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Xerox runs 175 call centers around the world. In all, the centers employ more than 50,000 customer service agents who deal with questions about everything from cellphone bills to health insurance.

Teri Morse, who is in charge of recruiting all those people, says the company had a problem: It was hiring people who just weren't a good fit.

"People were in the training classes sharing with us that they weren't right for the position," she says. "You have to deal with a frustrated customer, hang up the phone and move on to the next, and not have to excuse yourself to go to the ladies' room and cry."

So a couple of years ago, Xerox hired a company to help the company do a better job of finding the right people

This company, called Evolv, began collecting lots of data about the people applying for jobs at Xerox call centers.

The applicants had to answer extensive surveys with questions like: "Which word better characterizes you: 'consistent' or 'witty'?"

Another question: "Can you name three pieces of computer hardware?"

Applicants were tested on pattern recognition and multitasking. They had to respond to a challenging customer service call.

Some of these people got hired. Not all of them were a good fit for the job. But the data gave the company a sense of which characteristics predicted that hires would be a good fit — and which didn't. Prior experience in a call center, for instance, didn't really matter.

A retail background was a predictor of success — except for people who worked as cashiers or in restaurants. Those people tended to do worse at the call centers.

With these new techniques, Xerox says it has been able to improve its hiring and significantly reduce turnover at its call centers.

Other companies that parse employee data are finding surprising results. Michael Rosenbaum of Pegged Software, a company that works with hospitals, says one piece of conventional wisdom is flat-out wrong: "We find zero statistically significant correlation between a college degree or a master's degree and success as a software developer."

Of course, using data to drive hiring decisions has its problems. Employers guided by data could wind up skipping over promising candidates. But Barbara Marder of the consulting firm Mercer points out that the way companies hire now has its own flaws. We like to hire people who are like us. People who went to schools we know. People who were referred to us by our friends.

"A lot of these new techniques do have the potential to eliminate biases," Marder says.

All Tech Considered

Why Aren't More Girls Attracted To Physics?

Xerox runs 175 call centers around the world. In all, the centers employ 50,000 customer service agents who deal with questions about everything from cellphone bills to health insurance.

Teri Morse, who is in charge of recruiting all those people, says the company had a problem: It was hiring people who just weren't a good fit.

"People were in the training classes sharing with us that they weren't right for the position," she says. "You have to deal with a frustrated customer, hang up the phone and move on to the next, and not have to excuse yourself to go to the ladies' room and cry."

So a couple of years ago, Xerox hired a company to help the company do a better job of finding the right people

This company, called Evolv, began collecting lots of data about the people applying for jobs at Xerox call centers.

The applicants had to answer extensive surveys with questions like: "Which word better characterizes you: 'consistent' or 'witty'?"

Another question: "Can you name three pieces of computer hardware?"

Applicants were tested on pattern recognition and multitasking. They had to respond to a challenging customer service call.

Some of these people got hired. Not all of them were a good fit for the job. But the data gave the company a sense of which characteristics predicted that hires would be a good fit — and which didn't. Prior experience in a call center, for instance, didn't really matter.

A retail background was a predictor of success — except for people who worked as cashiers or in restaurants. Those people tended to do worse at the call centers.

With these new techniques, Xerox says it has been able to improve its hiring and significantly reduce turnover at its call centers.

Other companies that parse employee data are finding surprising results. Michael Rosenbaum of Pegged Software, a company that works with hospitals, says one piece of conventional wisdom is flat-out wrong: "We find zero statistically significant correlation between a college degree or a master's degree and success as a software developer."

Of course, using data to drive hiring decisions has its problems. Employers guided by data could wind up skipping over promising candidates. But Barbara Marder of the consulting firm Mercer points out that the way companies hire now has its own flaws. We like to hire people who are like us. People who went to schools we know. People who were referred to us by our friends.

"A lot of these new techniques do have the potential to eliminate biases," Marder says.

By a vote of 59-34 the Senate on Friday moved the nomination of Janet Yellen to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve past a key procedural hurdle.

The vote invoked "cloture" — effectively preventing Republicans from filibustering President Obama's nominee.

Next up for Yellen's nomination: A confirmation vote, set for Jan. 6. With the Democratic caucus controlling 55 of the Senate's 100 seats, she's expected to get a majority and then become the first woman to head the central bank.

Yellen, 67, is currently the Fed's vice chairman. As we've written previously, post-confirmation hearing analyses of her recent testimony before the Senate Banking Committee concluded that Fed policy likely wouldn't change much, if at all, should she replace outgoing chairman Ben Bernanke. The central bank is expected to begin gradually reducing the amount of stimulus it's giving the economy, probably as soon as next month.

The Fed's thinking: The economy, which sank into recession in late 2007 and spent the better part of the next 5 years or so either in decline or only growing weakly, has regained some of its strength. That impression was reinforced Friday when the Bureau of Economic Analysis said gross domestic product expanded at a healthy 4.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter.

Bernanke's term expires on Jan. 31.

Update at 10:02 a.m. ET. News Conference Set For 2 P.M. ET:

The White House just announced that the president will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. ET.

So, we've changed our original headline from "If Obama Takes Questions ..." to "When."

Note: The president's sessions with reporters often get started a little late.

Our original post picks up the story:

There some open time on President Obama's schedule today — between a late morning meeting with advisers and an early evening departure for a two-week vacation in Hawaii.

How might he fill that gap? Politico is among the news outlets speculating that the president will endure a "torturous rite of passage ... a year-end press conference."

The topics he would be quizzed about seem fairly obvious. They include: The troubled roll out of HealthCare.gov; the two-year budget deal; Edward Snowden and his leaks about the National Security Agency; the ongoing crisis in Syria; and strained relations with Russia.

As we wait to hear for sure whether the president will or won't be appearing before the White House press corps, we wonder:

What would you ask the president?

The powers-that-be in Washington are typically, though certainly not always, wrestling with weighty issues.

Recently, they've also been debating height – and whether they prefer a stout, familiar dowager, or a taller, sleeker model.

Building heights, people: We're talking building heights in your nation's capital, where for more than a century the 1910 Building Height Act has kept the city's profile low.

Now, with the city's population expanding, and space to build in becoming increasingly scarce, discussion has intensified over whether to allow the city to soar higher.

Why should you care?

If you're one of the millions of Americans who have visited Washington – more than 16.8 million of you made the trek last year alone, a record – you've encountered a city that still looks a lot like the one envisioned by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant in the late 1700s.

L'Enfant's "great plan," says the National Capital Planning Commission, "was conceived on a grand scale, and was influenced by the plans for Paris and Versailles" that emphasized broad avenues providing "long vistas with monumental focal points."

The vacation photos on your smart phones testify to the resilience of that plan, which allows the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and other monuments to shine. And it's the Congress-approved Height Act which, with some exceptions, limits building heights to around 130 feet, that has been key to preserving Washington's unique, ground-hugging skyline.

But critics of the limits say it has wrapped a vibrant, growing city in an 18th century straightjacket. They argue that higher structures, strategically built to preserve historic sight lines, would help accommodate the city's growing residential and business population, and help feed the city's coffers by increasing the tax base.

It has also been noted that politically powerful development and contracting interests would also be served.

But At What Cost?

Congress through the Height Act, and the city through its own zoning regulations, both have a say in what happens to the restrictions, so the debate has been predictably complicated.

Last year, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked the city to look into changes to the restrictions. City planners, with Mayor Vincent Gray's endorsement, came up with a variety of proposals to allow higher buildings, particularly outside the heart of the capital known as "L'Enfant City."

The Washington Post developed a graphic to show what the various proposals, from minimal changes to significant ones, would look like. Fast Company has a more whimsical take; it asked artists to imagine Washington with skyscrapers.

But the powerful National Capital Planning Commission recently nixed the city's proposals, arguing instead that the issue merited further study.

"The character of Washington's historic L'Enfant City – particularly the Monumental Core – establishes the city's iconic image as our capital," change opponents wrote, advocating preservation of the "iconic, horizontal skyline."

Not The Last Of It

During a congressional hearing earlier this month on the proposed Height Act changes, Issa noted the divergence of opinions between city planners and the NCPC and indicated the debate is not over.

"I'm not done looking at this," he said, "or listening, or reading."

Architecture critic Phil Kennicott summed up the mixed feelings many have about the height restrictions, and whether they should be eased.

He argued in a Washington Post column last year when the issue began to bubble that the limits have resulted in a downtown that looks "boxy and dull" and features "long, monotonous" city center corridors with little architectural interest.

Given ethical issues that have plagued city leaders in recent years, he and others have been loath to take Issa up on his offer to turn over some of the height decisions to the city exclusively.

"Theoretically," Kennicott wrote, "small changes to the Height Act could be good for urban density, development, smart growth and transit – if we make them responsibly."

But Washington, he said, where council members' relationships with developers has been the subject of scrutiny, "is not mature enough to step onto this slippery slope without slipping."

So, a dowager D.C. will remain, both beloved and criticized, at least for now.

By a vote of 59-34 the Senate on Friday moved the nomination of Janet Yellen to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve past a key procedural hurdle.

The vote invoked "cloture" — effectively preventing Republicans from filibustering President Obama's nominee.

Next up for Yellen's nomination: A confirmation vote, set for Jan. 6. With the Democratic caucus controlling 55 of the Senate's 100 seats, she's expected to get a majority and then become the first woman to head the central bank.

