Leonardo Tegls says such personal attention makes this nursing home, Sun House, special. The 87-year-old Dutch-born immigrant to Germany says he first learned about the Polish nursing home from a TV ad.

He says he had become too frail live on his own, but his German stepdaughter didn't have enough room to take him in. So Tegls moved 500 miles from Moenchengladbach across the border to Sun House, where he pays a third of what he would spend in Germany.

Enlarge image i

Syria's chemical weapons could be consolidated and moved out of the country, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested in an interview with NPR.

Weapons inspectors are still in Syria assessing the country's stockpile and how to destroy it, in accordance with a United Nations Security Council resolution approved in September.

Asked by Morning Edition host Renee Montagne whether the agreement ensures that Syria's President Bashar Assad will remain in power, perhaps for many more months, Kerry replied:

"The fact is that these weapons can be removed whether Assad is there or not there because we know the locations, the locations have been declared, the locations are being secured. And my hope is that much of this material will be moved as rapidly [as] possibly into one location, and hopefully on a ship, and removed from the region."

Talk to economists about the government shutdown's impact on their forecasts and you'll hear this phrase again and again:

Flying blind.

For economists and investors, "at this moment, we are flying blind," said Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and now president of Greenspan Associates LLC, a consulting firm.

Greenspan is not alone in feeling a little lost without the compass of government reports.

"We have not been collecting the data, so we are flying blind," said Diane Swonk, past president of the National Association for Business Economics and an economist for Mesirow Financial, a financial services firm.

Even though federal offices were reopened on Thursday morning, government economists have not yet been able to release their long-delayed reports. For example, the Labor Department's September employment report should have been released on Oct. 4. But when the government shut down on Oct. 1, it sent home the workers who should have been there releasing the statistics.

That employment report is very closely watched by investors. Its regular release — precisely at 8:30 a.m. — has the power to move markets.

But you can't see it yet. The Bureau of Labor Statistics website says the much-anticipated report will be released Tuesday.

At the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which issues reports on international trade, personal income and spending, the website read, "Please Note: BEA is currently assessing the impact of the shutdown and will post a revised release schedule as soon as possible."

The government data points — and their release times — are crucial for making decisions about investments. At BLS alone, this month's missing reports include those that measure wages, job creation, unemployment rates, import and export prices and consumer inflation.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

President Obama said Thursday that the government shutdown and threat of default did unnecessary damage to both the U.S. economy and the country's reputation abroad.

Standard & Poor's concluded that the disruption subtracted about $24 billion from the economy and is likely to trim more than half a percentage point off growth in the final three months of the year.

Some of the businesses that lost money during the shutdown will gain it back, as federal workers and the government make up for spending that was deferred. But there are likely to be longer-term repercussions, according to Beth Ann Bovino, S&P's chief U.S. economist.

She says the fact that the agreement only keeps the government funded until mid-December is a worry and leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers with lots of uncertainty.

"Will you get your paycheck, or will we go back on furlough without pay again? Concerns of a repeat, I am sure, are on people's minds and that's coming in to the holiday season," she says.

Bovino says that could make the most important shopping season of the year pretty ho-hum. And it's not just federal workers who will hold back because of that uncertainty. Other workers will, too, as well as businesses that might decide to put off hiring and investment.

Related Stories

It's All Politics

10 Takeaways From The Fiscal Fight

President Obama slammed the partisan standoff "spectacle" that he said had damaged the economy and America's international credibility, and called on Congress to pass a comprehensive budget, immigration reform and a farm bill by year's end.

He praised "Democrats and responsible Republicans who came together" to pass a last-minute deal to reverse a partial government shutdown and narrowly avert the expiration of the federal borrowing authority.

"Let's be clear, there are no winners here," he said Thursday. "These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage to our economy."

"The American people are completely fed up with Washington," he added.

The president's remarks follow a 16-day hiatus in many government operations that he said had cost billions of dollars.

"There was no economic rationale for this," the president said of the shutdown.

"Today I want our people, our businesses and the rest of the world to know that our faith and credit remains unquestioned," he said.

Obama called for a renewed, bipartisan effort to pass a comprehensive budget, fix the "broken" immigration system and get a farm bill passed.

"This can and should get done by the end of this year," he said.

Finally, he said he had a message for federal workers, who were either furloughed or kept working without pay: "Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters."

A Time to Kill didn't sell well when it was first published in 1989. It was not until a few years later after The Firm and The Pelican Brief became popular that the book was re-released and gained an audience. When it was made into a movie, Grisham had control over who would play Brigance — and he held up the production until he found the actor he believed to be perfect for the part, Matthew McConaughey.

Grisham says that fans would often come up to him and tell him that A Time to Kill was their favorite book — and they'd ask him when he was going to write about Jake Brigance again. But, he says, he couldn't come up with the right story until recently. And even then, his wife had serious doubts about returning to an old character.

"And she said you know, 25 years later things have changed so dramatically in our lives, and we're not struggling, we're not worried about paying the overhead, we're not worried about the next case. And she said, I'm not sure this is a good idea. I don't know if you can re-capture the voice that made A Time to Kill so authentic."

In recent weeks, economists have been worrying about the negative impact of the now-ended government shutdown and potential debt crisis.

But away from Capitol Hill, the economy has been getting a big boost: gasoline prices have been declining, week after week. In some parts of the country, a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline is now down to less than $3 a gallon — a price most Americans haven't seen in three years.

And any time the pump price starts dropping, consumer spirits start rising.

"When it falls, everyone has a smile on their face, and when it goes up, nobody is happy," said Mike Thornbrugh, spokesman for QuikTrip, a Tulsa, Okla.-based company that operates nearly 700 gas stations nationwide. Dozens of them are located in the Tulsa area, where many stations sell gas for around $2.99 a gallon, thanks to low fuel taxes and nearby refineries.

Chuck Mai, spokesman for the AAA auto club in Oklahoma, says the lowering of geopolitical tensions involving Iran, Syria, Egypt and other places in the Middle East has helped cut prices.

"Tensions seem to have cooled there," Mai said. "And no hurricanes threatening the Gulf (of Mexico), so everything looks good for continued lower prices."

Mai's assessment is shared by most economists, who are predicting prices will be heading even lower over the next several months. Analysts point to a number of triggers that shot down gas prices, allowing the average price of a gallon to slide from $3.74 in March to $3.37 a gallon this week.

Now that the congressional standoff over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling has finally ended, here's a look back at the key events of the crisis:

Jan. 18

At a Republican retreat in Williamsburg, Va., GOP leaders agree not to force a debt ceiling showdown and to address deficit reduction demands later in the year.

