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The online magazine Ozy covers people, places and trends on the horizon. Co-founder Carlos Watson joins All Things Considered regularly to tell us about the site's latest feature stories.

This week, Watson talks with guest host Kelly McEvers about a rising star who has made hip-hop serious business, and the advertising tactics that life insurance companies are using to attract young people.

"He's an incredible young Yale graduate named Zack O'Malley Greenburg who writes for Forbes magazine. But instead of writing kind of complicated stories on hedge funds, [he] has spent all of his time covering what he calls the kings of hip-hop. He writes an incredible annual digest of whose been most successful. And whether he writes about Ludacris or Jay-Z, whether he's talking about Beyonce's recent success or what Drake is doing, he's actually turned music — and fun music — into serious business. And it's become one of the most popular portions of the magazine."

Read 'Zack O'Malley Greenburg Is All About The Benjamins' On Ozy.com

U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has acknowledged that the first day of face-to-face talks between representatives of Syria's government and the opposition coalition failed to yield anything in the way of results.

"We haven't achieved much," Brahimi said following the day's discussions. "But, we are continuing."

"The situation is very difficult and very, very complicated, and we are moving not in steps, but half-steps," he said.

The Associated Press described the talks, which are set to resume on Sunday, as "painstakingly choreographed."

The New York Times reports:

"The opposing teams sat across from each other at a U-shaped table and made eye contact but did not speak, listening as [Brahimi], the international mediator for Syria, spoke about the agenda for the talks, said Obeida Nahas, a member of the opposition delegation."

"The session lasted about 30 minutes, and the delegations left through separate doors to avoid contact, planning to resume in the afternoon to discuss the first order of business: a potential cease-fire in the central Syrian city of Homs to allow aid deliveries to reach areas long blockaded by the government."

"One is on the left and one on right and they face one another and they talk to each other — through me, to one another," he said. "This is what happens in civilized discussions."

Last year, there were more than two dozen shootings on or near college campuses in the United States. This past Tuesday, that number went up, with the fatal shooting of a student at Purdue University. Then yesterday, a fatal shooting at South Carolina State University. It will, of course, tick up again.

On the other side of the world, in Afghanistan, two university colleagues went out for a Friday night meal in Kabul. Before they could finish dinner, they were killed in a suicide bombing followed by a hail of bullets.

We are outraged at the attack, and at the senseless loss of life. We're safer here in America, we tell ourselves, from targeted violence.

And we know that isn't true.

Because increasingly, our halls of higher learning, and the football fields and parking lots and plazas, are targets. Whether at Santa Monica College, where five people were gunned down, or the University of Arkansas or Maryland, all over the country we find ourselves vulnerable to gun violence. But the issue of campus security is a contested topic.

Colorado's legislature is trying to reinstate a ban to make colleges gun-free.

Yet some states, such as Georgia and Pennsylvania, have been considering whether to make it easier to bring guns to college. Legislatures in Texas and North Carolina have passed laws that allow students who are licensed gun owners to keep handguns in their cars.

In Florida, a group calling itself Florida Carry is contesting state restrictions against keeping guns on campus.

Florida Carry has been advancing its cause in the courts. It has successfully argued that Florida students have the right to stash guns in their cars. This year, the group is pushing for students to be able to keep guns in their dormitories.

Somehow it's not the college experience I remember. Pizza, beer and bullets. Quite the combination: everyone armed and pulling all-nighters.

In an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the former provost of Idaho State University Gary Olson said, "there is no recorded incident in which a victim, or spectator, of a violent crime on a campus has prevented that crime by brandishing a weapon."

And most surveys show that students and faculties think having guns on campus is a terrible idea.

Perhaps it's not about knowing who the bad guys are, but knowing ourselves, which offers our best protection. Which is, after all, the fundamental mission of higher learning. Those kinds of insights can't really be learned at gunpoint.

One of the dangers of writing a book in this style is that the different little stand-alone sections are inevitably pitted against one another. Some work better than others. A sudden quote from Simone Weil, "Attention without object is a supreme form of prayer," seemed a little bewildering. And a questionnaire about sparrows, a page after the revelation that the couple had lost their baby, made me want to say: let's get back to our characters now.

But there were other times when I was more willing to be taken far afield, such as in a little story about the scientist Carl Sagan's infidelity. Because, in fact, infidelity comes into play in Dept. of Speculation. The husband strays, and the ensuing drama has a held-breath suspense to it.

And the novel is often really funny. Offill refers to the Internet meme of the cat saying, "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" And the payoff comes later, after men are flirting with the wife, who muses to herself, "I CAN HAS BOYFRIEND?"

Offill has successfully met the challenge she seems to have given herself: write only what needs to be written, and nothing more. No excess, no flab. And do it in a series of bulletins, fortune-cookie commentary, mordant observations, lyrical phrasing. And through these often disparate and disconnected means, tell the story of the fragile nature of anyone's domestic life.

Even as Microsoft promotes Windows 8, its latest operating system, Windows XP is still the second-most used OS on non-mobile computers, according to Net Applications web analytics. Debuting in 2001, XP lasted through three new Microsoft operating systems and the growth of mobile technology.

And in a move that seems to lower the incentive for stragglers to move on already, Microsoft announced last week that it will continue to provide anti-malware updates for XP until July 2015. That's more than a year after XP support officially ends April 8.

But the company faces a challenge as it herds its users away from the 12-year-old operating system: With so many computing options on the market, customers leaving XP behind might end up leaving Microsoft behind, too.

What The End Means For You

First, a brief explanation of what "ending support" means: XP won't stop working in April — if you have it on your computer now, you'll still have it on your computer then. But the machine won't receive new security updates. Even with Microsoft's anti-malware updates, it will still be much more vulnerable to attacks.

"The data could be erased, the data could be changed, people could take over those machines to use for spam or other elicit purposes," says Michael Silver, a tech analyst at Gartner.

Still On XP?

If you're reluctant to get rid of an ancient-but-functioning computer, here are some steps you can take to protect it:

Back up documents and photos. In a worst-case scenario, you at least won't lose important digital files.

Delete critical data. A malicious attack could find information like credit card and Social Security numbers.

Update anti-malware software. Whether you're using Microsoft's version — which will be updated through July 2015 — or another company's, anti-malware software will be able to patch up some, but not all, security holes.

Limit email use. And for the love of all that is holy, don't open suspicious attachments.

Disconnect your PC from the Internet if you don't need it online.

Upgrade your PC. Unfortunately, most old computers running XP don't have the physical requirements to do this.

Microsoft only condones upgrading or getting a new computer altogether. Underlying vulnerability in the XP system will not be patched with new security updates, said a company statement. "PCs running Windows XP after April 8, 2014, should not be considered to be truly protected."