Yellen, 67, is currently the Fed's vice chairman. As we've written previously, post-confirmation hearing analyses of her recent testimony before the Senate Banking Committee concluded that Fed policy likely wouldn't change much, if at all, should she replace outgoing chairman Ben Bernanke. The central bank is expected to begin gradually reducing the amount of stimulus it's giving the economy, probably as soon as next month.

The Fed's thinking: The economy, which sank into recession in late 2007 and spent the better part of the next 5 years or so either in decline or only growing weakly, has regained some of its strength. That impression was reinforced Friday when the Bureau of Economic Analysis said gross domestic product expanded at a healthy 4.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter.

Bernanke's term expires on Jan. 31.

Politicians in the Dominican Republic have long courted Dominicans in the U.S. That relationship has strengthened further in the last couple years; in 2011, the government established seven representatives for Dominican communities outside of the country.

That influence means activism in the U.S. matters back home.

Writers in the U.S. took notice when the Dominican Republic made a constitutional change in September that retroactively revokes citizenship for thousands living in the country. Those born in the Dominican Republic since 1929 could lose citizenship if they don't have at least one Dominican parent. The ruling has the potential to upend the lives of thousands, mostly people of Haitian descent. Multiple generations could be affected. It could impact everything from marriages to school eligibility, health care and travel.

Haitians, including immigrant laborers who came to work in the sugar cane industry, have long battled discrimination in the Dominican Republic. September's ruling is a far-reaching decision that follows many smaller legal battles and personal stories of injustice.

So as Dominicans of Haitian descent enter a state of legal limbo, Americans with ties to that community are mobilizing. Such action is not unprecedented, but what that looks like is changing. More generations are growing up "American," yet still culturally tied to another home. Travel and citizenship continue to present new opportunities — and legal challenges.

The Issues At Hand

Haitian-American activist Miriam Neptune says immigrant workers' legal rights have been applied unevenly over the years, and their children have run into roadblocks with various requests — a birth certificate denied, a professional license challenged.

As a coalition of accomplished writers in the U.S. — both Haitian and Dominican — noted in an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, the ruling amplifies a persistent racial divide: "Dominican animosity and racial hatred of Haitians dates back to at least 1822, when the Haitian army invaded the Dominican Republic, liberated the slaves and encouraged free blacks from the United States to settle there to make Dominicans 'blacker.' "

Besides writing op-eds in major U.S. newspapers, Haitian- and Dominican-Americans are expressing outrage through community gatherings, holding protests and lectures in New York City.

People in the diaspora can have influence, says Neptune, who made the documentary Birthright Crisis with the group Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. Through remittances, they have some economic power; Dominicans in the U.S. also have political power and social influence, she says.

While the full legal and societal effects of the ruling are yet to be realized (though there have been reports of people leaving the country and deportations), those who have been in the trenches have some pretty good guesses about what's going to happen.

One immigrants' rights group in Manhattan's Washington Heights is reaching out to lawyers, anticipating future asylum cases. Legal cases become more complicated when someone is rendered "stateless," says human rights lawyer Blaine Bookey of Hastings law school in California: Which country are you seeking asylum from?

Neptune says she worries that the random acts of violence that have already happened over the years targeting people of Haitian descent will become even more prevalent.

"If violence were to be perpetrated against these people, they have no safety net," she says. "They have no protection because the government has already disowned them."

These and other concerns have been raised in a number of responses to the ruling. Here are some of the highlights:

A 'Dreamer' By Another Name

In The New York Times on Dec. 13, Harvard assistant professor Lorgia Garcia-Pea — who studies U.S. Latino and Caribbean culture and literature — brings U.S. immigration activism into the discussion. She tells the story of two young women, one 19 and the other 18, whose parents entered their respective countries illegally. One story plays out in the Dominican Republic, the other in the U.S.

"Maria Pierre, according to Dominican Law 168/13, was born a criminal," she writes. "In the United States, someone with a similar history would be a criminal at age 18 ..."

The other young woman came to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 1: "Like Ms. Pierre, who knows no country other than the Dominican Republic, she has no country other than the United States. Like Ms. Pierre, she could be deported to an unfamiliar nation."

Garcia-Pea takes this comparison further, noting the policy ties between the United States government and the Dominican Republic (a topic The Nation and Mother Jones have also covered). "The Dominican Constitutional Court ruling is an extreme version of the American response to the 'immigration problem' and a scary window into a possible future," she says, adding:

"The Dominican Court actions, much like Arizona's law, send the following message: We want our houses cleaned, our food prepared, our fruits picked; but we don't want you here and we do not want you to be our equals."

The Dark History Of Statelessness

The Los Angeles Times op-ed published in November was a collaboration between American journalist and author Mark Kurlansky, Dominican-American novelist and poet Julia Alvarez, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat and Dominican-American writer Junot Daz.

They give a rough timeline of institutionalized racism in the country and draw parallels to slavery, apartheid and the Holocaust ("the first step toward genocide is to strip a people of their right to citizenship").

Along with other activists, they ask the yet-to-be-answered question, "What will happen now to these quarter of a million people who will be stateless?" Consider, it asks, how they will study, work, marry, open bank accounts or even leave the country.

A Dominican Response

Such denouncements of the law have been denounced themselves by writers in the Dominican Republic. Eight such writers have called out Dominican-American Junot Diaz, accusing him of being too far removed from the situation to know the reality on the ground, doubting his "dominicanidad."

For the Dominican news outlet El Caribe, Robert Takata defends the law, pointing to government resources used by immigrants, saying that such a change will allow the country to focus on building itself up.

"The fact that the Dominican Republic is strengthening its institutions and its processes is beneficial for the country itself but also for Haiti," he says.

Creating a new immigration system will ultimately strengthen the country's global standing, Takata argues.

Political Pressure

Other editorials have suggested specific action to pressure the Dominican government.

It's not just New York that has a strong Dominican political contingent: The Providence, R.I., City Council has passed a resolution "that asks Dominican Republic officials to update their Constitution, remove this law, and grant citizenship to all immigrants born in the country." The paper reports that copies of the resolution will be sent to the Dominican ambassador to the U.S. and Dominican President Danilo Medina.

The Council took action because of the state's own sizable Latino population. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, a state senator, a state representative and members of the City Council all have Dominican roots. According to the Providence Journal:

"The resolution says that because Providence has a 'vibrant and politically active Dominican community,' the city is 'uniquely positioned to positively affect this situation created by this egregious ruling.' "

As the Latino population in the U.S. continues to move and change, you're likely to see more seemingly unexpected places like Providence pushing for change abroad — and having the clout to do so.

The U.S. economy expanded at a 4.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter, a significantly faster pace than first thought and its strongest showing since the end of 2011, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Friday.

After each quarter, the agency spends the next three months reporting and revising its figures on gross domestic product growth.

Earlier, BEA said it thought GDP grew at a 3.6 percent annual rate from the end of June through September. That was up from its initial estimate of 2.8 percent.

Now it's saying growth topped 4 percent.

What's led to the upward revisions? "Stronger consumer spending, primarily in the area of health care," The Associated Press reports.

At 4.1 percent, growth was the strongest since the 4.9 percent gain in fourth-quarter 2011. Growth was also up from recent quarters. This year began with weak, 1.1 percent growth in the first quarter and was followed by a 2.5 percent gain in the second.

Looking ahead, MarketWatch writes, economists caution that growth could slow — particularly if companies have trouble selling some of the goods they've recently added to inventories.

There have also been some signs, as we reported Thursday, that one of the economy's stronger sectors in recent months — housing — may be cooling off due to slightly higher mortgage rates and a tight supply of homes.

Still, economist Hugh Johnson tells our Newscast Desk that the GDP report suggests "the economy, based on a lot of different factors, is starting to show some improvement."

Among the memorials to Nelson Mandela put up across India is a billboard in Tamil Nadu that features a photo of actor Morgan Freeman, not the iconic anti-apartheid hero from South Africa who died earlier this month.

The businessman who paid for the sign says it will be replaced with one that has the right image.

Perhaps the billboard's designer got confused because Freeman portrayed Mandela in the 2009 movie Invictus.

As you might expect, a photo of the botched billboard has been whipping around Twitter.

Freeman has inadvertently been part of such a mix-up before. At President Obama's inauguration back in January, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos got famously confused. He thought basketball great Bill Russell was the actor.

Back in ye olden days — say, a decade ago — many holiday shoppers worried about using credit cards to buy gifts online. They feared their information would end up in the hands of computer hackers.

Turns out, walking into a store and swiping a credit card can be plenty risky too.

"There aren't good statistics measuring which one is a greater risk," said Greg Brown, chief technology officer for McAfee, a computer security company. But either option — shopping in real life or online — can let bad guys into your wallet, as Target shoppers learned Thursday.

If you shop through a shady website, "your risk goes up, just as it would if you bought merchandise off the back of a truck," Brown said. "You have to be diligent" about who sees your credit card, he said.

But that's what was so disturbing about the revelation that Target, with nearly 1,800 U.S. stores, suffered a huge theft. The company said that between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, information from 40 million card accounts may have been stolen. The data loss involved customers' names, credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates and three-digit security codes imprinted on the cards. Target said it's working with law enforcement and financial institutions, and has "identified and resolved the issue."

The theft involved cards used to make purchases inside the stores, where lights twinkle and Christmas carols play, not through the company's website.

That freaks out many customers who thought they could make themselves safe, just by refraining from flashing cash or throwing card information out on the Internet.