Aug. 19

The conservative group Heritage Action's anti-Affordable Care Act town hall tour begins in Fayetteville, Ark. The tour features Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his father, Rafael Cruz, and Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina senator.

Aug. 21

80 House Republicans sign a letter to Speaker John Boehner urging him to "affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill."

Sept. 20

House Republicans approve legislation that would defund the health care law while keeping the government open through Dec. 15. The White House has already said the president would veto such a measure.

Sept. 24-25

Ted Cruz stages 21-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the Affordable Care Act.

Sept. 26

Boehner says President Obama needs to negotiate with Republicans on raising the debt limit. The Treasury has warned it will run out of "extraordinary measures" it has been using to keep paying the nation's bills by Oct. 17.

All Is Lost

Director: J.C. Chandor

Genre: Action, drama

Running Time: 106 minutes

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

With: Robert Redford

(Recommended)

The alternative approach for brewing sours is to go old-school and just let all the wild yeast and bacteria in the air drop into the beer naturally. It's risky but — when done right — can produce magnificent beer.

That's the strategy Ron Jeffries at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter, Mich., uses. He's a pioneer of the sour movement in America, and he made some of the first commercial sours way back in 2004.

"There's wild yeast and bacteria everywhere, especially if there are orchards nearby," Jeffries tells The Salt. "When you make a happy home for them in your barrels, they just show up and spontaneously ferment — and sour — a beer."

"For thousands of years, all beer had sour notes to it," Jeffries says. "It was refreshing and crisp because people didn't understand how to keep things clean.

"Then with pasteurization, refrigeration and an understanding of how to keep cultures free of bacteria, beers started to become nonsour," he says.

A handful of breweries in Belgium continued to produce sour beers, known as lambics, Flanders ales and guezes. But it's craft breweries in America that are making them fashionable again.

"They're taking the beer style in crazy directions, just like they did with IPAs and porters," Jeffries says. "The reason why you're seeing sour beers gaining popularity is because they taste great, but also because of the creativity of American brewers."

Remember how that fight over the budget was all about Obamacare?

Seems like ancient history now, but House Republicans ostensibly shut down the government 17 days ago, demanding first a defunding, and, when that failed, a year's delay in the health law.

When it became clear that President Obama and Senate Democrats weren't going to yield to demands to stop or slow implementation of the administration's signature legislative achievement, Republicans looked for smaller changes.

They floated the idea of killing or delaying an unpopular tax on medical devices. Many Senate Democrats joined Republicans in a nonbinding vote of displeasure on the tax earlier this year.

The Republicans also looked to take away health insurance contributions for congressional and executive branch staffers. And they proposed to delay a temporary $63 annual per-person health insurance tax intended to build a fund to help pay for high-cost cases.

None of those things ended up in the final bill that reopened the federal government and raised the debt ceiling Wednesday night.

So what did?

Well, there was a little language related to the health law. It requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services "certify to the Congress that the Exchanges verify" that individuals who get subsidies for premiums and cost-sharing are, in fact, eligible. And that the secretary "shall submit a report to the Congress that details the procedures employed by the American Health Benefit Exchanges to verify eligibility for credit and cost-sharing."

Sounds like a big deal? Not really. It so happens that the much-maligned "data hub" that's part of the health exchange already links to the IRS to verify income eligibility. So, basically, the law requires HHS Secretary Sebelius to write a letter explaining what the department is already doing.

But it's not just that the Republicans failed to make any changes to the health law in their 16-day tirade against the government. News coverage of the shutdown and potential default crowded out stories about the very rocky rollout of the health exchanges themselves.

As The Washington Post's Ezra Klein tweeted Wednesday:

Hearing from more people getting through http://t.co/iJrBCjFhBY. Ironic if GOP knocked it from headlines just long enough for it to be fixed

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 16, 2013

With the double crises of a partial government shutdown and a potential debt default resolved, it's a good time to consider some of the lessons we learned from the dysfunction and drama of recent weeks.

Here are 10 of them:

Shutting Down The Government Is Not A Winning Political Strategy

Once again, the GOP brand was hurt because of a failure to learn from past mistakes. Republicans were warned before this shutdown that it could seriously hurt the party's approval ratings, as in 1996 during the last shutdown showdown. Many Republicans convinced themselves that this time was different. It wasn't. Most Americans like government more than they let on.

Obama Wasn't Bluffing

This time the president meant it when he said he wasn't going to let Republicans use government shutdowns or potential debt defaults to pressure him into making policy changes. Obama had actually signaled his shift long before the current fight. But his message either wasn't heard clearly by enough of the right people or they expected him to blink first.

The House GOP Is Ungovernable

The wheels have truly come off the House Republican Conference. The GOP-controlled House was already one of the least productive in recent history largely because of Speaker John Boehner's difficulty in getting a majority of votes on controversial legislation from his fractured group. The two-week shutdown just furthers the perception of a caucus in disarray and raises real questions about how the House will be able to move major legislation like an immigration overhaul or budget bills.

Boehner's Speakership Rises And Falls

A corollary to House Republicans being adrift is the state of Boehner's speakership. It's a tale of two Boehners, actually. Inside his conference, Boehner strengthened his hand by allowing its Tea Party faction to drive the House GOP strategy. Those Tea Party members have praised Boehner for his handling of the shutdown-debt ceiling fight, making a challenge to his speakership unlikely. But Boehner's hand is weaker outside his conference, compared with Obama and Reid, which could have real consequences in negotiations with Democrats. And with voter approval of congressional Republicans bumping the bottom, it will be hard for him to argue that Republican positions widely reflect Americans' wishes.

The Hastert Rule Really Isn't One

It took the current crisis for Republican Dennis Hastert, the former House speaker, to say it was just common sense, not an actual rule. As speaker, you want a majority of your party to support the legislation you bring to the House floor. But if it takes votes from the other party to pass important bills, so be it. Boehner and Hastert don't talk, so Hastert couldn't apparently tell Boehner this directly.

The Senate Emerges Enhanced

Well, at least in contrast to a weaker House. By once again arriving at a deal to avert financial disaster after an abysmal House failure, as it has done several times now, the Senate is clearly the more functional of the two chambers. Of course, that's a relative term.

Sen. Mitch McConnell Isn't Panicking

Cutting a deal to end the impasse with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? Maybe the Kentucky senator and minority leader isn't as frightened by his Tea Party-backed primary challenger, Matt Bevin, as people think. McConnell's last minute efforts toward compromise suggest McConnell could be looking past Bevin and towards the general election contest with Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Kentucky secretary of state who's raising lots of money and polling competitively against him.