You can find Microsoft's official tips here.

Each year's Grammy Awards offer their own questions and controversies based on how the nominations pan out, but there are a few points of contention that come up year after year. There's the difference between Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year. How a song can be eligible for nomination this year when the album it came from was nominated last year (or vice versa). The precise eligibility requirements for Best New Artist, a category that can be (and has been) won by performers several albums into their careers.

There's a simple solution for at least one of those: Abolish the Best New Artist category altogether.

Of course, there are those who would call for the abolition of the entire enterprise. But even accepting the framework and mission of the Grammys at face value, Best New Artist is an odd duck. It's predictive at best (and the only explicitly predictive award, at that) and patronizing at worst (and the only explicitly patronizing award, at that).

Take, for example, the nearly annual discussion of the "Best New Artist curse." This year's model seems to have focused on "Royals" singer Lorde, who has received four nominations in major categories like Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Album but not, alas, Best New Artist.

In arguing that Lorde should be thankful for that snub, Forbes's Ruth Blatt takes exactly two sentences to make a comparison that hits on the exact problem with the category: Jon Landau's famous review stating, "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Just as that review set expectations that Springsteen was apprehensive about living up to, argues Blatt, so should Lorde be relieved that she can avoid the spotlight that a potential Best New Artist win would bestow upon her.

This, like the more general cataloguing of previous winners and assessment of the worthiness (or un-) of their subsequent careers, is frankly madness. It is based on the understanding that, alone amongst the 82 Grammys being given out this year, Best New Artist is awarded not for the work of the past year but for the work the performer will be doing in years to come. It professes to honor an artist now for what they will do in the future.

At the same time, Best New Artist carries with it the less-generous whiff of being a Grammy with training wheels. Grouping together performers purely on the basis of when their careers began (or, as the case often is, took off) is the recording industry equivalent of setting aside a kids' table at its biggest annual event. It creates a minor-league award that makes the implicit argument that the nominees aren't strong enough on their own amongst more established artists.

That's insulting to the people the National Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences is claiming to honor, all the more so when the nominees are also up for other awards (as are Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Kacey Musgraves and Ed Sheeran this year). In those cases, a Best New Artist nomination is redundant. For artists without any other nominations (like poor James Blake), it's a consolation prize, a condescending pat on the back that says, "Good job... for a rookie."

And that's saying nothing of the many unique ways that Best New Artist offers NARAS to embarrass itself (beyond the usual, anyway). Lauryn Hill won in 1999 as a solo artist, two years after winning two Grammys (including Best Rap Album) as a member of the Fugees. 2001 winner Shelby Lynne accepted her award by saying, "13 years and six albums to get here." And by the time Fountains Of Wayne were nominated (but didn't win) in 2004 on the occasion of their first and only top 40 hit, they'd already released three albums (two on a major label) and had been the subject of a feature in People magazine.

So in the end, you have the most poorly-defined of all the Grammy categories (itself quite an accomplishment) that salutes performers for things that haven't happened yet — when, that is, it's not implying that the nominees aren't quite ready for the big time. Best New Artist may date back to the second-ever Grammys, but plenty of categories have been discontinued since then. The Oscars retired their Special Juvenile Award in 1961 (allowing Patty Duke to win in a straightforward Best Supporting Actress race two years later), and the Golden Globes dropped the variously titled Promising Newcomer/Best Acting Debut/New Star award after 1983. It's time the Grammys followed suit.

(And Song Of The Year is for the composition, while Record Of The Year goes to the recording proper. So now we've cleared that up.)

Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss won't be seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate this year, and his decision to bow out has eight other Republicans, including three congressmen, scrambling for his seat.

Democrats, meanwhile, have their hopes pinned on the daughter of a well-known and widely admired former senator. It's turned a Senate race Republicans hoped would be a cakewalk into something far less predictable.

Georgia has gone from a bastion of conservative Democrats to a place where, for the first time since Reconstruction, all statewide offices are now held by Republicans. Still, Merle Black, who teaches Southern politics at Emory University, says going into this Senate race, neither Democrats nor Republicans in Georgia have a majority.

"The issue for the Republicans is whether they can come out united behind a candidate who can put together the different factions of the Republican Party and also appeal to independents," Black says. "And right now, that's a big open question."

The Most Conservative Person In The Room

In a high school auditorium deep in southern Georgia last weekend, state GOP chairman John Padgett kicked off the first debate among the Republicans vying for Chambliss' Senate seat. A nearly all-white crowd of several hundred showed up for the debate, as did seven of the eight GOP contenders. Moderator Martha Zoller, a conservative radio talk show host, said this slew of Republican rivals have their work cut out for them.

"Whoever comes out of this primary is going to be bruised, bloodied and broke," Zoller said.

The debate largely boiled down to those candidates trying to out-conservative one another.

"I am a proven conservative, with a track record of actually getting the job done," said Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state.

Not to be outdone was 11-term Rep. Jack Kingston.

"I'm a consistent conservative with an A-plus NRA rating," Kingston said.

Rep. Paul Broun one-upped the others.

"I'm the only true conservative with a proven consistent record of that conservatism," Broun said.

Rep. Phil Gingrey, the other member of Congress who's running, skipped the debate for a fundraiser. He's made repealing the Affordable Care Act his campaign's centerpiece; so has Broun.

And Kingston, who's considered more moderate than the other two congressmen, called Obamacare "an absolute assault on the American Dream."

"That's why I have voted 40 times to repeal it," Kingston said.

That's not good enough, though, for Broun, who chides his House colleague in a recent Web ad.

Kingston has also caught some grief for suggesting last month that low-income children do something in exchange for free school lunches, such as paying a dime or a nickel, or "maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria."

That prompted the NBC TV affiliate in Savannah to highlight some of Kingston's own free lunches. They reported that Kingston and his staff expensed $4,200 in meals for business purposes to his congressional office.

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Two weeks before the Winter Olympics, Russian security forces are reportedly searching for potential suicide bombers, at least one of whom may already be in the host city of Sochi.

The suspects are thought to be linked to Islamist militants who are fighting to throw off Russian control and create a fundamentalist Muslim state in Russia's North Caucasus Mountains.

Police have been circulating leaflets at hotels in Sochi, warning about women who may be part of a terrorist plot.

They are known as "black widows," women sent to carry out suicide bombings in revenge for husbands or family members killed by security forces.

It's a tactic that's been used before, to devastating effect, by a Chechen rebel leader named Doku Umarov.

Last June, Umarov released a video that showed him in a forest, flanked by jihadi fighters. He called on Islamist militants to do everything in their power to wreck the Olympics, which he called "satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors."