"I don't carry cash with me because I'm a senior citizen," said Betty Singletary-Flythe, who was at a Target store in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. To shop, she likes to pull out her plastic in person.

All Tech Considered

Outdated Magnetic Strips: How U.S. Credit Card Security Lags

Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Thursday for his third visit this year to the hard-line Stalinist country, saying he will train the country's national basketball team and see his "friend," leader Kim Jong Un.

Rodman's visit comes just a week after Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed for treason. The demise of Jang, a top government official, appears to have been part of an internal purge and has largely ended speculation that the youngish Kim, who became the country's supreme leader after his father's death two years ago, might usher in a kinder, gentler era.

Speaking in Beijing en route to Pyongyang, Rodman said he was "very proud" to call Kim his friend.

"[He] hasn't done anything to put a damper or to say negative things about my country," the ex-NBA player said.

Rodman said he hoped his trip would "open doors for America."

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Publicity materials for the event indicate that Rodman plans to bring 'NBA stars' to play against the North Koreans, though no names of any participating players have been announced."

Time and again, business leaders say the one thing they want out of Washington is more certainty.

But rarely do they get their wish.

In recent years, business owners have found themselves wondering whether their government would default on its debts, shut down national parks, change tax rules, cancel supplier contracts, confirm key leaders at federal agencies or hike interest rates.

Finally on Wednesday, they saw policymakers take two big steps toward a more certain future.

First, the Federal Reserve said it would start to modestly taper its bond-buying stimulus. The changes will start in January — so now you know.

The second move came hours later when the Senate voted 64-36 to complete the first bipartisan budget agreement in years. The $1.01 trillion budget deal resolves many questions about automatic spending cuts and deficit-reduction plans.

That marked "a really big step forward," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities.

Congress "lowered uncertainty about fiscal policy and the Fed lowered uncertainty about monetary policy," he said. As a result, "2014 will probably be a better year" for the economy, he added.

Putting a specific dollar figure on the cost of uncertainty isn't easy. But Silvia says there's no question businesses are less likely to hire when they don't know what is coming out of Washington.

"A lot of companies have government contracts," he noted. If they can't predict what's happening with spending cuts or shutdown threats, they can't hire. And all business leaders wonder: "Are you going to change the tax rules? What is the cost of financing? You can never get rid of all uncertainty, but you can reduce it," he said.

Apparently, investors agreed that greater certainty would be a good thing. They sent stock prices soaring, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising nearly 300 points on Wednesday.

Randall Stephenson, the chief executive officer of AT&T and chairman-elect of Business Roundtable, issued a statement saying Congress' approval of the budget should serve as a foundation for more compromises.

"Our leaders can build upon this agreement by moving forward with comprehensive tax reform, lifting the debt ceiling, reforming immigration and passing updated Trade Promotion Authority legislation to advance U.S. trade agreements," he said.

Business Leaders Decry The Economic Cost Of Uncertainty

(This post was updated at 6:30 p.m. ET)

A panel looking into U.S. electronic surveillance activities in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations has recommended removing the NSA's authority to collect and store Americans' telephone data.

The key recommendation was one of dozens that the panel put forward; however, it did not propose a wholesale scaling back of domestic spying by the National Security Agency and other intelligence branches.

Richard Clarke, a member of the advisory panel, said, "Although we found no evidence of abuse ... the potential for abuse in the future is there, and the technology is certainly there to create a surveillance state in the future."

"We want to put in place more oversight outside of those agencies," he said.

The Associated Press says: "It was not immediately clear whether the proposed changes would limit the scope of the collections." The recommendations, if adopted, would "end the government's systematic collection of logs of all Americans' phone calls, and [keep] those in private hands, 'for queries and data mining' only by court order," the New York Times reports.

The panel also recommended "new criteria that should be met before the United States engages in surveillance of foreign leaders," reports Reuters. "Before spying on such leaders, U.S. officials should determine if there are other ways to obtain the necessary information and weigh the negative effects if the surveillance becomes public, panel members wrote in one of 46 recommendations."

Taken together, The Times says, "the recommendations would remove from the N.S.A.'s hands the authority to conduct many of its operations without review by the president, Congress or the courts. But by themselves, they would terminate few programs."

President Obama ordered the review board after a series of exposes in British and U.S. newspapers detailing leaks by former NSA contractor Snowden, who fled the U.S. and is now living in temporary asylum in Russia. He is not obligated to accept their proposals.

The White House said Wednesday that the president had met with the panel:

"This meeting offered President Obama an opportunity to hear directly from the group's members and discuss the thinking behind the 46 recommendations in their report. The President noted that the group's report represented a consensus view, particularly significant given the broad scope of the members' expertise in counterterrorism, intelligence, oversight, privacy and civil liberties. The President again stated his expectation that, in light of new technologies, the United States use its intelligence collection capabilities in a way that optimally protects our national security while supporting our foreign policy, respecting privacy and civil liberties, maintaining the public trust, and reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosure."

Way back in the 2004 film Anchorman, Ron Burgundy was a local TV-news host in '70s San Diego. Fast-forward to this year's sequel, and that epic haircut is national news: Set in 1980, Anchorman 2 follows Will Ferrell's vain, shallow character as he graduates to a CNN-style cable news network.

"We felt like we needed to jack up the stakes," director and co-writer Adam McKay tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It was just perfect timing that, in '79, '80 — that's when you saw 24-hour news come about. You saw ESPN, MTV, the whole broadcast media [universe] completely changed. And anytime you say the word 'change,' that's a fun world to throw Ron Burgundy into. You know he's not going to handle change well."

Ferrell and McKay, who co-wrote both Anchorman films, started working together on Saturday Night Live. They've collaborated on the films Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, among others, and co-founded the website Funny or Die. They joined Fresh Air to talk about why the sequel took so long — and the meaning of that mustache.

In the U.S., Big Pizza is locked in a battle that's as much a testament to gluttony as it is to food science: How much cheese can you possibly stuff inside of wheat dough?

Earlier this year, Pizza Hut took it to the next level with the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza: a regular pizza ringed with "pockets" oozing a five-cheese blend. (Our friends at Sandwich Monday sampled this addition to the pizza canon during its limited run.) By way of explanation of its existence, Pizza Hut's head chef told Yahoo, "Consumers always want more cheese."

But in Israel, apparently, they don't.

There, the cheese is being voted off the pizza, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported this week. It seems a passionate vegan lobby clamored so loudly for dairy-free pizza that Domino's had to acquiesce. The pizza chain's stores in Israel are now offering a family-size pizza with vegetables and a soy-based topping for about $20.

It all started with a Facebook campaign led by Vegan Friendly, a group that promotes the vegan lifestyle in Israel. Vegan Friendly claims to have a virtual community of 30,000 vegans in Israel, and has stamped hundreds of stores and restaurants with its vegan-friendly seal. The vegans wanted pizza, and they weren't going to stop until they got it.

The Salt

Billboards Slather On The Guilt With Anti-Cheese Campaign

Texas Republicans can't get hold of enough guns.

Greg Abbott, the party's frontrunner for governor, posed for a recent cover of Texas Monthly with a rifle over his shoulder. Nearly every other GOP statewide candidate has put out pictures or videos proudly displaying firearms.

"Perception becomes reality in so many areas," says state Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, a Republican who is running for lieutenant governor. "Voters want to know who you are and what you stand for, and your comfort level with what you're talking about."

It's not just Texas, and it's not just guns.

For all the innovations wrought by technology, politicians around the country — and around the globe — continue to embrace the most basic symbols as a means of getting their points across more powerfully to voters.

"It sends a subtle, or sometimes not so subtle, message about who you are and what's important to you," says David Heller, a Democratic media consultant.

Whether it's holding the flag, wearing a pin or posing alongside individuals of obvious ethnic identity, candidates know that symbol-laden pictures often speak louder than words.

"These sorts of images just stay with us better than text," says Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a political scientist at the University of North Texas. "We're better able to remember something that's striking visually."

Belonging To The Team

Politicians and their handlers understand it makes no sense to announce new policies on education from inside a conference room when they can easily find a classroom that will provide a more telling backdrop.

The same holds true with hospitals, or groups of farmers, or other photo-friendly settings.

"We don't believe for one second that Democrats ought to be ceding the symbolism of the flag or church or any other widely respected institution to the Republicans," Heller says.

Symbols become more prominent at moments of conflict, says David Butz, a Morehead State University psychologist who has studied political imagery.

"Symbols serve as reminders of group membership, that you're part of something, whether you're part of a nation or a subgroup within that nation," Butz says. "In times of war and especially after Sept. 11, flag displays become pervasive."

Photo Ops May Backfire

Nothing seems more phony than a politician trying to appropriate a symbol to which he has no real connection.

"Don't walk around with your wife and kids in every shot if you're running around on the side," says Heller.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani drew Bronx cheers when he announced in Massachusetts that he was rooting for the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 World Series. "Maybe the Devil made him do it," opined the Daily News.

When a politician tries to prove his bona fides through the use of props or symbols and fails to pull it off, such missteps can linger in the mind longer than an errant remark, whether it's Michael Dukakis drawing unflattering comparisons to Snoopy after riding around in a tank during the 1988 presidential race or John Kerry offending Philadelphia sensibilities by asking for Swiss cheese to adorn his cheesesteak hoagie a decade ago.

"Gerald Ford trying to eat a tamale and biting through the corn husk is still in textbooks," says Eshbaugh-Soha, the UNT professor, referring to an infamous 1976 presidential campaign trail gaffe at the Alamo.