Sen. Ted Cruz Is Running For President In 2016

The Texas senator would be a strong contender for the Tea Party presidential nomination if there were one. But as the leading proponent of the strategy of shutting down the government in an effort to gut the Affordable Care Act, he's reduced his general election appeal. Indeed, the Houston Chronicle which endorsed him for Senate has now has buyer's remorse.

The Hardliners May Have Gone Too Far

Even some conservative Republicans have had just about enough of the hardline Tea Party members. And they're speaking out. Consider Rep. Charles Boustamy. R-La., who told National Journal that Tea Party lawmakers' "allegiance is not to the members in the conference. Their allegiance is not to the leadership team and to conservative values. Their allegiance is to these outside Washington DC interest groups that raise money and go after conservative Republicans."

How To Blow A Golden Political Opportunity

The irony of the fiscal fight is that the story of the terribly botched Affordable Care Act rollout has been buried by the shutdown and debt ceiling news. The lesson? If you want to lift the curtain on a monumentally glitchy major project like the enrollment process for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, you'd be wise to wait until the nation is wildly distracted by a government shutdown and potential debt default.

We can wonder how BBC America's Burton And Taylor might have been received in the absence of Lifetime's Liz And Dick, which, almost a year ago, did not quite rehabilitate Lindsay Lohan's career in the way she was hoping. Perhaps we'd have been able to see this biopic, with Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter, purely as its own project.

But it's very difficult not to be conked in the head over and over again by the sheer number of things Burton And Taylor, which is still essentially a celebrity meltdown biopic, gets right that Liz And Dick got wrong. It's not a surprise in the great majority of cases, given who's involved, but it's conspicuous nevertheless.

Unsurprisingly, the portrayal of Taylor is the biggest one of all. Bonham Carter has a firm hand on a fundamental conflict within Taylor, which is that she seems like such an impossibly elegant, self-possessed woman at some moments and like such an infuriating flake at others. The styling is not as amped-up as Lohan's was; it's not quite as glamorous. But Bonham Carter's breathy, chirpy Taylor voice recalls the woman eerily at times.

It's safe to say Dominic West also makes a substantially more persuasive serious British stage actor than Grant Bowler did. The film is more sympathetic to Burton than to Taylor in many ways, and West gives him a certain weary attachment to her — more the attachment of an addict than a lover.

Burton And Taylor also benefits from the decision to focus on a particular period of time; namely, the Broadway production of Noel Coward's Private Lives in which the two co-starred in 1983, several years after their second divorce. While the Lifetime film seemed like a highlight reel of iconic moments, this one can sit with some actual story elements, like Burton's erratic attempts to quit drinking and his far more serious attempts to get Taylor off of pills (a few months prior to her first trip to the Betty Ford Center, and not terribly long before he died), long enough for them to have some heft.

It's not necessarily great, but it affords them and their relationship some complexity (and toxicity) and nuance. And the performances from the two leads, perhaps appropriately, are terrific.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin is a book read in an afternoon, and remembered long after. Mary, mother of a murdered son, struggles to mourn in the presence of a menacing character recognizable as the writer of the Gospel of John. As her watcher questions and cajoles, demanding a version of events that Mary cannot endorse, Toibin shows us how history is made, in the determined shaping and reshaping of stories. Bold, intense and exquisitely crafted, this iconoclastic imagining is a power pack of a book that, at only 81 pages, presents a daring interpretation of what a novel can be.

Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being plays with ideas of perception and interconnectedness from the title page onward. Her eponymous narrator, who lives on a remote Canadian island, finds a plastic bag washed up on the beach. In it is a Hello Kitty box containing the diary of Nao, a girl struggling toward womanhood in modern-day Japan. Ruth's own writing has stalled, and as she immerses herself in Nao's story, and that of the girl's 104-year-old Zen Buddhist grandmother, Ozeki braids together the lives of the three women. It's an intricate pattern of cause and effect, skillfully batting the stories of Ruth and Nao back and forth until the reader feels she has entered a conversation across space and time, unraveling some of the mysteries of existence along the way.

Cause and effect are also at the core of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland, a tale of two brothers set in Kolkata and Rhode Island. One, Subhash, leaves home for a new life in America; the other, Udayan, stays behind, deeply involved in the politics of his country. Udayan's radical affiliations lead to his brutal execution by security forces. While perhaps the most conventional title on the shortlist in terms of form, Lahiri's work is a measured and thoughtful meditation on home, family and the enduring effects of personal choice.

In a shortlist of memorable titles, this year's winner, The Luminaries, by Canadian-born New Zealander Eleanor Catton, is a masterwork of structural brilliance. Set in the gold fields of New Zealand in 1866, the book tells the stories of 20 characters, all of whom are implicated in an untimely death, a suspected suicide, a disappearance and a stolen fortune. While there is a compelling narrative — a mystery to be solved — there are also archetypal characters rendered alive with dialogue, and a plot that seduces the reader with revelations and reversals at every turn.

If the shortlist this year has offered up new ways to appreciate how a story may be told, Catton's win celebrates a writer whose powers of innovation are deeply rooted in an understanding of what it takes to hold a reader in her grip for 800-plus pages, never losing their attention.

Ellah Allfrey is an editor and critic. She lives in London.

Karen Hanghoj, a scientist with Denmark's Geological Survey, points to the southern tip of Greenland on a colorful map hanging in her office.

"What you can see here in the southern region here, is you have a big pink region," she says. "And then within the pink region, you see you have all these little purple dots.

"And what the purple dots are is a later period of rifting. These complexes have these weird chemistries and have these very, very strange minerals in them," she adds.

Related NPR Stories

In our "Weekly Innovation" blog series, we explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.

Hikers and campers can now keep their cameras charged with FlameStower, which uses heat from a campfire, stove or even candles to charge any device powered by a USB connection. While this can seem superfluous — powering up while getting away from it all — creators Andrew Byrnes and Adam Kell says the device can also bring power to people in developing countries where wireless technology has leap-frogged others, places where people have cell phones but not electricity.

Byrnes and Kell were both studying materials science at Stanford University and at first they thought about a generator wired to a toaster, but quickly dismissed that idea. They spoke to a business school professor, who told them something that's been their guiding principle since — build something that can cook a pot of rice and charge a cell phone at the same time.

The technology is fairly simple. The FlameStower has a blade that extends out over the fire, while the other end is cooled by a reservoir of water. That means one part of the blade is hotter than the other. The temperature difference generates electricity and semiconductors amplify the voltage to a useful amount. It gives you the same charge as connecting your phone to a laptop. The Mars Curiosity Rover uses the same technology, though its heat source comes from decaying radioactive materials.