Umarov has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly suicide attacks in the past, including bombings in Moscow in 2010 and 2011 that killed more than 70 people.

Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security issues, says that Umarov is an important influence on other jihadists in the region, "but his actual authority within the insurgent movement is exceedingly limited. Essentially, it's symbolic more than anything else."

Galeotti, a professor at New York University, says that's because the insurgency is composed of autonomous cells scattered across a rugged area that stretches for hundreds of miles.

It makes the rebel network hard to combat, because each cell plans and carries out its own operations.

Earlier this week, an insurgent group based in Dagestan posted an online video showing two men in explosive vests, saying that unless Russian President Vladimir Putin canceled the Winter Games, they were preparing a "present" for him and the Olympic visitors.

The video also claims that the two men pictured were the ones who carried out a pair of suicide bombings that killed 34 people last month in the southern Russian city of Volgograd.

Although it's only a little more than 400 miles from Sochi, Volgograd is considered to be outside the North Caucasus, a reminder that the insurgents have the power to strike terror beyond their region.

Some analysts say that terror may have only been a secondary purpose of the attacks.

"The biggest fear is that these attacks in Volgograd might be some sort of a diversion tactics," says Andrei Soldatov, editor-in-chief of Agentura.ru, a website that acts as a watchdog on the Russian security services. "Before every big terrorist attacks in Russia, militants used diversions. They organized small terrorist attacks in some other regions."

It was only after the suicide attacks focused intense attention on Volgograd that reports emerged that a "black widow" might have infiltrated the security cordon around Sochi.

A leaflet that has been distributed in the Olympic city shows a mug shot of a woman with dark, impassive eyes.

She wears a Muslim headscarf.

The leaflet says she is Ruzanna Ibragimova, the 22-year-old widow of an insurgent, and that she has been spotted in recent days in central Sochi.

Galeotti points out that once a suicide bomber has been prepared, he or she must be must be used fairly quickly.

"Suicide bombers are actually quite fragile weapons," he says. "These people have been groomed, they have been brought to a pitch, where they're ready to give their life. And once they're at that pitch, you can't then put them on the shelf until you're ready."

Even if there is no bomber, and even if the Olympics go off without a hitch, the terrorists may have already succeeded, to some degree, in disrupting the games.

Russian officials acknowledged last week that, so far, only about 70 percent of the tickets for the Olympics have been sold.

As if to underscore GOP efforts at outreach to female voters, a breakout session of the Republican National Committee's latest "rising stars" at the group's winter meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C., entirely comprised young women.

There were Alex Smith, a law school student who is the first woman elected national chair of the College Republicans in its 120-year history; Chelsi P. Henry, an African-American conservative activist who grew up on welfare; Kimberly Yee, an Asian-American state senator from Arizona; Monica Youngblood, a Latina New Mexico state representative; and Alison Howard, communications director of the Concerned Women for America.

The GOP's own officials have increasingly faulted its leadership for lacking the kind of diversity and positive message that would attract women, younger voters and minorities. And almost as though he was there to prove the need for such new voices, Thursday's RNC luncheon speaker — radio host, 2008 presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — caused an Internet ruckus with this controversial comment:

"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it."

Since the Korean War, which ended in 1953, no American has been imprisoned in North Korea as long as 45-year-old Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae.

Bae was arrested in November 2012 and later convicted for supposedly attempting to overthrow the state through a plot called Operation Jericho, described in videotaped sermons.

On Monday, at a rare press conference in Pyongyang, Bae called for American diplomats to help secure his release, a development signaling the regime could be open to talks with Washington.

Washington has offered to send U.S. Ambassador Robert King to Pyongyang, Voice of America has reported, citing an anonymous White House official.

"Obama has been persistent with his hands-off policy towards North Korea," said Leonid Petrov, a researcher at Australian National University. "Kim is using Bae as a decoy for the dialogue. Now all eyes are on Obama. The ball is in his court."

Sending an envoy to plea for the release of an American is a familiar scenario for the U.S. government. In recent years, a handful of U.S. citizens have been detained or imprisoned in the garrison state, some under circumstances similar to Bae's: Korean-American missionaries accused of proselytizing and, as authorities say, undercutting North Korean sovereignty.

Here are five other Americans who've landed behind bars — and managed to win freedom.

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A cease-fire deal has been reached between the government of the nascent country of South Sudan and rebel forces to end five weeks of fighting that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

NPR's Gregory Warner, reporting from Bukavu, in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, says the agreement signed in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday for a country-wide cease-fire marks a breakthrough in peace talks that stalled for weeks over the fate of 11 political prisoners under house arrest by the South Sudanese government.

The government and the rebels agreed to an amnesty for the prisoners, but they still must first stand trial.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton says that the cessation of hostilities should allow the world's youngest nation to catch its breath, in a bid to restore peace. She says:

"Five weeks of warfare erupted in mid-December in South Sudan, after tension and a political tug-of-war between President Salva Kiir and his erstwhile deputy, Riek Machar."

"After weeks of stop-start negotiations between the two sides, brokered by the regional mediators the signing ceremony is the first real evidence of progress."

Binyavanga Wainaina is one of Kenya's best-known writers. Now he is one of the most prominent figures in Africa to announce that he's gay.

Wainaina did so on Saturday, his 43rd birthday, in a piece posted on several websites, called, "I Am A Homosexual, Mum."

The title comes from a conversation he imagined, but did not have, with his mother back in 2000, when she was dying in a Kenyan hospital from complications related to diabetes.

In reality, Wainaina was living in South Africa at the time and did not make it back to Kenya before his mother died. He never told her he was gay.

But in his piece, he writes, "I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five."

He followed that up with a series of YouTube videos, called "We Must Free Our Imaginations," posted on Tuesday.

His declaration comes at a time when a number of African countries are enacting strict anti-gay laws on a continent that has long discriminated against gays.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya. Uganda and Nigeria recently passed legislation that has been widely criticized by human rights groups. In Nigeria, the president signed the measure into law. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni refused to sign the law, citing technical reasons, then went on to call homosexuality an "abnormality."

Speaking on NPR's Tell Me More on Thursday, Wainaina said he decided to come out because, "I wanted to generate a conversation among Africans."

"If you're ready to share, you are ready to share," he said. "So I was ready to share."

In 2011, Wainaina's father was dying. And as with his mother, Wainaina regretted not telling him about being gay.

"Sometimes I feel like your parents are hostage to you much more than you are hostage to them, and so, the fear of sort of, wounding them, for me, I think, was a big thing," he said. "But then, this is the opportunity to test their hearts the way I didn't give myself the opportunity to test their hearts."