Gaming Out The Situation

For that reason, campaign aides and consultants think long and hard about staging photo ops.

President Obama is drawing some criticism from conservative quarters right now for embarking on a long, expensive vacation in Hawaii. Back in 1996, President Bill Clinton went camping in the mountains due to polls that suggested vacationing in tony Martha's Vineyard had come across as elitist.

In an early episode of HBO's Veep, the vice president, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is set to visit a yogurt shop that's owned by "three generations of African Americans," as one aide notes. "There's a narrative built right in."

Her team then debates what flavor she should order. Mint suggests "freshness, trust, traditional values," one character suggests, while swirl hints of "racial harmony, crossing the aisle."

Such decisions are no joke, says Republican media consultant Doug McAuliffe. While corporations spend millions testing and honing images, political campaigns too often make decisions out of hand.

He notes that during the recent campaign for attorney general in Virginia, he and other aides to Mark Obenshain spent considerable time debating what colors to use in graphics. Republicans traditionally favor red, white and blue, McAuliffe notes, but "the colors that appeal to women are blue and green.

"That's the great art of this business," McAuliffe says, "understanding how voters are going to react and how the press is going to run with it."

Target Corp. acknowledged early Thursday that there was a massive security breach of its customers' credit and debit card accounts starting the day before Thanksgiving and extending at least to Dec. 15 — the heart of the holiday shopping season.

"Approximately 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been impacted," the retailer said. The hacking involved not only Target-issued cards but those from other issuers as well. The size of the breach puts it in the upper echelon of recent hackings into consumers' payment accounts. As The Wall Street Journal reminds readers:

"One of the biggest incidents to hit the industry took place in 2007, when thieves stole card numbers and personal data on up to 90 million cards belonging to people who had shopped at stores owned by TJX, parent of T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods and other discount chains.

"In July, federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges in an ongoing investigation of a group of people believed to have stolen more than 160 million credit and debit card numbers from companies including J.C. Penney Co., 7-Eleven, Nasdaq OMX Group, JetBlue Inc. and others over several years."

Michael Steinberg, a top portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors, has been found guilty of insider trading — the latest conviction stemming from a years-long federal investigation into the hedge fund's activities.

Steinberg was found guilty on five counts of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Reuters writes:

"Prosecutors said he traded on confidential information that was passed to him by an employee, who later admitted to swapping illegal tips with friends at other firms."

Time and again, business leaders say the one thing they want out of Washington is more certainty.

But rarely do they get their wish.

In recent years, business owners have found themselves wondering whether their government would default on its debts, shut down national parks, change tax rules, cancel supplier contracts, confirm key leaders at federal agencies or hike interest rates.

Finally on Wednesday, they saw policymakers take two big steps toward a more certain future.

First, the Federal Reserve said it would start to modestly taper its bond-buying stimulus. The changes will start in January — so now you know.

The second move came hours later when the Senate voted 64-36 to complete the first bipartisan budget agreement in years. The $1.01 trillion budget deal resolves many questions about automatic spending cuts and deficit-reduction plans.

That marked "a really big step forward," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities.

Congress "lowered uncertainty about fiscal policy and the Fed lowered uncertainty about monetary policy," he said. As a result, "2014 will probably be a better year" for the economy, he added.

Putting a specific dollar figure on the cost of uncertainty isn't easy. But Silvia says there's no question businesses are less likely to hire when they don't know what is coming out of Washington.

"A lot of companies have government contracts," he noted. If they can't predict what's happening with spending cuts or shutdown threats, they can't hire. And all business leaders wonder: "Are you going to change the tax rules? What is the cost of financing? You can never get rid of all uncertainty, but you can reduce it," he said.

Apparently, investors agreed that greater certainty would be a good thing. They sent stock prices soaring, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising nearly 300 points on Wednesday.

Randall Stephenson, the chief executive officer of AT&T and chairman-elect of Business Roundtable, issued a statement saying Congress' approval of the budget should serve as a foundation for more compromises.

"Our leaders can build upon this agreement by moving forward with comprehensive tax reform, lifting the debt ceiling, reforming immigration and passing updated Trade Promotion Authority legislation to advance U.S. trade agreements," he said.

Business Leaders Decry The Economic Cost Of Uncertainty

More and more people are sending money from places like the United States to places like the Dominican Republic, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center.

Last month, my blogmate Kat Chow wrote about a New Jersey lottery winner named Pedro Quezada who sent a staggering $57 million of his winnings back to the Dominican Republic, where his family lives. Let's ignore the sheer dollar amount for a second to look at the larger global trend that Quezada represents: the growing amount of money flowing from high-income nations to what the World Bank classifies as "middle-income" nations.

Seventy percent of all "remittances" — the money that migrants send back to their countries of origin — goes to middle-income nations like the Dominican Republic, India and Mexico, according to a newly released Pew study that crunched numbers from the World Bank. (The World Bank classifies countries as middle-income if their per capita annual incomes fall between $1,036 and $12,615.) There are a few reasons for this: there are more middle-income nations in the world than before; those nations have more people in them; and more of those people are migrating to wealthier places.

Those immigrants are also heading to new destinations. In 1990, nations like Ukraine and India were among the countries with the world's largest immigrant populations. But they're not in the top 10 today, having been supplanted by places like the United Arab Emirates and Australia. (The United States had a far larger immigrant population than any country in the world, both then and now.)

Secretary of State John Kerry has telephoned a top official in New Delhi to express regret for the strip-search of an Indian diplomat after her arrest last week in New York on charges of visa fraud.

"As a father of two daughters about the same age as [Indian diplomat] Devyani Khobragade, the Secretary empathizes with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms. Khobragade's arrest," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement, relating Kerry's conversation.

"In his conversation with National Security Advisor [Shivshankar] Menon, he expressed his regret, as well as his concern that we not allow this unfortunate public issue to hurt our close and vital relationship with India," Harf added.

Menon had called the Khobragade's treatment "despicable and barbaric."

As NPR's Krishnadev Calamur reported on Tuesday, the 39-year-old Indian diplomat is accused of using false documents to get a work visa for her Manhattan housekeeper.

Reaction in India has been harsh, and the Indian government even removed concrete barriers near the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in an apparent signal of its unhappiness over the situation. India has also withdrawn all airport passes and halted import clearances for the U.S. Embassy.

Australian Network News, quoting Indian media, reported that New Delhi had transferred Khobragade to the United Nations Permanent Mission in New York on Wednesday in a bid to grant her full diplomatic immunity. India's Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm the reports, however.

In a year that featured divisive fights over the budget, health care and presidential nominations, the United States Senate took a break from partisan bickering Tuesday night to get in the Christmas spirit.

A total of 65 senators — 42 Democrats and 23 Republicans — took part in a gift exchange after the day's final votes were tallied. As NPR congressional correspondent Tamara Keith reported on Morning Edition Wednesday, "Secret Santa" is taking shape as something of a tradition in the upper chamber, as this is third year in a row the event has taken place.

Here are some of the stocking stuffers that were swapped this year:

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, who organized this year's Secret Santa event, came in well below the $15 limit for his gift. He personally made a map of the United States — which he can draw from memory — for Sen. Joe Donnelly, noting important moments in the Indiana Democrat's life.

He was the man with "the nose of a blood hound," as one wine critic once put it.

Rudy Kurniawan was once the toast of the fine wine world, renowned for his ability to find some of the rarest — and priciest — wines in the world.

He was also, prosecutors alleged, a fraud who duped some of the country's wealthiest wine purchasers with counterfeit bottles of wine that he manufactured in his home laboratory.

And on Wednesday, a Manhattan jury agreed, finding Kurniawan guilty of fraud in connection with selling counterfeit wines and of defrauding a finance company.

The sensational trial began Dec. 9 in a Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have argued that Kurniawan used his exceptional palate to blend together younger wines with older French wines of poor vintage. He then slapped counterfeit labels on the bottles, prosecutors alleged, and passed them off as some of the rarest wines on Earth. When these bottles turned up at auctions, the excitement of coming across them often overshadowed bidders' skepticism of whether they were the real thing.

Among those who believed they were duped is billionaire industrialist Bill Koch — yes, a brother to those Kochs — who said he spent $2.1 million on 219 bottles of Kurniawan's wine.

Born in Indonesia but residing in California, Kurniawan began turning heads in the fine wine scene around 2002, winning over sommeliers, wine critics and auctioneers with his palate and his generosity. He often footed the bill at restaurants, where he poured thousands of dollars of wine from his personal collection for his friends.

"I've never known him not to bring a bottle," testified Truly Hardy, director of auction operations for Acker Merrall & Condit.

Around 2004, prosecutors say, Kurniawan began passing off his fake wines. Last week, both Koch and Laurent Ponsot of top Burgundy winemaker Domaine Ponsot, testified that they had long suspected that Kurniawan's wares weren't quite what they seemed. Ponsot told jurors that he became suspicious of Kurniawan in 2008, after the collector consigned to auction dozens of bottles of Domaine Ponsot wine of a vintage that had never existed.

i i

Older Two-Way readers will remember the monthly Golden Fleece Awards from former Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., who spotlighted ways the federal government was wasting money.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has picked up that mantle in recent years with his annual Wastebook.

On Tuesday, Coburn released his 2013 edition, where he points to:

— "Obamacare [and] the failure of its $319 million website."

— The $2 billion or so "to provide back pay to federal employees" who were furloughed during the 16-day partial government shutdown.