This phenomenon of heat to electricity is called the Seebeck effect, and it doesn't generate a lot of energy, which means it wasn't that useful until people started walking around with cameras and smartphones.

"Now you have these tools that are insanely powerful, and increasingly are stingy on their energy use, so that value of the low amount of electricity is getting higher," Byrnes says.

He and Kell want to bring the FlameStower not only to stores in the U.S., but to developing countries as well. Kell recently returned from a trip to rural Kenya and Ethiopia to refine the FlameStower for users there, because around 65 percent of people in Africa have cell phones, but only 42 percent have electricity.

"(The cell phone) has been the first technology that people in rural villages are actually buying," Kell says.

Kell says products sold in developing countries are usually made to be cheaper than their counterparts in the U.S., with the exception of energy, which is much more expensive and less reliable.

Kell and Byrnes aren't the only people to come up with something like this. The BioLite CampStove and PowerPot are both pots that will charge a device and cook your food or boil water at the same time. But Kell says they weren't as successful in developing countries because people there often want to use their own pots, so the FlameStower founders made something that can work on any stove or fire.

At the moment a FlameStower costs $80, and the project is being funded on Kickstarter until late October.

Alan Yu is a Kroc fellow at NPR.

A Lao Airlines flight from the capital Vientiane crashed into the Mekong River on landing approach. There was no word of survivors among the 49 passengers and crew, The Bangkok Post reports.

The twin-turbo ATR, with 44 passengers and five crew aboard hit the water short of a runway in Pakse, in Champassak province in southern Laos, the newspaper says.

Witnesses quoted by the Post said they saw dead bodies at a makeshift emergency ward set up at a Buddhist temple near the crash site.

A statement from the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport says:

"Upon preparing to land at Pakse airport the aircraft ran into extreme bad weather conditions and was reportedly crashed into the Mekong River. There were no news of survivors at this time," the statement said.

"Lao Airlines is taking all necessary steps to coordinate and dispatch all rescue units to the accident site in the hope of finding survivors and at the same time informing relatives of the passengers," it added.

The Associated Press quotes a Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying everyone aboard – including five Thai nationals – were killed in the crash.

Spokesman Sek Wannamethee said "the flight from the Lao capital of Vientiane to Pakse in southern Laos crashed at about 4 p.m. Lao time [5:30 a.m. ET]."

"He said the flight crashed 7-8 kilometers (4-5 miles) short of the international airport at Pakse. Reports by China's official Xinhua News Agency and Thai media said the plane crashed in the Mekong River."

Senate leaders say they're optimistic of an eleventh-hour bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would avoid a government default after their House colleagues failed to produce a plan that could pass muster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were set to pick up the pieces from the fractious and fruitless night in the House that accomplished little more than running down the clock.

"Given tonight's events, the Leaders have decided to work toward a solution that would reopen the government and prevent default," Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement. "They are optimistic an agreement can be reached."

Their effort to forge a deal acceptable to both parties to restart the government and renew its authority to borrow was given urgency on Tuesday by a warning issued by Fitch Ratings, the third-largest credit rating agency, which said the debacle in Washington meant it was placing the country's long-term credit rating under review for a potential downgrade.

If you haven't been following every twist and turn, here are the latest events from each chamber:

In The House:

On Tuesday evening, House Republicans tried and failed to produce their own plan for ending the stalemate, but in the end it wasn't Democrats who scuttled their efforts, but divisions among GOP lawmakers.

In the early evening, the House had crafted a plan to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling in exchange for some changes in the Affordable Care Act, which has been a key stumbling block throughout the weeks of negotiations. But when Heritage Action for America, a lobby group affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation weighed in against the plan, what little resolve that might have existed Republicans quickly evaporated.

As Politico writes of House Speaker John Boehner:

"[Battered] from three years of intra-party battles, [he] was caught between at least three different GOP factions as he tried to craft a compromise agreement: Republicans who didn't want to slash government health care contributions for Capitol Hill aides, members who thought repealing the medical device tax was a giveaway to corporate America and conservatives, who thought Republican leaders were too soft on Obamacare.

Boehner was unable to craft a deal that would satisfy all of the groups, forcing him to shelve his plan and show the world — again — just how hard it is for him to rule the raucous House Republican Conference.

No amount of political gymnastics would help him reach the crucial 217 vote-level to send a bill to the Senate. GOP aides said that Boehner was — at a minimum — 20 to 30 votes short of the target."

Senate leaders say they're optimistic of an eleventh-hour bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would avoid a government default after their House colleagues failed to produce a plan that could pass muster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were set to pick up the pieces from the fractious and fruitless night in the House that accomplished little more than running down the clock.

"Given tonight's events, the Leaders have decided to work toward a solution that would reopen the government and prevent default," Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement. "They are optimistic an agreement can be reached."

Their effort to forge a deal acceptable to both parties to restart the government and renew its authority to borrow was given urgency on Tuesday by a warning issued by Fitch Ratings, the third-largest credit rating agency, which said the debacle in Washington meant it was placing the country's long-term credit rating under review for a potential downgrade.

If you haven't been following every twist and turn, here are the latest events from each chamber:

In The House:

On Tuesday evening, House Republicans tried and failed to produce their own plan for ending the stalemate, but in the end it wasn't Democrats who scuttled their efforts, but divisions among GOP lawmakers.

In the early evening, the House had crafted a plan to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling in exchange for some changes in the Affordable Care Act, which has been a key stumbling block throughout the weeks of negotiations. But when Heritage Action for America, a lobby group affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation weighed in against the plan, what little resolve that might have existed Republicans quickly evaporated.

As Politico writes of House Speaker John Boehner:

"[Battered] from three years of intra-party battles, [he] was caught between at least three different GOP factions as he tried to craft a compromise agreement: Republicans who didn't want to slash government health care contributions for Capitol Hill aides, members who thought repealing the medical device tax was a giveaway to corporate America and conservatives, who thought Republican leaders were too soft on Obamacare.

Boehner was unable to craft a deal that would satisfy all of the groups, forcing him to shelve his plan and show the world — again — just how hard it is for him to rule the raucous House Republican Conference.

No amount of political gymnastics would help him reach the crucial 217 vote-level to send a bill to the Senate. GOP aides said that Boehner was — at a minimum — 20 to 30 votes short of the target."

Senate leaders say they're optimistic of an eleventh-hour bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would avoid a government default after their House colleagues failed to produce a plan that could pass muster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were set to pick up the pieces from the fractious and fruitless night in the House that accomplished little more than running down the clock.

"Given tonight's events, the Leaders have decided to work toward a solution that would reopen the government and prevent default," Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement. "They are optimistic an agreement can be reached."