Wainaina also said he contemplated coming out while working on a memoir called One Day I Will Write About This Place (published in the U.S. by Grey Wolf Press). He didn't do so, but with all the attention focused on the recent laws in Uganda and Nigeria, he felt the time was right.

"While finishing (the book), I'd really kind of contemplated talking about being gay, and then I thought, in that kind of, sort of, writerly way 'Oh my God, I don't think my language is ready or lyrical enough to start talking about' that sort of thing. So I was finding reasons and excuses for a long time, but I think sometimes you're just ready. So I feel like I kind of did this because there's a lot going on in Nigeria with the new laws and so on, but really, in a certain way, by the time I was hitting that 'send' button to my friends to put it up on platforms, I felt, this is one of the most successfully put together and honest pieces I've ever written."

And so I thought, "You know what? This is going to have to work on my terms, which [are]: I want to live alone, and I'll be true, I'll be faithful, I'll see you every day, we'll have dinner together every night, but I don't want to get married and I don't want to live together." It just made perfect sense. And I kept saying, "But relationships don't all have to go the same way." And I really believe that. Every relationship doesn't have to follow the same formula. ...

It was good, I loved it. It was genius. And there were times where Karl and I, in that 11 years, would have problems and I would think, "It's so much better to have a fight and say, 'I want to go home,' instead of have a fight and say, 'I don't want to live with you anymore.'" I mean it really gave us both a tremendous amount of space. Karl needed time to get over being divorced and I needed time because I had psychological problems and didn't want to live with anybody ever again, and it really gave us a very healthy, solid foundation for what is now our marriage.

On how things changed when, after 11 years, they finally got married and moved in together

It changed in two big ways. One was that after we got married, Karl loved me more and that was amazing. There was something about getting married that allowed Karl to say, "OK ... I've been holding out on you. There's like a secret storeroom of extra love, but because we weren't married I was always afraid that you were going to leave." And so that was a wonderful bonus. He was just relaxed because he always really wanted to get married.

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If you don't live in the Northeast, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey may sound like just another obscure government agency. But it's suddenly been in the spotlight because of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge.

The agency's name is a bit of an understatement. The Port Authority manages the biggest port on the East Coast, along with three major airports, the key bridges and tunnels across the Hudson River, bus and rail lines, and even the World Trade Center site.

The Port Authority controls a pot of money for long-range construction projects that's bigger than the annual budget of many states. The name is a holdover from the way the Port Authority was created.

Birth Of Giant

Back in 1920, business at the port of New York was bustling, but there was a problem. The port is spread across two states: New Jersey on one side of the Hudson River, and New York on the other. And the two states could not agree on how to manage it.

"The Port Authority was to be truly a bi-state effort," says Jameson Doig, who wrote a book about the Port Authority called Empire on the Hudson.

Doig says it was designed so that the governors of each state would appoint half of the Port Authority's commissioners. That was supposed to prevent local politicians from putting their friends in charge, and to encourage interstate cooperation.

"That was the key element, to not have [a] tug of war between the two states," he says, "but rather ... to improve the transportation and the economic development of the New York-New Jersey region as a whole."

And for a while, Doig says, that's pretty much how it worked.

Crossing The Streams (Of Money)

The Port Authority built the George Washington Bridge — the one at the heart of the current scandal — on time and under budget when it opened to traffic in 1931. For most of the 20th century, Doig says, the agency was a model of government competence and cooperation, even as it got bigger and drifted further from its original mission.

But in the 1990s, Republican New York Gov. George Pataki began the tradition of appointing political allies to positions of power at the Port Authority.

"What it did clearly in hindsight was it started to create two separate agencies in one building," says Thomas Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association in New York.

Since the 1990s, Wright says Port Authority commissioners from both sides of the Hudson have gotten more calculating about how they steer billions of dollars in spending back to their own states.

"They took the budget [and] they split it down the middle, essentially," he says. "So for every dollar invested in one side of the river, a dollar has to be invested in the other side of the river. It's absurd."

That process has only accelerated since Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took office. Since then, the agency has moved even further from its bi-state roots. Like spending billions of Port Authority dollars, for example, to rebuild the Pulaski Skyway, a road that never leaves New Jersey.

Doig says Christie appointed political allies to dozens of positions.

"When Chris Christie became governor, he added a new passion, you might say, to have patronage appointees at the agency," Doig says.

Doig is also critical of Cuomo for, he says, all but ignoring the Port Authority.

Two of Christie's top appointees — David Wildstein and Bill Baroni — have resigned over their roles in the plan to close toll lanes at the George Washington Bridge last year, apparently as retribution for a political enemy.

Whenever that scandal dies down, Wright hopes the conversation will turn to reform.

"You go back to the original intention of the Port Authority; it was fiscal accountability with political independence," he says. "And we've got the worst of both worlds right now."

But any changes will require dialogue across the Hudson River, and that is exactly what's been missing at the Port Authority for a quite a while.

The credit and debit card data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus compromised at least 70 million American consumers, and analysts say even more of us are at risk. That's because the technology we use to swipe for our purchases — magnetic stripes on the backs of cards — isn't hard for a skilled fraudster to hack.

"It's totally unprotected and it's static, so it's the same data that's read every single time. It's just about the worst security that you can put into a payment system," says Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Gartner, a firm retailers hire to assess their cybersecurity gaps.

Sophisticated cyberthieves got consumer data during the holiday season breaches by injecting a virus into Target's card payment terminals. From there, the bad guys systematically captured the information found on every card swiped, from Thanksgiving through just before Christmas.

"We've seen hacks as big as this before, in fact we've seen bigger, but what we haven't seen before is something this sophisticated and well organized," Litan says. The data from the cards was turned around and sold on an underground market, where thieves can recreate credit cards using the stolen data and use them to make fraudulent purchases, she says.

Industry leaders know magnetic stripes are outdated and easily exploitable. The rest of the world moved onto a more secure, harder-to-hack payment system based on chip-enabled cards — chip and PIN. Chip-enabled cards are more secure because the data on the chip is hidden behind encryption. So even if criminals intercept what's on it, they can't re-use it.

"It's standardized all over the world and used all over the world, except in the U.S. and perhaps one country in Africa," Litan says.

It's a reality that NPR's new London correspondent, Ari Shapiro, learned quickly when he moved overseas a few weeks ago.

"Basically my American credit card is like a second-class citizen here," Shapiro says. "I can't use the self-checkout line at the supermarket, I can't use the automated machine in the subway system or the post office. Some merchants charge me an extra charge just because of my American credit card."

Shapiro's new British pal, Ben Thompson, explains how he pays for purchases without swiping — or signing.

"I put the card in the machine. The retailer, the cashier will hand me a little key pad, I type in my [PIN] number. And that verifies the transaction. It means I don't have to sign, I don't have to use a pen. I literally type in four little numbers," Thompson says.