— The destruction of $7 billion worth of vehicles and other military equipment in Afghanistan.

— A slew of smaller expenditures that he says appear to have been of dubious value. They include: $10 million spent by the Army National Guard on a "soldier of steel" promotional campaigned tied to this year's Superman movie; nearly $1 million shelled out by the National Endowment of the Humanities to "explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs and Internet fan fiction;" and the grounding of a "mega-blimp" project after nearly $300 million was expended.

According to Coburn, his staff came up with "examples of wasteful and low-priority spending totaling more than $28 billion."

That is, for sure, a large number. But it's also about 0.7 percent of the $3.8 trillion the federal government spent for the year.

The first of four current or former BP employees charged with crimes related to the 2010 Gulf oil spill has been found guilty of obstructing justice because he deleted text messages from his cellphone that contained information about the worst offshore spill in the nation's history.

NPR's Debbie Elliott tells our Newscast Desk that a federal jury in New Orleans convicted 52-year-old Kurt Mix on Wednesday.

Mix, she says, was involved in BP's failed attempt to stop the out-of-control well after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 rig workers. In one of the deleted messages, Mix estimated a much higher rate of oil flow than BP had publicly acknowledged.

The jury acquitted Mix on a second, similar count. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

As The Associated Press writes, prosecutors argued that Mix "was trying to destroy evidence when he deleted hundreds of text messages to and from a supervisor and a BP contractor. Mix's indictment also accused him of deleting two voicemails from the same two people."

The wire service adds that "Mix's lawyers said their client didn't hide anything. He preserved other records containing the same information contained in the deleted messages, they told jurors."

Mix left BP in 2011.

Talk about a fall:

"Prices of virtual currency bitcoin fell 20% Wednesday and are now down more than 50% from their record high hit two weeks ago amid worries that China is moving to block the purchase and use of the currency by its citizens," The Wall Street Journal writes.

Bitcoin's big slide began two weeks ago, as we reported, when Chinese authorities told banks there that they couldn't trade in the currency. Officials were worried, NPR's Frank Langfitt reported, about a lack of control over bitcoins that "makes it easier to launder money and finance terrorism."

Wednesday, MarketWatch writes, "BTC China, the biggest bitcoin exchange in that country," announced it has "temporarily stopped" accepting yuan deposits into bitcoin accounts. The news followed reports that "the People's Bank of China had a meeting on Monday with about 10 major third-party payment processors and ordered them to stop working with bitcoin exchanges."

The result: "On Wednesday, bitcoin prices fell another 20 percent to $550.02, down more than 50% from its high of $1,147.25 two weeks ago," the Journal says.

And according to MarketWatch, "some in the Twittersphere [are] reading the last rites for the virtual currency that has captured the world's attention."

At Slate, economics correspondent Matthew Yglesias writes about why so many Chinese have been eager to use bitcoin: "The ability of Yuan-rich savers to turn their money into dollars or other foreign currency is sharply circumscribed. ... By using a Bitcoin exchange as an intermediary, a Chinese person could sell Yuan and a non-Chinese person could buy them."

But, he concludes, "as of this morning it looks like party is over."

Two decades ago, the strongest critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement were members of labor unions. They warned that the trade deal would mean the loss of manufacturing jobs to Mexico and lower wages for U.S. workers.

Today, 20 years since NAFTA's passage, unions feel as strongly as ever that the deal was a bad idea.

Back in 1993, the labor movement was mobilized against the creation of a massive free-trade zone including the U.S., Canada and Mexico. There were union-backed protests around the U.S. — at the Capitol in Washington and especially in the industrial Midwest and in big manufacturing states.

That fall in Lansing, Mich., Ruben Burks of the United Auto Workers addressed a big crowd. "Do we care about our jobs?" he said to cheers. "Do we care about our brothers and sisters in Mexico and Canada? Brothers and sisters, we're going to stop this NAFTA — you're darn right we are."

Except they didn't. President Clinton was in his first year in the White House, having been elected with help from traditional Democrats — including union members. But he disagreed with labor on NAFTA.

Unions predicted disaster for U.S. workers: a flood of high-wage American factory jobs moving to Mexico. In a radio address that fall, Clinton spoke to that worry.

"Well, if we don't pass NAFTA, that could still be true. The lower wages and the lower cost of production will still be there," he said. "But if we do pass it, it means dramatically increased sales of American products made right here in America."

So during the NAFTA debate, labor unions squared off against a Democratic president. That wasn't necessarily a rare thing, but Harley Shaiken, a labor analyst at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that the reach of the controversy made it unusual.

"Trade debates from World War II up to NAFTA tended to be rather sedate. Important issues, but left to the experts," Shaiken says. But NAFTA, he says, "put the debate onto Main Street, into union halls, into community groups as well as into Congress."

And since NAFTA, trade has regularly been a contentious topic, prompting debate and protests. "Globalization" has become a term both praised and scorned.

More NPR Coverage On NAFTA

20 Years Of NAFTA

Economists Toast 20 Years Of NAFTA; Critics Sit Out The Party

Doctors talking up drugs to other doctors has been quite lucrative for pharmaceutical companies — and the physicians who moonlight as their salesmen.

Drugmakers learned long ago that deputized doctors were effective pitchmen. A doctor paid by a company to give a dinner speech or to chat over lunch with colleagues can go a long way toward changing their prescribing habits.

But now drug giant GlaxoSmithKline says it's going to stop paying doctors to speak about drugs or diseases to people with the power to write prescriptions or influence those who do. Doctors will still be able to earn money from Glaxo through research collaborations and consulting agreements.

The company will also stop paying sales reps based on sales targets. Historically, Glaxo and other companies have tied reps' compensation to changes in the prescriptions written by doctors they call on.

The changes "are designed to bring greater clarity and confidence that whenever we talk to a doctor, nurse or other prescriber, it is patients' interests that always come first," Glaxo CEO Andrew Witty said in a statement.

Glaxo says the new approach will be implemented in all the countries it operates in by early 2016.

Some of the changes, such as the shift in sales rep pay, got rolling in the U.S. a few years ago. In 2011, Deirdre Connelly, Glaxo's U.S. president, talked about decoupling rep pay from prescriptions in a speech that acknowledged that "our industry lost its way."

Why is Glaxo making these changes now? Well, the company has been rocked by allegations of ethical missteps and worse. There's been a bribery investigation in China. And last year, a settlement of alleged health care fraud involving the marketing of some drugs in the U.S. The settlement included a restrictive corporate integrity agreement with the federal government.

Shots - Health News

Before The Prescription, Ask About Your Doctor's Finances

What if you discovered the last name you've lived with since birth is fake?

That's what happened in many Chinese-American families who first came to the U.S. before World War II, when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese laborers from legally entering the country.

The law, formally repealed by Congress 70 years ago Tuesday, prompted tens of thousands of Chinese to use forged papers to enter the U.S. illegally.

Today, their descendants are still trying to uncover the truth.

Paper Sons And Daughters

William Wong says that even as a child, he knew Wong was his last name on paper only; his real family name is Gee.

"We knew when we were growing up in Oakland's Chinatown that we were a Gee family," says Wong, 72, a retired journalist in Piedmont, Calif.

“ Coming to America was a game. And the Chinese knew they were playing a game, and the Americans knew they were playing a game.

If your holiday shopping trip includes a stop at the bookstore, you might consider adding audiobooks to your gift list. And this year, as you slip on headphones to sample the offerings, what you hear might surprise you.

According to Robin Whitten, the founder and editor of AudioFile magazine, the genre has far surpassed the conventions of the taped readings of yore.

More Recommendations

NPR's Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2013's Great Reads

Santa Clara County, Calif., is home to Google, Apple and eBay. So, it's no surprise that the median household income was $91,000 a year in 2012, one of the highest in the country. Yet fully a third of the households in the county don't earn enough for basic living expenses, even when they work at some of those big tech companies.

Take Manny Cardenas, a security guard at Google who lives in low-income housing in San Jose and commutes regularly to Google's sprawling corporate campus in Mountain View. Cardenas, a stocky, soft spoken 25-year-old, has been working as a part-time security guard at the search giant for the last year and a half.

Most of the time he guards a parking lot during special events at the nearby Shoreline Amphitheater.

Cardenas says his job is to "make sure none of the people were parking in Google's parking place." He says he usually stands in the lot for eight hours and gets a lunch break. That gives him a chance to dive into Google's famous free gourmet food buffet; he would like to bring a few snacks home for his 5-year-old daughter, but as a contract worker here he can't.

"I see people taking to-go boxes," he says. "They give you to-go boxes if you ask for them, but we weren't allowed to do that."

Cardenas says it is strange being on Google's campus watching the regular employees drive around on company supplied bikes and scooters and taking food home.

"You feel like you're different," he says. "Even though you're working in the same place, you're still like an outsider. And it's weird because you're actually protecting these people."

Cardenas earns $16 an hour, has no benefits and never gets more than 30 hours a week. In a good month, he brings home about $1,400. If Cardenas didn't live with his mother he says he probably wouldn't have a roof over his head.

Sometimes Cardenas says he doesn't get much notice if his employer wants him to work a shift, and because he shares custody of his daughter Zoe with her mother, and he picks his her up from school four days a week, that can mean turning down money.

"If they call me for a shift on the same day I have to pick up my daughter I can't do that shift, and therefore I'm not going to get paid," he says. "So it's very difficult and to then be a parent."