Their effort to forge a deal acceptable to both parties to restart the government and renew its authority to borrow was given urgency on Tuesday by a warning issued by Fitch Ratings, the third-largest credit rating agency, which said the debacle in Washington meant it was placing the country's long-term credit rating under review for a potential downgrade.

If you haven't been following every twist and turn, here are the latest events from each chamber:

In The House:

On Tuesday evening, House Republicans tried and failed to produce their own plan for ending the stalemate, but in the end it wasn't Democrats who scuttled their efforts, but divisions among GOP lawmakers.

In the early evening, the House had crafted a plan to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling in exchange for some changes in the Affordable Care Act, which has been a key stumbling block throughout the weeks of negotiations. But when Heritage Action for America, a lobby group affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation weighed in against the plan, what little resolve that might have existed Republicans quickly evaporated.

As Politico writes of House Speaker John Boehner:

"[Battered] from three years of intra-party battles, [he] was caught between at least three different GOP factions as he tried to craft a compromise agreement: Republicans who didn't want to slash government health care contributions for Capitol Hill aides, members who thought repealing the medical device tax was a giveaway to corporate America and conservatives, who thought Republican leaders were too soft on Obamacare.

Boehner was unable to craft a deal that would satisfy all of the groups, forcing him to shelve his plan and show the world — again — just how hard it is for him to rule the raucous House Republican Conference.

No amount of political gymnastics would help him reach the crucial 217 vote-level to send a bill to the Senate. GOP aides said that Boehner was — at a minimum — 20 to 30 votes short of the target."

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases on Wednesday — one that focuses on the right against self-incrimination and another that looks at when prosecutors can seize defendants' assets.

What Counts As Self-Incrimination?

The first arguments before the court Wednesday come in a murder case that tests whether a court-ordered psychiatric exam can be used to rebut a defendant's claim that he had not formed the necessary intent to kill. The defendant claims that using the examination violated his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

In 2005, Scott Cheever shot and killed a sheriff during the course of an arrest. Cheever, then 24, had been addicted to methamphetamines since he was 17. He claimed that at the time of the killing, he had not slept in nine days, had just injected a near-lethal dose of the drug and was incapable of exercising judgment when the sheriff came to arrest him. In short, he contended that he was incapable of forming the necessary intent to kill — an element that is required to qualify a defendant for the death penalty.

The case took tortuous legal turns, dragging its way through both state and federal court, before Cheever was finally convicted in state court and sentenced to death.

The appeal of that conviction centers on a psychiatric exam that took place at the early stage of the case, prior to trial, and over defense counsel's objection. A federal judge ordered the psychiatric exam when Cheever's lawyer first notified the federal court that the defense intended to argue that Cheever did not have the requisite intent to kill.

For unrelated reasons, the federal prosecution was eventually dropped in favor of a state prosecution. But when the case went to trial in state court, Cheever pressed the same argument. The defense called its own expert witness to testify about the short- and long-term effects of methamphetamine use. That expert testified that Cheever was experiencing paranoid psychosis and could not have exercised any judgment when he killed the sheriff.

In response, the state called the psychiatrist who had conducted the court-ordered examination at the earlier stage of the case. That doctor testified that, while Cheever had antisocial personality disorder and was "impressed and awed" by "outlaws," his mental state at the time was not significantly altered. In short, that the defendant could have intended to kill the sheriff.

The Kansas Supreme Court subsequently voided the conviction. It ruled unanimously that the state had violated Cheever's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by calling the state's psychiatrist to testify.

The state then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices will hear arguments on Wednesday. The state argues that Cheever voluntarily waived his right against self-incrimination by introducing evidence of his mental state. Cheever's attorney counters that presentation of evidence of mental state is not a waiver of the right against self-incrimination.

What Can Prosecutors Seize Before Trial?

The second of the two cases being argued Wednesday tests under what circumstances prosecutors may seize a defendant's assets prior to trial. The defendants in the case claim the seizure of their assets is unconstitutional because it makes it impossible for them to pay their chosen lawyers to conduct a defense.

When the government began investigating Kerri and Brian Kaley for allegedly selling stolen medical supplies, the Kaleys fought back, contending that the medical supplies were not stolen at all. They knew that identical charges in another case had ended in a not-guilty verdict. So, they took out a $500,000 loan on their home and put it into a CD to pay their lawyers for a trial.

Federal prosecutors, however, then sought to freeze all their assets — an action that the Kaleys contend denied them the right to counsel and due process of law.

The couple is asking the Supreme Court to set down rules requiring a pretrial evidentiary hearing prior to allowing the seizure. Prosecutors counter that such a hearing would essentially be a mini-trial, giving defendants two bites at the apple after they are tried.

The case could have a significant impact on both prosecutors and defense lawyers. Groups on the right and the left have filed briefs on behalf of the Kaleys. They say that if the court sides with the Kaleys, it would deprive prosecutors of a heavy weapon used too aggressively and frequently to force guilty pleas on unwilling defendants. On the other hand, prosecutors contend that a decision favoring the Kaleys would encourage white-collar defense lawyers to represent wealthy defendants, regardless of the fact that the lawyers are being paid with their clients' ill-gotten gain.

Isaac Chaput contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review an Obama administration policy that requires new power plants and other big polluting facilities to apply for permits to emit greenhouse gases.

To get these permits, which have been required since 2011, companies may have to use pollution controls or otherwise reduce greenhouse gases from their operations — although industries report that so far they haven't had to install special pollution control equipment to qualify for the permits.

The rule is part of a larger effort by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

The EPA started with automobiles. It determined that once it did that, it was "compelled" by the Clean Air Act to also require greenhouse gas permits when companies want to construct big new facilities. The statute requires permits for all facilities that are major polluters of "any air pollutant." And the EPA has long interpreted this to mean any pollutant that is regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The utilities, manufacturers and chemical companies that petitioned the Supreme Court challenge EPA's decision. They argue that the EPA should have interpreted "any air pollutant" to mean only pollutants that have health-based ambient air quality standards, such as ground-level ozone, according to Jeffrey Holmstead, an industry lawyer who headed EPA's air pollution program under the Bush administration.

Furthermore, industry groups argue that getting these permits causes delays in big projects that could help revive the economy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided in 2012 that the EPA got it right.

In its decision, the appeals court cited a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which affirmed the EPA's determination that greenhouse gases are a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

That Supreme Court ruling also upheld the EPA's finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the Obama administration's authority to regulate greenhouse gases from automobiles.

The Supreme Court is expected to take up the case on the greenhouse gas permits for large polluters early next year.