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If you don't live in the Northeast, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey may sound like just another obscure government agency. But it's suddenly been in the spotlight because of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge.

The agency's name is a bit of an understatement. The Port Authority manages the biggest port on the East Coast, along with three major airports, the key bridges and tunnels across the Hudson River, bus and rail lines, and even the World Trade Center site.

The Port Authority controls a pot of money for long-range construction projects that's bigger than the annual budget of many states. The name is a holdover from the way the Port Authority was created.

Birth Of Giant

Back in 1920, business at the port of New York was bustling, but there was a problem. The port is spread across two states: New Jersey on one side of the Hudson River, and New York on the other. And the two states could not agree on how to manage it.

"The Port Authority was to be truly a bi-state effort," says Jameson Doig, who wrote a book about the Port Authority called Empire on the Hudson.

Doig says it was designed so that the governors of each state would appoint half of the Port Authority's commissioners. That was supposed to prevent local politicians from putting their friends in charge, and to encourage interstate cooperation.

"That was the key element, to not have [a] tug of war between the two states," he says, "but rather ... to improve the transportation and the economic development of the New York-New Jersey region as a whole."

And for a while, Doig says, that's pretty much how it worked.

Crossing The Streams (Of Money)

The Port Authority built the George Washington Bridge — the one at the heart of the current scandal — on time and under budget when it opened to traffic in 1931. For most of the 20th century, Doig says, the agency was a model of government competence and cooperation, even as it got bigger and drifted further from its original mission.

But in the 1990s, Republican New York Gov. George Pataki began the tradition of appointing political allies to positions of power at the Port Authority.

"What it did clearly in hindsight was it started to create two separate agencies in one building," says Thomas Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association in New York.

Since the 1990s, Wright says Port Authority commissioners from both sides of the Hudson have gotten more calculating about how they steer billions of dollars in spending back to their own states.

"They took the budget [and] they split it down the middle, essentially," he says. "So for every dollar invested in one side of the river, a dollar has to be invested in the other side of the river. It's absurd."

That process has only accelerated since Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took office. Since then, the agency has moved even further from its bi-state roots. Like spending billions of Port Authority dollars, for example, to rebuild the Pulaski Skyway, a road that never leaves New Jersey.

Doig says Christie appointed political allies to dozens of positions.

"When Chris Christie became governor, he added a new passion, you might say, to have patronage appointees at the agency," Doig says.

Doig is also critical of Cuomo for, he says, all but ignoring the Port Authority.

Two of Christie's top appointees — David Wildstein and Bill Baroni — have resigned over their roles in the plan to close toll lanes at the George Washington Bridge last year, apparently as retribution for a political enemy.

Whenever that scandal dies down, Wright hopes the conversation will turn to reform.

"You go back to the original intention of the Port Authority; it was fiscal accountability with political independence," he says. "And we've got the worst of both worlds right now."

But any changes will require dialogue across the Hudson River, and that is exactly what's been missing at the Port Authority for a quite a while.

In the annals of corrupt governors, former Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell's place remains to be seen.

He was indicted along with his wife Tuesday for allegedly taking illegal gifts, vacations and loans while in office, but the governor says he's innocent.

Either way, in light of the allegations against McDonnell, the first governor in Virginia history to face felony charges, we thought we'd take a look back at other examples of gubernatorial bad behavior in recent decades that resulted in fines, probation or even a prison stint.

It's safe to say that Illinois has set a standard that's hard to match — three governors convicted of felonies since the late 1980s, beginning with Democrat Daniel Walker, who went to prison in a savings and loan scandal.

THE INCARCERATED

Rod Blagojevich, Democrat of Illinois

For the crime of attempting to sell President Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, Blagojevich was found guilty in 2011 of 17 of 24 federal charges against him. He's currently serving a 14-year prison sentence. Eleven of the charges stemmed from the seat-selling scheme. The convictions came on retrial, and after he was impeached.

Quote: "I caused it all. I'm not blaming anyone. I was governor, and I should have known better. I am just so incredibly sorry."

Edward DiPrete, Republican of Rhode Island

DiPrete was indicted in 1994, along with his son, accused of taking close to $300,000 in bribes from contractors in exchange for state contracts. In exchange for leniency for his son, DiPrete pleaded guilty before trial to 18 charges of corruption that included bribery and extortion. He was sentenced to one year in a minimum security prison — the first governor to go to prison from the little state known for big corruption.

Quote: "The pressures of raising money for campaign spending obviously clouded my perspective. However, I can assure every citizen of Rhode Island that you received the very best."

Edwin Edwards, Democrat of Louisiana

Here's how the New Orleans Times-Picayune characterized Edwards' 2000 conviction on 17 counts of extortion, mail fraud and money-laundering: "Investigators spent three decades chasing Gov. Edwin Edwards. They finally got their man in 2000 ..." That's when a jury convicted him of extorting nearly $3 million from companies that applied for casino licenses. The four-term governor, 72 years old at the time, received a 10-year sentence, his 35-year-old wife at his side. When he emerged from prison in 2011, he was accompanied by his new wife, nearly five decades his junior. They welcomed a baby last year.

When convicted, Edwards quoted a Chinese proverb: " 'If you sit by a river long enough, the dead bodies of your enemies will float by you.' I suppose the feds sat by the river long enough and here comes my body."

Arch Moore Jr., Republican of West Virginia

Federal prosecutors in 1990 were ready to try Moore on charges of extortion, mail fraud, tax fraud and obstruction of justice. They stemmed from a nearly $600,000 payment he extorted from a coal operator in return for a refund of millions from the state's black lung fund for miners; for filing false tax returns; and for a vote-buying scheme. Facing 36 years in prison and fines of $1.2 million, Moore, who also served as governor in the 1970s, made a deal. He got a prison sentence of just under six years and a $170,000 fine.

Quote from 2009: "I never been ... I'm not going to use the word 'sorry.' But there's never been a day I didn't enjoy public service."

John Rowland, Republican of Connecticut

In 2005, Rowland pleaded guilty to a single felony count of "conspiracy to steal honest service" after a corruption scandal. Once considered a rising national party star, Rowland admitted illegally taking trips and vacations to Las Vegas, Vermont, and Florida, and improvements to his lake cabin. He served 10 months in prison.

Quote: "I let my pride get in my way. I am ashamed to be here today, and I accept full responsibility for my actions."

George Ryan, Republican of Illinois

Lauded for suspending the state's death penalty after investigations revealed its flaws, Ryan by 2006 was convicted of 18 felony corruption counts for racketeering, mail fraud and tax fraud — largely related to selling government licenses and contracts as a public official. He was also convicted of making false statements to the FBI. Ryan was released from prison in 2013 after serving a 6 1/2-year sentence. Seventy-nine state workers and business people were also charged in the investigation.