Sometimes Cardenas says he doesn't make enough money to feed himself and his daughter, which feels strange working at a place like Google.
"Like I was thinking, 'Wow! If I was just one of them. I wouldn't need to do any of that.' They get to eat whatever they want, however they want."

Cardenas has had to rely on a food pantry a few times, Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose. According to its executive director, Poncho Guevera, it is common to see others like Cardenas here.

Last year, 38 percent of the jobs created in Silicon Valley paid $18 an hour, Guevera says. "It sounds like a considerable salary," he says. "But it's really not enough to be able to make ends."

It's expensive to live in Santa Clara County. According to the nonprofit Working Partnership USA, a single person with no dependents needs to make $16.50 an hour, plus benefits, just to have the basics of living.

Cardenas works for a security contractor called SIS, which has contracts with big tech companies including Apple, Twitter, eBay and Google. According to SIS more than half its workers are part time with no benefits. NPR reached out to Google, Apple and Twitter about pay for their security guards and none responded.

Cardenas tried to bring in a union to SIS. There are some unionized security firms in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and those companies provide benefits and paid time off.

Cardenas finally finished college this semester. On Monday he is starting a new full time job at a nonprofit. But he says many security guards are much older and it would be hard for them to find another job.

"I feel like I was one of the lucky ones to have help from my mother," Cardenas says. "These other people don't have that and sometimes I think about if I were in their position it [would] be like 10 times harder."

Cardenas says he hopes he doesn't have to return to the food pantry for help, though he would like to go back to help others.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Director: Adam McKay

Genre: Comedy

Running Time: 119 minutes

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, drug use, language and comic violence.

With: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell

As we near the end of 2013, NPR is taking a look at the numbers that tell the story of this year. Numbers that, if you really understand them, give insight into the world we're living in, right now. Over the next two weeks, you'll hear the stories behind these numbers, which range from zero to 1 trillion.

Today's figure: Half a million. That's how many people there are who likely qualify but have yet to apply for the Obama administration's program known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to avoid deportation and to get a work permit for two years.

The DACA program was announced in 2012. For months after, undocumented young people — most of whom were Latino — applied by the hundreds of thousands. It wasn't the DREAM Act they were pushing Congress for, but it was a temporary substitute. That flood has now slowed to a trickle. Eligible young people are no longer coming forward in large numbers on their own

"They're out there. We just wish we had more resources to go out and do DACA-specific outreach," says Amanda Chavez Doupe, who often meets with legal residents who want to become citizens. The community outreach worker for Catholic Charities in Los Angeles always tells groups about deferred action, too.

Adam Luna of Own the Dream says the biggest challenge is identifying potential applicants and overcoming misinformation about eligibility.

"People who didn't go to college think that they don't qualify. People who are young, and young parents of 14- [and] 15-year-olds don't realize that people that young can apply," Luna says.

The Washington-based Migration Policy Institute estimates a total of 1.1 million people are eligible for DACA. Of those, the largest group, by far, were born in Mexico. They, along with other Latin Americans, also make up the largest percentage of people who have already applied.

Other groups have not been as organized, especially people brought illegally as children from many Asian countries. Only 16 percent of eligible Filipinos and just 9 percent of Chinese who don't have authorization to be in the U.S. have applied for DACA. Tiffany Panlilio, who works with the organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice, says part of the problem is cultural — organizers have to overcome a social stigma among Filipinos over admitting that they're undocumented.

Code Switch

After Drop, Number Of Immigrants Illegally In U.S. Levels Off

At the moment, Washington fiscal policy is a good news, bad news story.

The good news is that the budget agreement, overwhelmingly passed by the House last week in a bipartisan vote, is likely to be approved by the Senate this week. That takes another costly government shutdown off the table.

The bad news? Another debt ceiling fight, with all the attendant risks of a U.S. government default, appears to be right around the corner.

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who was lead GOP negotiator on the pending budget deal, raised the specter of another debt ceiling standoff over the weekend when he said on Fox News Sunday: "We don't want nothing out of this debt limit. We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight."

Notice that he said "fight." He's not mincing words.

That's consistent with what Ryan has said before. During the government shutdown, when Republicans were seeking an exit from that morass, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the debt ceiling was where the fight over spending cuts should be waged. That was the case he made to fellow Republican House members as well.

All the while, he rejected President Obama's repeatedly stated position that there would be no negotiating over the debt ceiling, saying other presidents — including Obama — had set precedents by engaging in debt ceiling horse trading.

It's unlikely Ryan will back down from this position. One reason he was able to sell the present two-year budget deal to the Republican conference was that he had credibility as a fiscal conservative who has pushed hard for entitlement reform and against tax increase.

Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, is still thought to have ambitions for either the White House or House speakership. For that reason, it's unlikely he would go out of his way to antagonize conservatives.

That places him on a collision course with the White House, where press secretary Jay Carney on Monday yet again repeated that the president doesn't intend to negotiate over the debt ceiling.

"We have not and will not change our position, nor do we expect Republicans to travel down that road again, because one, so many of them have said they won't, including those who endorsed the approach in October, and two, because that approach and pursuit was so disastrous for them and for the economy and for the middle class," Carney said.

"So, you know, I'm not going to anticipate a decision by Republicans to do that again, to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, because we don't believe they — obviously, that they should, and nor do we believe that they will. The president's position has not and will not change."

So there it is: Ryan says there will be no clean debt ceiling bill if Republicans have anything to say about it, and the administration says negotiations over the debt ceiling are a nonstarter. It's a perfect recipe for another default scare early in a midterm election year, sometime in March to be somewhat more precise.

That happens to be right about when the 2014 primary season gets underway. Which means many Republicans will be under maximum grass-roots pressure to vote against a clean debt ceiling.

So if the two-year budget agreement represented a break in the partisan clouds that have long hung over the nation's capital, it is likely to be only the briefest of openings.

She's not the first woman to head a global corporation.

Ginni Rometty runs IBM, and Indra Nooyi heads PepsiCo. Don't forget Ursula Burns at Xerox and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard. There's Marissa Mayer at Yahoo.

Still, when Mary Barra emerged on Tuesday as the new chief executive of General Motors, the announcement felt historic. Next month, the 51-year-old daughter of a GM factory worker will succeed retiring Dan Akerson as leader of the biggest U.S. automaker.

The automotive sphere has been seen as a guy thing since the first oil-splattered cars started rolling down dirt roads in the late 1800s. Even now in Saudi Arabia, women risk violence or arrest just for sitting behind the wheel of a car.

But in Detroit, Barra leapt ahead of men such as Mark Reuss, president of GM North America; Dan Ammann, chief financial officer; and Steve Girsky, vice chairman.

"It is remarkable because the auto industry has always been such a male-dominated industry," says Jerry Jasinowski, an economist and past president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Just 1 in 5 workers in the auto industry is a woman, and a mere 4 percent of CEOs at all major U.S. companies are female. So Barra's promotion is a big deal. On the other hand, auto analysts say her elevation should not come as a surprise to anyone at GM because her career path has been so steady.

At the moment, Washington fiscal policy is a good news, bad news story.

The good news is that the budget agreement, overwhelmingly passed by the House last week in a bipartisan vote, is likely to be approved by the Senate this week. That takes another costly government shutdown off the table.

The bad news? Another debt ceiling fight, with all the attendant risks of a U.S. government default, appears to be right around the corner.

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who was lead GOP negotiator on the pending budget deal, raised the specter of another debt ceiling standoff over the weekend when he said on Fox News Sunday: "We don't want nothing out of this debt limit. We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight."

Notice that he said "fight." He's not mincing words.

That's consistent with what Ryan has said before. During the government shutdown, when Republicans were seeking an exit from that morass, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the debt ceiling was where the fight over spending cuts should be waged. That was the case he made to fellow Republican House members as well.

All the while, he rejected President Obama's repeatedly stated position that there would be no negotiating over the debt ceiling, saying other presidents — including Obama — had set precedents by engaging in debt ceiling horse trading.

It's unlikely Ryan will back down from this position. One reason he was able to sell the present two-year budget deal to the Republican conference was that he had credibility as a fiscal conservative who has pushed hard for entitlement reform and against tax increase.

Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, is still thought to have ambitions for either the White House or House speakership. For that reason, it's unlikely he would go out of his way to antagonize conservatives.

That places him on a collision course with the White House, where press secretary Jay Carney on Monday yet again repeated that the president doesn't intend to negotiate over the debt ceiling.

"We have not and will not change our position, nor do we expect Republicans to travel down that road again, because one, so many of them have said they won't, including those who endorsed the approach in October, and two, because that approach and pursuit was so disastrous for them and for the economy and for the middle class," Carney said.

"So, you know, I'm not going to anticipate a decision by Republicans to do that again, to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, because we don't believe they — obviously, that they should, and nor do we believe that they will. The president's position has not and will not change."

So there it is: Ryan says there will be no clean debt ceiling bill if Republicans have anything to say about it, and the administration says negotiations over the debt ceiling are a nonstarter. It's a perfect recipe for another default scare early in a midterm election year, sometime in March to be somewhat more precise.

That happens to be right about when the 2014 primary season gets underway. Which means many Republicans will be under maximum grass-roots pressure to vote against a clean debt ceiling.

So if the two-year budget agreement represented a break in the partisan clouds that have long hung over the nation's capital, it is likely to be only the briefest of openings.

The fact that you know nothing much about the sea, and cannot tell a freighter from a futtock (part of a wooden hull), is beside the point.