These greenhouse gas permits are not the same as the greenhouse gas regulations that the Obama administration has been drafting over the last couple years.

The EPA last month released a second proposal for how it wants set limits on how much greenhouse gases new power plants can release. President Obama says he also intends to regulate greenhouse gases from existing power plants, but has yet to release a proposal.

If you don't pay your electric bill on time, probably you'll get charged a buck or two in interest. As long as you pay off the balance in a reasonable amount of time, your lights will stay on.

So why is it such a big deal that the Treasury Department may soon be unable to pay all of its bills on time?

U.S. Treasury securities are used as both currency and collateral for countless financial transactions around the world. Think dozens per minute.

Right now, Treasurys are almost as liquid and secure as cash. If investors are at all nervous that they might not be honored, this could have a cascading effect that will cause stock markets to tumble, the dollar to lose value and unemployment to rise.

"If Treasury bonds were no longer seen as risk-free, that would have implications for virtually all collateralized loans, which is a huge proportion," says Phillip Swagel, a University of Maryland economist who served as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy under President George W. Bush.

"If people couldn't hold Treasurys, they would have to hold a lot of cash," he says. "We don't want people to feel like they have to hoard cash to make transactions."

Still A Big 'If'

Note that Swagel is still using the word "if." No one knows whether time will run out on the Treasury Department's authority to raise money.

Technically, it ran out in May, but the department has been able to keep juggling since then. The nominal deadline Congress and President Obama have been working with is Thursday, when the Treasury says it will be unable to borrow any more money by issuing bonds.

Politics

How The Debt Limit Became 'A Nuclear-Tipped Leverage Point'

If you don't pay your electric bill on time, probably you'll get charged a buck or two in interest. As long as you pay off the balance in a reasonable amount of time, your lights will stay on.

So why is it such a big deal that the Treasury Department may soon be unable to pay all of its bills on time?

U.S. Treasury securities are used as both currency and collateral for countless financial transactions around the world. Think dozens per minute.

Right now, Treasurys are almost as liquid and secure as cash. If investors are at all nervous that they might not be honored, this could have a cascading effect that will cause stock markets to tumble, the dollar to lose value and unemployment to rise.

"If Treasury bonds were no longer seen as risk-free, that would have implications for virtually all collateralized loans, which is a huge proportion," says Phillip Swagel, a University of Maryland economist who served as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy under President George W. Bush.

"If people couldn't hold Treasurys, they would have to hold a lot of cash," he says. "We don't want people to feel like they have to hoard cash to make transactions."

Still A Big 'If'

Note that Swagel is still using the word "if." No one knows whether time will run out on the Treasury Department's authority to raise money.

Technically, it ran out in May, but the department has been able to keep juggling since then. The nominal deadline Congress and President Obama have been working with is Thursday, when the Treasury says it will be unable to borrow any more money by issuing bonds.

Politics

How The Debt Limit Became 'A Nuclear-Tipped Leverage Point'

Thieves, using axes and smoke grenades, break into a Swiss luxury watch store and make off with more than $2 million in loot.

What sounds like a scene from the latest Hollywood crime caper actually took place earlier this month in central Paris — in the latest of a wave of high-profile European jewelry heists.

It's been a particularly rich year for thieves in Europe, who have stolen tens of millions of dollars in diamonds and other precious gems so far. Worldwide jewelry thefts total more than $100 million each year, according to the FBI.

By European standards, the latest heist in Paris is pretty small potatoes. Compare it to the $105 million worth of rings and necklaces that were snatched in 2008 from the Paris outpost of Harry Winston, a premier American jeweler, or the $50 million worth of gems stolen from a plane waiting on the tarmac in Brussels earlier this year.

And there's the whole string of high-profile jewel thefts in southern France this spring, including one at a hotel in Cannes where a lone thief made off with more than $135 million in diamonds.

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A 7.2-magnitude earthquake killed at least 32 people across the central Philippines on Tuesday, toppling buildings and historic churches and sending terrified residents into deadly stampedes.

Panic ensued as people spilled out on the street after the quake struck at 8:12 a.m. It was centered about 20 miles below Carmen town on Bohol Island, where many buildings collapsed, roads cracked up and bridges fell. Extensive damage also hit densely populated Cebu city, across the narrow strait from Bohol, causing deaths when a fish port and a market roof fell.

The quake set off a stampede in a Cebu gym where people lined up to receive government cash assistance, killing five and injuring eight others, said Neil Sanchez, provincial disaster management officer. In another city nearby, 18 people were injured in the scramble to get out of a shaking building where the assistance was being handed out.

At least 16 people died in Bohol and 15 in Cebu, officials said. Scores were injured.

"We ran out of the building, and outside, we hugged trees because the tremors were so strong," said Vilma Yorong, a Bohol provincial government employee.

"When the shaking stopped, I ran to the street and there I saw several injured people. Some were saying their church has collapsed," she told The Associated Press by phone.

As fear set in, Yorong and the others ran up a mountain, afraid a tsunami would follow the quake. "Minutes after the earthquake, people were pushing each other to go up the hill," she said.

But the quake was centered inland and did not cause a tsunami.

Offices and schools were closed for a national holiday — the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha — which may have saved lives. The earthquake also was deeper below the surface than the 6.9-magnitude temblor last year in waters near Negros Island, also in the central Philippines, that killed nearly 100 people.

Aledel Cuizon, who works for a Finnish company in Cebu, said the quake that caught her in her bedroom sounded like "a huge truck that was approaching and the rumbling sound grew louder as it got closer."

She and her neighbors ran outside, where she saw "the electric concrete poles were swaying like coconut trees." She said it lasted 15-20 seconds.

Cebu city's hospitals quickly evacuated patients in the streets, basketball courts and parks.

Cebu province, about 350 miles south of Manila, has a population of more than 2.6 million people. Cebu is the second largest city after Manila. Nearby Bohol has 1.2 million people and is popular among foreigners because of its beach and island resorts and the Chocolate Hills.

Many roads and bridges were reported damaged, but historic churches dating from the Spanish colonial period suffered the most. Among them is the country's oldest, the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, which lost its bell tower.

A 17th-century limestone church in Loboc town, southwest of Carmen, crumbled to pieces, with nearly half of it reduced to rubble.

Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said that he recalled soldiers from the holiday furlough to respond to the quake. He said it damaged the pier in Tagbilaran, Bohol's provincial capital, and caused some cracks at Cebu's international airport but that navy ships and air force planes could use alternative ports to help out.

Passenger flights resumed later Tuesday after officials checked runways and buildings for damage.

A strong earthquake has left dozens of people dead in the Philippines. The temblor, whose magnitude was first reported as 7.2 and then downgraded to 7.1, struck near the city of Catigbian in the inland area of Bohol, one of the central Visayas Islands.