Quote: "I believe this decision today is not in accordance with the kind of public service that I provided to the people of Illinois over 40 years."

CONVICTED, BUT DID NOT SERVE PRISON TIME

Mike Easley, Democrat of North Carolina

A two-year state and federal probe into allegations that Easley took free flights, cars and vacations, made questionable real estate deals, and created a job for his wife at a state university led to his guilty plea in 2010. Easley, the first governor in state history to admit to a felony, copped to violating six campaign laws, all related to a $1,600 helicopter flight with a supporter. No time served, minimal fine paid.

Quote: "I have to take responsibility for what the campaign does. The buck has to stop somewhere. It stops with me, and I take responsibility for what has occurred in this incident."

Guy Hunt, Republican of Alabama

The state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Hunt in 1993 was convicted of violating state ethics law by helping himself to $200,000 donated to a tax-exempt fund for his inauguration. He was kicked out of office, got five years' probation, and was ordered to pay a $211,000 fine. Hunt got a state pardon in 1990.

Quote: "For a year and a half now practically the whole emphasis of that office has been to try to find something on me. They found nothing whatsoever as far as state government has been concerned; it's been run honestly and aboveboard."

Bill Janklow, Republican of South Dakota

After his second stint as governor, Janklow, who had amassed speeding tickets in the past, was convicted in 2003 of second degree manslaughter for crashing into and killing a motorcyclist in rural South Dakota. Janklow, serving in Congress as the time, was sentenced to 100 days in the county jail and three years' probation.

Quote from a 1999 speech as governor to the state Legislature: "Bill Janklow speeds when he drives — shouldn't, but he does. When he gets the ticket he pays it, but if someone told me I was going to jail for two days for speeding, my driving habits would change."

J. Fife Symington III, Republican of Arizona

In 1997, Symington was convicted of seven felony counts of bank fraud, making false financial statements and extortion, much of it related to a failing real estate business. He had faced 21 counts. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, but in 1999 his conviction was overturned; in 2001, President Clinton gave him a pardon.

Quote: Upon resigning after the verdict, he said, "I've never been one to linger and I don't intend to now. My lot is to offer best wishes and full support, to say thank you and move on."

Jim Guy Tucker, Democrat of Arkansas

A jury in 1996 found the former governor guilty of fraud and conspiracy in a Whitewater-related scheme that involved Clinton family friends James and Susan McDougal and the engineering of about $3 million in fraudulent loans. Tucker was sentenced to four years' probation and spared prison, in part because of a serious liver ailment. He was also ordered to pay $294,000 back to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Quote: When asked if he thought he'd broken the law, he answered, "I do not."

David Lee Walters, Democrat of Oklahoma

In a 1993 deal that infuriated Oklahomans, Walters pleaded guilty to one of the eight felony counts he faced for allegedly violating campaign contribution laws, perjury, and conspiracy to hide donations. The New York Times quoted a juror who contended that prosecutors traded "a Shetland pony for eight thoroughbreds" to avoid what promised to be a long, nasty trial.

Quote: "I'm somewhat of a fighter, and every bone in my body said to fight."

Bob Taft, Republican of Ohio

Taft, of the storied GOP family, became in 2005 the state's first governor to be convicted of criminal charges. He pleaded no contest to four misdemeanor ethics counts for failing to report gifts of more than 50 golf outings, dinners and other largesse. He was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine and write an apology to Ohioans.

Quote: "As governor, I have made it clear that I expect all public employees to follow both the letter and the spirit of the ethics law and have demanded no less from myself. I have personally failed to live up to those expectations, as well as the expectations of the public, and I am disappointed in myself."

Roger Wilson, Democrat of Missouri

In April 2012, long after he had left office, Wilson pleaded guilty to illegally shifting money to make political donations; on the same day, he was also indicted by federal prosecutors. He faced a $2,000 fine and a year in prison; he was ordered to pay the fine and given two years' probation.

Quote: "There are no excuses. I made a mistake. I apologize for that mistake and I deeply regret it."

The Affordable Care Act had ardent critics and supporters long before last fall's troubled launch of the HealthCare.gov website. Opponents of Obamacare say the law will reduce, not increase, the number of health plans available to Americans and that fewer consumers will be able to afford care than before. And delays in implementation of portions of the ACA, they argue, demonstrate how the Obama administration has been forced to undermine its own law in order to keep it running.

More From The Debate

With a major push from the U.S., a new Syrian peace conference opened Wednesday in Switzerland, the first such effort since the middle of 2012. It wasn't easy getting everyone there and it will be harder still to achieve a breakthrough.

Here are a few key things to know about the conference:

1. What's the goal?

The aim is a broad-based transitional government that would have full power over state institutions, including the security forces. This body would seek to bring the civil war to an end and set the stage for a future government.

2. Who's taking part?

The Assad government was the first Syrian party to sign up. Extreme Islamist groups that are linked to al-Qaida and want to create as Islamic state won't be there. More moderate rebel factions, represented by the Syrian National Coalition, quarreled among themselves for weeks. Facing heavy pressure from the U.S. and other Western governments, they agreed last week to participate.

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President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama met today with over 140 college presidents at the White House. Also present at the event, were dozens of organizations committed to raising the number of low-income students who attend college.

No more than half of low-income high school graduates apply to college, so the President has asked the first lady to spearhead a national effort to encourage colleges — the more selective ones, in particular — to admit and graduate more students who are poor.

"We want to restore the essential promise of opportunity and upward mobility that's at the heart of America," said President Obama. "To that end, young people, low-income students in particular, must have access to a college education."

He was preaching to the choir. Every institution and organization present, after all, had to show up at the conference with a plan to help needy students get into college.

Eric W. Kaler, president of the Universtiy of Minnesota, promised to offer increased financial aid and more advice to kids from poor communities. He says that admitting these students doesn't mean universities have to lower their standards.

"I'm proud of the fact that we don't accept students at the University of Minnesota who we don't project to succeed, said Kaler. "We look for the potential."

Non-profit groups say they're ready to help more students navigate the Byzantine college admission and financial aid processes. Jim McCorkell, president of College Possible, submitted a plan to reach out to a total of 20,000 students in Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota and, soon, Pennsylvania.

Still, McCorkell points out that one of the big issues the Obama administration is highlighting, and that could be a big problem in America, is undermatching — instead of opting for a four-year college, or another school that would be more suitable, low-income students end up attending a local community college.

"Sometime's that's the right fit," says McCorkell. "But sometimes it's not."