For you, listening to the BBC's Shipping Forecast every night is about something else entirely.

You're paying homage to an institution that is as much part of the jigsaw that makes up Britain's national culture as drizzle and warm beer.

Why does the Shipping Forecast mean so much to so many in the U.K.?

For one, the weather still actually matters for many coastal communities, such as the tiny island of Lundy off southwest England, home to 28 people. There's the Tyne in the northeast — one of the 31 sea areas that feature in the forecast — once a maritime hub for Britain's mighty coal and shipbuilding industries where the "Geordies" are now striving to find a new role for their community. And in the ancient southern seaside town of Hastings, the same families have been fishing for centuries.

But for many Britons, the Shipping Forecast is much more significant than a weather bulletin for the fishermen and sailors who make their living from the oceans.

A very large number of regular listeners are landlubbers. They are, however, fiercely loyal.

BBC Radio 4 broadcasts the Shipping Forecast four times a day, but the late-night bulletin — shortly before 1 a.m. — possesses a particular mystique. It's not uncommon for listeners to ask for the music that introduces it — "Sailing By" — to be played at their funerals.

A few years back, when someone suggested changing the bulletin's timing by just 12 minutes, there were angry speeches in Parliament and indignant newspaper editorials.

Listeners brandishing banners demonstrated outside the BBC's London headquarters. The idea was eventually abandoned.

A Mysterious, And Inspiring, Appeal

Exactly why the Shipping Forecast is held in such affectionate esteem by the British public is a topic of considerable discussion in the U.K.

Many people compare the forecast with listening to poetry. The BBC's Arlene Fleming is one of the presenters of the forecast: "It is poetry! ... There is a natural rhythm to it," she says, "just like the sea."

This may help explain why the Shipping Forecast has enthused so many artists over the years.

It has inspired poetry by neighboring Ireland's late, great Seamus Heaney and also Britain's Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy. It arises in art; it's mentioned in TV shows, movies and songs — such as Blur's "This is a Low" and Thomas Dolby's "Windpower."

A snippet from the bulletin cropped up in Danny Boyle's widely acclaimed opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Comedians aplenty have tried their hands at parodies of the forecast.

Peter Jefferson presented the Shipping Forecast on the BBC's airwaves for 40 years.

In his book And Now The Shipping Forecast, Jefferson offers this explanation: "There is something in many of us that likes the certainties of life and is averse to change.

"The Shipping Forecast is a comfort, a given, a sign that maybe, just maybe, everything is alright with the world after all — until the next day dawns, anyway — but that's a few hours of delicious sleep away! Time for the febrile mind to repair itself, rest, chill out, relax and take gentle stock of things."

"It's very similar to the early days of needle exchange in the U.S., where there was a lot of opposition," explains Laura Thomas with the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance. "Pretty much all of that opposition has now faded away and a lot of people acknowledge they were wrong to oppose it: that it didn't increase drug use, that it didn't do a lot of things that people feared. But at the same time, there's a very human cost to a slow learning curve."

So far, Copenhagen's two DCRs (a second one opened in August) have hosted 1,800 unique users, including people who smoke and inject heroin and cocaine.

Rasmus Christansen, manager at one of the Copenhagen DCRs, explains how the process works. On their first visit, drug users register anonymously, using a nickname and the year of birth.

"But it's not like East German border control to get in," he says. "We want people to get [into the rooms] pretty fast ... so we can get drug consumption out of the streets."

Inside, to the left, behind a huge window, is cluster of smokers with improvised pipes, enveloped in haze. To the right is a long, stainless steel table where several people sit, injecting themselves with heroin, cocaine or both. Some finish and leave quietly. A few slump over the table, asleep. One man gets up and paces frantically back and forth, swearing and shouting. In the middle of it all, sits a nurse in street clothes, calmly taking in the scene.

Many economists and investors think there's a good chance that at the end of their two-day meeting that begins Tuesday, Fed policymakers will announce they'll begin reducing their $85 billion dollar monthly stimulus, their third round of quantitative easing or QE3.

The analysts think recent economic data, like a drop in the unemployment rate to 7 percent and a budget deal in Washington, have brightened the outlook for the economy enough that the Fed can pull back.

But there's another troubling number that could make Fed policymakers stand pat, says University of Chicago professor and former Fed governor Randy Kroszner. That number is the inflation rate.

"The inflation being far below where the Fed wants it to be is a major reason why they may hesitate," Kroszner says.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder points out that, strangely, during a period when the Fed has pumped trillions into the financial system, inflation has drifted lower.

"Inflation has in fact fallen on average over the last five years," Blinder says.

The most recent measurement shows that core inflation in a basket of consumer goods through the twelve months ending in October was running at just 1.7 percent. That's below the Fed's target of 2.0 percent, and it's been drifting downward this year.

Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Fed, says this falling inflation is an extraordinary development given the trillions the Fed has pumped into the financial system. Economics textbooks say that's a recipe for inflation.

Show Me The Money

So what happened to that $85 billion a month — a trillion dollars total — that the Fed has pumped into the financial system over the past year?

"It all of it got bottled up in the banks and essentially none of it ... got lent out," Blinder says.

Blinder says that the banks are the key to making quantitative easing work. It would work by the Fed announcing it wants to buy $85 billion each month in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Blinder says banks would then line up to sell them, and the Fed pays the banks by putting money in their reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve.

"You can think of these as the deposits that banks hold at the Federal Reserve, which is a bank for them," he says.

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Retiring General Motors CEO Dan Akerson made a case Monday for how losing should feel like winning — at least for U.S. taxpayers who lost more than $10 billion in a GM bailout.

Akerson, who spoke at a National Press Club luncheon, said that if the federal government had allowed GM to collapse, taxpayers would have lost far more than $10 billion. For example, the Center for Automotive Research estimated the loss to federal coffers in 2009 and 2010 would have hit more than $37 billion, including the cost of lost tax revenues, unemployment insurance and other public assistance for the jobless.

And the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp., a federal agency, would have gotten saddled with GM's $26 billion pension shortfall.

Moreover, there's the matter of fairness to private investors, he said. When GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, it wiped out its old shareholders. After it reorganized, the company attracted new investors, who ponied up money based on the deal that was cut during the bailout process.

If the company were to now turn around and tell those shareholders that, since their bet paid off, they must give $10 billion to taxpayers, that would be unfair.

"I can tell you there would be shareholder suits that would be difficult to defend," said Akerson, 65, who is stepping down next month.

Akerson became CEO in 2010, not long after GM emerged from its 39 days in bankruptcy. He returned the company to the public stock market in November 2010. Since then, GM shares have nearly doubled. Earlier this month, the government sold the last of its GM stake, but never did get back about $10 billion of the bailout money.

So Akerson's argument boils down to this: new shareholders took a risk – and fair and square – they deserve the rewards.

Tech giants aren't on the best terms with the Obama administration lately, with the NSA's surveillance revelations getting more widespread by the day. But a lot of big tech names have agreed to visit the White House for a chat. The White House just announced a who's who of tech leaders are coming to Washington tomorrow to meet with President Barack Obama and his team about the tech disaster that was HealthCare.gov, how government can better deliver IT and of course, national security.

According to the White House, here are the bigwigs expected to attend:

· Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

· Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter

· Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy

· Reed Hastings, Co-Founder & CEO, Netflix

· Drew Houston, Founder & CEO, Dropbox

· Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo!

· Burke Norton, Chief Legal Officer, Salesforce

· Mark Pincus, Founder, Chief Product Officer & Chairman, Zynga

· Shervin Pishevar, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sherpa Global

· Brian Roberts, Chairman & CEO, Comcast

· Erika Rottenberg, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, LinkedIn

· Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

· Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

· Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Microsoft

· Randall Stephenson, Chairman & CEO, AT&T

No word on whether these tech leaders will do as cabinet members do for the State of the Union and have one group member stay back in case calamity strikes the room while they're all in it.

Writer-director Spike Jonze's latest movie, called simply Her, is about a lonely man who falls in love ... with his operating system. The two lovers — Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) — never meet face to face. In fact Samantha has no face, not even an avatar.

Like Jonze's earlier films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Her is odd and ambitious. But despite the high concept, Jonze insists his movie is really just an old-fashioned love story. He spoke with NPR's Audie Cornish about the unique challenges of creating a film where one of the two main characters is just a voice, as well as about the wide range of reactions people have had to the story. And he pushed back at one of Cornish's questions about the movie's larger themes.

"This movie is, to me, so emotional," Jonze says. "When you're asking these questions that are more intellectual ... that's only half the story. And I think you're editing half of your reaction out."

There's no such thing as too much practice when it comes to brain surgery.

But it's hard for beginner neurosurgeons to get real hands-on experience. Most residents learn by watching and assisting experienced surgeons.

Newbies can practice on cadavers or use simulators, of course. But neither of those alternatives is quite the same as operating on a real, live patient, for better and for worse.

That's why 3-D printers might help the doctors do a better job. At the University of Malaya in Malaysia, neurosurgeons are using 3-D printers to make realistic skulls and brains that residents can use to hone their skills.

The models combine different materials to mimic the feel of human bone, membrane and tissue. Each practice patient is made to order from the scans of an actual patient, so students can try the same procedures they see senior surgeons perform.

Dr. Vicknes Waran, one of the neurosurgeons working on the project, says he prefers these 3-D models over cadavers for teaching.