At least 93 people have been reported dead, and the casualty count is likely to grow as rescue and recovery teams reach areas that were cut off by rubble and other obstructions.

The earthquake struck just after 8 a.m. local time Tuesday, a national holiday observing the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. At least 10 quakes with a magnitude of 5 or higher were detected in the hours that followed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Low-rise buildings collapsed on at least two islands and historic churches cracked and crumbled during the quake," Reuters reports, "which sparked panic, cut power and transport links and forced hospitals to evacuate patients."

The quake also damaged tourist attractions, such as the famed Chocolate Hills of Bohol. A photo of the damage to one hill that was posted to Twitter by tourist Robert Michael Poole.

Churches that have stood for hundreds of years also suffered damage, including the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, The Associated Press reports.

The death toll was worsened by at least two stampedes of panicked people who had gathered to receive payments in a social welfare program for families with young children; a government agency says a four-year-old child died in one of the incidents, and that at least 35 people were injured.

The U.S. Geological Survey gives us some background on the area's tectonics:

"The Philippine Islands straddle a region of complex tectonics at the intersection of three major tectonic plates (the Philippine Sea, Sunda and Eurasia plates). As such, the islands are familiar with large and damaging earthquakes, and the region within 500 km of the October 15 earthquake has hosted 19 events of M6 or greater, a dozen of which have been shallow (0-70 km). One of these, a M 6.8 earthquake 70 km to the east of the October 15, 2013 event in 1990, caused several casualties."

Here's a way to stop hungry shoppers from leaving the store for dinner.

Brooks Brothers, the 195-year-old luxury apparel company, is looking to open a restaurant next summer adjacent to its flagship store in Manhattan, a company spokesman tells NPR. The New York Post reports that the restaurant will be a steakhouse — a fitting culinary accompaniment for the purveyor of fine business suits for the moneyed set, we think.

And it's not the only high-end retailer that's jumped into the food business. Ralph Lauren has a restaurant next to its location off Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and another in Paris. (Ironically, the Chicago incarnation features French-inspired dishes like escargot, steak tartare and bouillabaisse, while Paris' menu has a whole page for burgers and steaks.)

Tommy Bahama, a lifestyle clothing line with a tropical twist, has restaurants in about a dozen stores that serve seared ahi tuna and rum mojitos. At some mega-sized locations of outdoor recreation retailer Bass Pro Shops, customers can order hand-breaded alligator and catfish at an attached seafood grill.

Restaurants can be a terrific traffic driver, says Rob Goldberg, Tommy Bahama's senior vice president of marketing — diners peruse the merchandise while waiting; shoppers might stick around for a drink.

They also give the company another way to express its brand: not just through the colors and feel of the clothing, but also through the flavor and aroma of food, Goldberg says. "For us, the restaurant is a really rich way to tell our lifestyle story, because it touches all the senses."

Pairing clothing with food is nothing new: The former Marshall Fields in Chicago opened a restaurant on the seventh floor back in 1905, and other department stores like Macy's and Nordstrom also offer dining options.

But these more recent ventures into dining are part of a larger trend in experiential brand management, says Eric Anderson, marketing professor at Northwestern University.

"A lot of retailers are focusing heavily on managing their brands through the customer experience," Anderson says. "It's no longer just the product they sell."

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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

The partial government shutdown begins its third week on Tuesday as the debt ceiling deadline looms just two days from now. Congressional leaders seem to be inching toward a deal that could prove acceptable to both sides and the White House. But, we've been here before.

USAToday describes the broad outlines of the emerging deal:

"A flurry of negotiations occurred throughout [Monday] as [Sen. Majority Leader Harry] Reid and his Republican counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, engaged with each other, their own members, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and White House staff on the terms of a deal to end the budget impasse, which has kept the government partially shut down since Oct. 1.

McConnell said Monday morning, 'I share his optimism that we will get a result that is acceptable to both sides.'

The draft proposal still under negotiation would approve a stopgap funding bill to reopen government through Jan. 15; suspend the debt ceiling until Feb. 7; and create the framework for formal budget negotiations to conclude by Dec. 15 with long-term recommendations for funding levels and deficit reduction."

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 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.

From 'Here & Now'

Marilyn Geewax Discusses The Global Meetings Of The IMF And The World Bank

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake killed at least 32 people across the central Philippines on Tuesday, toppling buildings and historic churches and sending terrified residents into deadly stampedes.

Panic ensued as people spilled out on the street after the quake struck at 8:12 a.m. It was centered about 20 miles below Carmen town on Bohol Island, where many buildings collapsed, roads cracked up and bridges fell. Extensive damage also hit densely populated Cebu city, across the narrow strait from Bohol, causing deaths when a fish port and a market roof fell.

The quake set off a stampede in a Cebu gym where people lined up to receive government cash assistance, killing five and injuring eight others, said Neil Sanchez, provincial disaster management officer. In another city nearby, 18 people were injured in the scramble to get out of a shaking building where the assistance was being handed out.

At least 16 people died in Bohol and 15 in Cebu, officials said. Scores were injured.

"We ran out of the building, and outside, we hugged trees because the tremors were so strong," said Vilma Yorong, a Bohol provincial government employee.

"When the shaking stopped, I ran to the street and there I saw several injured people. Some were saying their church has collapsed," she told The Associated Press by phone.

As fear set in, Yorong and the others ran up a mountain, afraid a tsunami would follow the quake. "Minutes after the earthquake, people were pushing each other to go up the hill," she said.

But the quake was centered inland and did not cause a tsunami.

Offices and schools were closed for a national holiday — the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha — which may have saved lives. The earthquake also was deeper below the surface than the 6.9-magnitude temblor last year in waters near Negros Island, also in the central Philippines, that killed nearly 100 people.

Aledel Cuizon, who works for a Finnish company in Cebu, said the quake that caught her in her bedroom sounded like "a huge truck that was approaching and the rumbling sound grew louder as it got closer."

She and her neighbors ran outside, where she saw "the electric concrete poles were swaying like coconut trees." She said it lasted 15-20 seconds.

Cebu city's hospitals quickly evacuated patients in the streets, basketball courts and parks.

Cebu province, about 350 miles south of Manila, has a population of more than 2.6 million people. Cebu is the second largest city after Manila. Nearby Bohol has 1.2 million people and is popular among foreigners because of its beach and island resorts and the Chocolate Hills.

Many roads and bridges were reported damaged, but historic churches dating from the Spanish colonial period suffered the most. Among them is the country's oldest, the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, which lost its bell tower.