The only governor in attendance was Delaware's Jack Markell, a Democrat. He says enrolling more low-income students in public institutions is a costly proposition given the huge cuts in state funding for higher education in recent years.

But the nation's economy, says Markell, cannot afford to lose bright young people just because they're poor. He says his plan, in partnership with The College Board and several Ivy League schools, is already helping a thousand of these students get into college.

"They're low income students who are probably not going to apply absent our intervention," said Markell.

Yet, according to Jim McCorkell, there are two big problems that hit these kids especially hard: tuition costs and student debt.

"When you look at the average student loan debt in America, it's now approaching $30,000; so something has got to be done," says McCorkell. "The question is, what's driving tuition up at a rate so much greater than inflation?"

People in attendance say everybody tip-toed around that question during the day-long panel discussions. Administration officials stressed the issue of college access. Officials insisted the administration is separately tackling the high cost of college.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in an Illinois case that could drive a stake through the heart of public employee unions.

At issue are two questions: whether states may recognize a union to represent health care workers who care for disabled adults in their homes instead of in state institutions; and whether non-union members must pay for negotiating a contract they benefit from.

To understand why a growing number of states actually want to recognize unions to represent home health care workers, listen to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan:

"The home services program has about 28,000 home care aides, and these people are working in homes all over the state. There isn't a centralized workplace, and the goal for the state is creating and retaining a professional group of home care aides to meet the needs of what is an ever increasing population of older people with disabilities."

Prior to the state recognizing the union in Illinois, turnover was huge, leaving large gaps in coverage for disabled adults. In the 10 years since unionization, however, wages have nearly doubled, from $7 to $13 an hour; training and supervision has increased, as well as standardization of qualifications, and workers now have health insurance.

It's no surprise then that retention has greatly increased. What may surprise many is that this arrangement is cheaper, with savings of $632 million, according to the state.

No one is forced to join the union, but non-union members — and there are three in this case — do have to pay the costs of negotiating and administering the contract. Under long-established labor law, when a majority of workers approve a union, those who do not join cannot be forced to pay for political activities of the union. But if the union is accepted by the state, as it was in Illinois, non-members still have to pay their fair share of the expenses of negotiating a contract. That's to prevent them from free-riding on the dues of members.

For some workers, however, any fee is too much.

"They just don't want to deal with this organization whatsoever," says their lawyer, William Messenger of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Or, as Pam Harris, who cares for her son at home, puts it: "I object to my home being a union workplace."

Harris, however, is part of a separate and much smaller group of workers, most of whom care for family members at home, who voted down union representation. So her only claim in this case is that she fears there will be another vote someday.

Those who care for the bulk of the disabled are quite different. Not only did they approve union representation, most care for people who are not relatives.

Those opposing any fair-share fee have several claims. First, they say the state is not their employer, because under this program, the individual patients, known as customers, hire and fire their own aides. The state replies that the program was designed that way because these workers would be in people's private homes. But the aides are trained and supervised by the state, equipped with supplies by the state and paid twice a month by the state, and the state can fire them.

The second claim by the objectors is their view of the union as little more than a lobbying group. "Wages paid to government employees should be deemed a matter of public concern," Messenger says.

Does that mean public employees simply can't have a union because they are dealing with the government, and the government, per se, involves political issues? "Yes, to a large degree. Yes," Messenger says.

In other words, Messenger views bargaining for wages and health care as a political act. "I reject the notion that the [Service Employees International Union] somehow got higher reimbursement rates for them," he says. "Illinois could raise the reimbursement rates unilaterally."

"[There are only] three people who are complaining here," counters lawyer Paul Smith, who will argue on behalf of the state and the union in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

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Just 1 percent of the world's population controls nearly half of the planet's wealth, according to a new study published by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

The study says this tiny slice of humanity controls $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people.

Other key findings in the report:

— The world's 85 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 percent of humanity.

— 70 percent of the world's people live in a country where income inequality has increased in the past three decades.

— In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.

"Oxfam is concerned that, left unchecked, the effects are potentially immutable, and will lead to 'opportunity capture' — in which the lowest tax rates, the best education, and the best healthcare are claimed by the children of the rich," the relief agency writes. "This creates dynamic and mutually reinforcing cycles of advantage that are transmitted across generations."

In other words, Oxfam says that if trends continue, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

"[People] are increasingly separated by economic and political power, inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing the risk of societal breakdown," the report says.

The World Economic Forum is scheduled to hold its annual meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, beginning Jan. 22.

The Oxfam report largely mirrors findings of several other studies in recent years that have documented growing income inequality in the U.S. and across the globe.

In September, a University of California, Berkeley study found that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans saw their incomes grow by 31.4 percent over the period 2009 to 2012, while the other 99 percent experienced just 0.4 percent growth. Last month, the Pew Research Center published a study that found income inequality in the U.S. was at its highest since 1928, the year before the start of the Great Depression.

Chef Furard Tate is the kind of man who never sits still. He flits from the order desk at Inspire BBQ back to the busy kitchen, where young men are seasoning sauce, cooking macaroni and cheese, and finishing off some dry-rubbed ribs smoked on a grill.

"We grill on a real grill," Tate says. "None of this electric stuff."

But as important as the food is, Tate says it's also important that it's made by young hands who must learn a slow, consistent process.

Washington, D.C., has a thriving restaurant market with a plethora of restaurants serving its multicultural residents. But this barbecue eatery offers more than food on its menu.

Inspire BBQ aims to reclaim troubled young people, teach them a trade, and give them a chance at success.

"When an adult realizes that a young person took that process and is actually learning how to make everything, it actually means even more, because it reminds us that: My education started at home," he says.

i i

The Canadian company that is the main equipment and technology suppliers for bike-sharing systems across the U.S. has filed for bankruptcy.

Public Bike System Co., (PBSC) which owns the widely used BIXI bike-sharing system, announced the bankruptcy Monday, citing almost $50 million in debt, as first reported by the Montreal Gazette. Its bikes and technology are used in 16 areas around the world, including major cities such as Chicago, New York, London, Montreal, and Washington, D.C.

After the bankruptcy was announced, Alta, a company that operates several BIXI bike-share systems in the U.S., said in a statement that its customers won't have their service interrupted. Alta says it plans to expand current systems and launch new ones this year.

PBSC's bankruptcy doesn't jeopardize bike-sharing, says Elly Blue, author of Bikenomics, a book analyzing the economics of cycling.

"I don't see this as being a very big bump in the road for bike share," Blue says. "I just see this as a chance for cities to learn — we can't run our transportation systems like a business, it doesn't really work that way because then we run the risk of not serving the people that need to be served."