"In some parts of the world, it's difficult to get cadavers," Waran tells Shots. Plus it's hard to find a cadaver with the types of tumors and illnesses that the residents are being trained to treat. The best part, Waran says, is that students can practice on the models as many times as they need to in order to completely master a technique.

Once an institution invests in a 3-D printer, Waran says these anatomical models are fairly cheap to make. The face and head cost around $2,000, but those parts are reusable. Each 3-D brain costs $600 to print and is usually only used once.

Waran and colleagues from the University of Oxford and the University of Portsmouth published a paper about this training technique in the Journal of Neurosurgery last week.

But they're not the only ones using 3-D printed models to train residents. At the University of Florida, neurosurgeons have combined a similar 3-D printed model with a visual simulator.

Kansas City residents are proud of their barbecue, their Chiefs football, their national champion soccer team and Boulevard Brewing, a local brewery that has built up quite a local following since its launch in the late 1980s.

"It's our thing. You know, like la cosa nostra, it's our thing," says Char O'Hara, a Kansas City, Mo., resident who, like thousands of other local 20-somethings, grew up with Boulevard.

But soon, it will be a Belgian thing, too. Any day now, Belgian beer maker Duvel is expected to finalize its purchase of the Kansas City brewery.

The deal to buy Boulevard Brewing says a lot about the transformation of the American craft beer industry — and just how much the world now values a product with a firm sense of place.

O'Hara is a little leery about Duvel taking over her brand. "These people came from the outside, and took something that's native to us, and it's kind of a bummer," she says. "It makes the future uncertain."

But John McDonald, Boulevard Brewing's founder, sees things differently. "I think a lot of people were kind of shocked at the news, and I kind of knew that would happen."

Lately, it seems as if news about Sriracha has been as ubiquitous as the much-loved hot sauce itself.

First, there was the panic over a potential shortage, after a judge ordered the California factory where Sriracha is made to partially shut down, as our friends on the Two-Way blog have reported.

Now, this red hot culinary phenomenon is starring in its own documentary.

Released this past week on Vimeo, Sriracha is a 33-minute movie from filmmaker Griffin Hammond that traces the origins of the incredibly popular condiment, a pureed blend of garlic, red jalapenos, sugar, salt and vinegar that has addicted many a palate.

"Sriracha" documentary trailer from Griffin Hammond on Vimeo.

South Korean Kim Dong-hwan, a professional StarCraft II player, has received a special U.S. visa, normally reserved for baseball players and other athletes.

The five-year P-1A visa given to the video game player last week is for "internationally recognized athletes." This follows another visa given to a Canadian League of Legends player earlier this summer.

The move could bring more professional gamers to the U.S. and grow an already booming industry. This October, the final match for the game League of Legends almost packed the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers, with more than 13,000 people. The combined prize money for the three StarCraft II world championship series next year is $1.6 million.

For the past three years, Kim (aka "viOLet") has been traveling back and forth between the U.S. and South Korea under a visa waiver to compete in live matches, says Andrew Tomlinson, who is Kim's manager. Kim lived at Tomlinson's apartment when not competing.

At live matches, Kim would play against his opponent inside a soundproof glass booth. Thousands of spectators watch these tournaments in person, along with professional commentators narrating for millions of online viewers. But last fall, Kim was told that he had been coming in and out of the country so much that he couldn't come back without a visa.

That's a big problem, says Marcus Graham, a senior manager at the gaming media site Twitch and a competitive gamer for 14 years.

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The role earned him his first Oscar nomination, though he lost to Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. That established something of a pattern in O'Toole's career. He would be nominated for eight Oscars, but never won until he was awarded an honorary one in 2003.

"Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot," O'Toole said as he accepted it. "I have my very own Oscar now, until death us do part."

O'Toole said that the magic of the movies entranced him as a child. Born in Ireland to a wandering bookmaker and raised in England, he didn't start acting until after a two-year stint in the Royal Navy.

It was there that he decided to chase his childhood dream. He described the experience on NPR's All Things Considered after the release of the movie Venus in 2006.

"I mentioned that I wasn't particularly satisfied with what I was doing in civilian life, which was working for a newspaper," he recalled. "And the skipper said to me one night, have you any unanswered calls inside you that you don't understand or can't qualify? I said, well, yes, I do. I quite fancy myself either as a poet or an actor."

From there he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and started a career on stage that would carry him to London and eventually, to the silver screen.
In 2012, 50 years after his launch into stardom and a month before his 80th birthday, O'Toole announced his retirement from acting.

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Kansas citizens are proud of their barbecue, their Chiefs football, their national champion soccer team and Boulevard Brewing, a Kansas City brewery that's built up quite a local following since its launch in the late 1980s.

"It's our thing. You know, like la cosa nostra, it's our thing," says Char O'Hara, a Kansan resident who, like thousands of other local 20-somethings, grew up with Boulevard.

But soon, it will be a Belgian thing, too. Any day now, Belgian beer maker Duvel is expected to finalize its purchase of the Kansas City brewery.

The deal to buy Boulevard Brewing says a lot about the transformation of the American craft beer industry — and just how much the world now values a product with a firm sense of place.

O'Hara is a little leery about Duvel taking over her brand. "These people came from the outside, and took something that's native to us, and it's kind of a bummer," she says. "It makes the future uncertain."

But John McDonald, Boulevard Brewing's founder, sees things differently. "I think a lot of people were kind of shocked at the news, and I kind of knew that would happen."

On the origins of the station church pilgrimage

The idea of a station church goes back to the very earliest days of Christianity in Rome, when Christians would gather to celebrate Mass at the tombs of their martyrs. And in the first millennium of Christianity, the pope would celebrate Mass each day during Lent at one of a series of designated station churches in Rome.

On one of the most striking churches on the historic pathway

Sts. Cosmas and Damian is a church near the Coliseum in Rome. It's right above the Roman Forum. It's dedicated to the memory of two brothers — doctors, traditionally thought to be from the East, perhaps from Persia. And what's particularly striking about it is the mosaic in the apse. When I first saw it some 20 years ago, I thought, "Wow, that looks like art deco." And I said to the person I was with, "Was that done in the 1920s? Because it looks like something that would be in the Chrysler building." And he said, "No, you're only off by about 1,300 years — it was done in the early sixth century."

Enlarge image i

Kansas citizens are proud of their barbecue, their Chiefs football, their national champion soccer team and Boulevard Brewing, a Kansas City brewery that's built up quite a local following since its launch in the late 1980s.

"It's our thing. You know, like la cosa nostra, it's our thing," says Char O'Hara, a Kansan resident who, like thousands of other local 20-somethings, grew up with Boulevard.

But soon, it will be a Belgian thing, too. Any day now, Belgian beer maker Duvel is expected to finalize its purchase of the Kansas City brewery.

The deal to buy Boulevard Brewing says a lot about the transformation of the American craft beer industry — and just how much the world now values a product with a firm sense of place.

O'Hara is a little leery about Duvel taking over her brand. "These people came from the outside, and took something that's native to us, and it's kind of a bummer," she says. "It makes the future uncertain."

But John McDonald, Boulevard Brewing's founder, sees things differently. "I think a lot of people were kind of shocked at the news, and I kind of knew that would happen."

Ireland was one of the countries hardest hit by Europe's debt crisis. On Sunday, it passed a big milestone when the nation became the first country to formally exit the bailout program funded by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.

After three years of the bailout program, it isn't hard to find signs of improvement in Ireland and of an economy coming back from the dead.

"Don't get me wrong, it's been bad in a lot of ways, but there's a silver lining in every cloud," says Conor Mulhall, a 41-year-old father of three.

Mulhall used to be in construction management. After the collapse of the Irish economy, he moved to England. But recently, he moved back to Ireland to take a job managing another business.

"It brings you to new stages in your life," Mulhall says. "I'm now involved in the organic food business, so I never would have been if the construction thing had kept going, and there's a lot of people like me."

Mulhall is working at a food fair near Dublin's financial district.

These days, people like him are beginning to find work again. Ireland's unemployment rate has fallen from more than 15 percent to 12.5 percent. The economy is growing again, albeit slowly.

"We're still below where we were at the top of our inflated boom, so we need 10 years of solid growth, but we'll do it year by year," says Michael Noonan, Ireland's finance minister.

Noonan says that big foreign companies, including a lot of U.S. tech firms like Google, are once again investing in Ireland. The government can also borrow at a rate not much higher than countries like England and Belgium. Tourism and agriculture are rebounding as well.

Noonan says the exit from the European bailout program is one more step forward. The program forced the country to undergo steep budget cuts and tax increases in exchange for loans.

"Leaving the program means we control our own affairs," he says. "And an Irish government elected by the Irish people can make all future decisions concerning our country."

But there's little joy in Ireland over the exit, perhaps because the country still has a long way to go. The economic crisis was caused by a property bubble that popped in 2008, and the severe budget cuts that followed left the government with few resources to help.

"If you walk around the main streets of our cities, there are people sleeping in the streets because the homeless shelters are all crowded," says Robin Hanan, who directs the Irish branch of the European Anti-Poverty Network. "A lot of people lost their jobs and their houses."

Even though things are getting better, economist Colm McCarthy of University College Dublin says the recovery is tentative.

"It's very fragile and the economy is very dependent on external demand; it's a very small country," McCarthy says. "It exports a lot of what's produced here and a lot of what's consumed is imported."

McCarthy says Ireland's fate is very much up to its export markets — mainly England, the United States and continental Europe — and none of them are thriving. There are other problems as well.

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