A 17th-century limestone church in Loboc town, southwest of Carmen, crumbled to pieces, with nearly half of it reduced to rubble.

Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said that he recalled soldiers from the holiday furlough to respond to the quake. He said it damaged the pier in Tagbilaran, Bohol's provincial capital, and caused some cracks at Cebu's international airport but that navy ships and air force planes could use alternative ports to help out.

Passenger flights resumed later Tuesday after officials checked runways and buildings for damage.

Monday marks the last day of newsstand sales of the International Herald Tribune, the newspaper that was once instrumental in keeping American expatriates up to date on their homeland. On Tuesday, the paper will bear a new name: The International New York Times.

"The paper has changed names a number of times since its founding 126 years ago," reads a story in the newspaper about the change, "but its mission has always remained the same: to provide a global perspective on events and ideas shaping the world."

A slideshow accompanying the Herald's story about the name change includes black-and-white photos of luminaries such as Andy Warhol and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. reading The International Herald Tribune.

For decades, the newspaper was a cultural force, featuring in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises in addition to French director Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (or if you prefer the original title, Bout de Souffle). In that film, actress Jean Seberg is seen hawking it on the street.

For our Newscast unit, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports:

"The New York Times has owned the Herald Tribune for the last decade, and the name change is meant to streamline the company's print and online editions.

"Founded in 1887 by New York Herald publisher Gordon Bennett, the paper aimed to provide American expats living in Paris with news from home, from stock prices to the latest baseball scores.

"Charles Trueheart was the Paris correspondent for The Washington Post in the 1990s when the Post jointly owned the Herald Tribune with The New York Times. He says the Tribune began as a Paris local paper.

"'To me, the Herald Tribune represents a time when Paris truly was the expatriate capital of America,' he said.

"The Herald Tribune is sold in 135 countries."

The federal government shutdown is in its 13th day, with little sign of a budget deal that could win the approval of both houses of Congress, as well as the White House. The debate now includes efforts to avoid a default if the government's debt limit isn't raised by Thursday.

Sunday afternoon, the White House reiterated its position after a phone call with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, saying that she and President Obama agree on the need for "a clean [continuing resolution] and a one-year clean debt limit increase that would prevent a first-ever default of our nation's credit."

The reference to "clean" legislation stems from House Republicans' efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act, the health care system known as Obamacare.

But there were signs Sunday that while health care may have been the key issue in the House debate, in the Senate, which is now leading the discussion, a solution may hinge on the next round of sequestration cuts that take effect in January.

"[Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and Republicans want to continue current spending at $986.7 billion and leave untouched the new round of cuts in January, commonly known as sequester, that would reduce the amount to $967 billion," the AP reports. "Democrats want to figure out a way to undo the reductions, plus a long-term extension of the debt limit increase and a short-term spending bill to reopen the government."

Here's a roundup of what else people are saying about the state of affairs:

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., discussed undoing the sequester cuts — "one of the sticking points," he said — on CBS's Face the Nation:

"The dispute has been how to undo sequester. Republicans want to do it with entitlement cuts, in other words, take entitlement cuts and then put that money into undoing at least part of the sequester. Democrats want to do it with a mix of mandatory cuts, some entitlements, and revenues.

"And so how do you overcome that dilemma? We're not going to overcome it in the next day or two. But if we were to open up the government for a period of time that concluded before the sequester took place — which is Jan. 15 — we could have a whole bunch of discussions.

"And I am more optimistic than most we could come to an agreement. That was one place where the House Republicans and the president were not, you know, at total loggerheads."

On the same program, host Bob Schieffer asked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., how "a freshman senator, less than a year in office, Ted Cruz, was able to lead your party into what some in your party are calling a box canyon here? How did this happen?"

"There was already fertile ground because of those many members of the House who were elected in 2010 on the promise that they would repeal and replace Obamacare," McCain said said.

"And by the way, there were many of us who fought it back to 2009. We still want it changed. But to say that we were going to defund it just after the 2012 elections — every speech I gave all over the country were repeal and replace "Obamacare." Well, we lost. So we still can fight provisions of it. And the irony of all this is the rollout is a fiasco. That should be what's on the front page of newspapers across America."

McCain also criticized the president, saying that Obama hadn't been active enough in looking for solutions to get around the impasse.

"I hope the president will become engaged," McCain said. "Maybe we need to get — maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program," he said, referring to the vice president's ability to broker deals in Congress.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told host Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union: that she believes a deal will come before Thursday's deadline:

"I think you see the fact that Senator Reid, Senator McConnell are now talking and we've gotten to a stage where some of the demands that we've heard from House Republicans who put ideological things on the budget and shut the government down if they didn't defund Obamacare, if they didn't get something on on birth control, that's behind us now."

Later, she added,

"We have situations now where a plane manufacturer in Duluth, Minn., can't get their inventory out of a warehouse to be able to try to sell it overseas, where they do exports all the time, because the Transportation Department shut down and they can't get approvals. We have fishermen off Alaska that are going to lose their market on crab to Russia. It's an unbelievable thing. We have to get this government open again."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tells George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week that any deal should start in the House.

"Here's what I'm worried about: a deal coming out of the Senate that a majority of Republicans can't vote for in the House. That really does compromise Speaker Boehner's leadership. And after all this mess is over, do we really want to compromise John Boehner as leader of the House? I don't think so.

"So I'm not going to vote for any plan that I don't think can get a majority of Republicans in the House — understanding that defunding Obamacare and delaying it for a year is not a realistic possibility now."

Later, Graham said:

"We're in a free-fall as Republicans, but Democrats are not far behind. And after listening to all of us talk now, I probably understand why 60 percent of Americans want to vote all incumbents out.

"To my colleagues in the House on both sides, and to my friends in the Senate: we are ruining both institutions."

How federal judges view the shutdown — particularly after a sequester that took a toll on the judiciary — is the topic of a Politico report today.

Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who writes a blog (called Hercules and the Umpire) apart from his bench duties in Nebraska, wrote last week that "It is time to tell Congress to go to hell. It's the right thing to do."

"Court budgets have essentially been slashed to the bone, with us losing nationwide thousands of judicial employees performing very important tasks...We're being told to furlough where we're already cut to the bone," Judge Richard Roberts, whose district court is near the Capitol, tells Politico.

The website also notes that Judge Amy Berman Jackson rebuffed an attempt to keep a House-related court case moving, despite the shutdown. Here's how she responded to House lawyers who sought to keep their inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious moving along:

"While the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion," Jackson wrote.

And earlier today on NPR's Weekend Edition, you could hear a report on Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black, who hasn't spared the chamber from a bit of scolding during the shutdown.