PBSC attributes the bankruptcy partly to cities that have not paid it, including around $5.1 million from New York and Chicago. It is also in a lawsuit with the company that makes its bike-share analysis software.

The bankruptcy doesn't surprise John Pucher, who studies bicycling as a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University and who recently published a book about the cycling boom in cities.

"Looking at the operating data of the cost and revenues of the [bike-sharing] systems that I've seen, they vary from one system to another, but I'm just not convinced overall that it's a profitable venture," Pucher says. "It's not a big money maker the way they've set it up."

He points out that although some systems have come close to breaking even, whatever money the bike-sharing systems get from customers will not cover the cost of installing the system and getting bikes in the first place.

The fees can almost cover the operating cost — the money needed to repair bikes, move them around to meet demand and hire staff — but the systems need sponsors. Citibank paid for the system in New York City, the advertising company JCDecaux paid for the system in Paris, and City of Minneapolis provided start-up funding to the system there.

But Pucher says this doesn't mean the bike-share system doesn't work. In fact, it's booming.

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Thailand's government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday in Bangkok and surrounding areas amid massive protests that have rocked the country since last November.

The Bangkok Post reports that the "invocation of the law was widely expected." Indeed, as NPR's Eyder Peralta reported, 28 people were injured by a blast during an anti-government rally in Bangkok on Sunday. And a grenade attack on a march last Friday killed one person.

Labor Minister Chalerm Yubumrung said the emergency measures, which go into effect Wednesday, will last for 60 days. Anti-government protesters are trying to stop elections, scheduled for Feb. 2.

Reporter Michael Sullivan tells NPR's All Things Considered that the protesters "know they would lose those elections to the government currently in power." He adds:

"The people who are on the streets in Bangkok now represent a minority of the Thai population. They represent the royalists, the traditional elite here, the middle class, the upper middle class. And the majority of the people in Thailand actually live somewhere else. And they live either outside, in the rural areas of Thailand, or [are] the urban poor who work for the people who are demonstrating."

If you've ever shopped at Whole Foods, you've probably noticed that some of the foods it sells claim all kinds of health and environmental virtues. From its lengthy list of unacceptable ingredients for food to its strict rules for how seafood is caught and meat is raised, the company sets a pretty high bar for what is permitted on its coveted shelves.

Now, Whole Foods is dictating what kind of fertilizer the farmers that grow its produce can use. Specifically, the company recently confirmed that the produce rating system it's launching in September will prohibit produce farmed using sludge.

Sludge? This doesn't exactly sound like something you'd want near your food. Also known as biosolids, it's a type of fertilizer made from treated municipal waste and derived, in part, from poop. And though many farmers gladly accept sludge to enrich their soil, it's a product with a pretty big PR problem.

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Is It Safe To Use Compost Made From Treated Human Waste?

The holiday season data breach at Target that hit more than 70 million consumers was part of a wide and highly skilled international hacking campaign that's "almost certainly" based in Russia. That's according to a report prepared for federal and private investigators by Dallas-based cybersecurity firm iSight Partners.

And the fraudsters are so skilled that sources say at least a handful of other retailers have been compromised.

"The intrusion operators displayed innovation and a high degree of skill," the iSight report says.

The report doesn't say specifically how Target's network was breached but says that a virus was injected into the retail giant's credit card swiping machines, and that malware allowed hackers to collect data from the magnetic stripes on payment cards. The problem for the security companies hired to protect retailers is, according to iSight, that the malware the bad guys are using can't be detected by anti-virus software.

Who are these guys? Well, it's all part of an underground market that's been running for years — Planet Money featured this dark credit card underworld in 2011 — and the hackers writing data-stealing code are getting more sophisticated than ever.

"There's already a lot of breaches related to the Target breach that aren't being disclosed," says Avivah Litan, a retail industry analyst for Gartner. "The chances that we'll see another big breach like this are probably 80 percent."

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When relocating to a new country, it's important to establish routines and traditions. My ritual here in London is spending an hour on the phone with the bank every day.

It's a strange thing about 2014 — we've got one collective foot planted squarely in the 21st century, while the other is stuck in back in the 19-something-or-others.

My email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts don't care whether I'm in Dublin or Dubai. I can jog along the Seine in Paris to the same music on Spotify that I listen to when I'm running along the Willamette River in Portland.

On WhatsApp, I send text messages to my friends every day at no cost, no matter where in the world I am. Skype is a snap. But banking is something else altogether. (Phone calls go in the same category as banking, but that's for another blog post.)

This is a universal experience, from what I can gather. Anyone living abroad wrestles with the arcane formulas and fees that go into converting an American salary to a British (or Brazilian, or Burmese) bank account.

Two weeks in London, and I've already found that American expats trade banking horror stories like crusty sailors comparing sharkbite scars.

My story, briefly, is this: In order to avoid a $35 Bank of America fee every time I move my paycheck to the United Kingdom, I devised a hopscotch as follows: Dollars leave Bank of America to an international transfer company. That company hands off the money to a Lloyds Bank International account. Lloyds International plops it into an account with UK Lloyds. Hardly simple, but at least the plan comes with no fees. Guaranteed.

The first transfer took three days longer than planned, and arrived with $600 less than the amount that left the U.S.

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For more than four years, the unemployment rate has been sliding down — from a 10 percent peak to today's 6.7 percent.

But does that reflect a fast-strengthening economy? Or is the rate falling only because so many people are dropping out of the workforce?

In coming weeks, members of Congress and the Federal Reserve Board will be making big policy decisions based upon their best understanding of those unsettled questions.

"The problem is that there are multiple possible explanations" for why the jobless rate has been falling since 2009, said Ann Owen, a former Fed economist who now teaches at Hamilton College. "There's no one thing that ties it all up" and makes it absolutely clear what is happening.

Even though their understanding of the job market's health may be incomplete, policymakers must make judgments. Here are just two issues hanging in the balance:

Interest rates. The Federal Reserve said in 2012 that it would allow interest rates to rise once the jobless rate fell to 6.5 percent. But as the magic 6.5 percent level draws closer, many people fear the economy is still far too weak to handle higher rates, which would make homes, cars and other purchases less affordable.

Extended unemployment benefits. Democrats plan to push Congress to renew extended unemployment benefits. Many Republicans say that emergency measure, first approved in 2008, is no longer needed. But is it?

As economists sift through the data, these are agreed-upon facts:

In 2007, 66 percent of Americans over age 16 either had a job or were looking for one. Today, that is down to 62.8 percent, the lowest labor-force participation rate since 1978.

When fewer people are in the job market, the unemployment rate can look better. In the past year, the unemployment rate has plunged from 7.9 percent to 6.7 percent.

In December, employers added just 74,000 jobs. But the unemployment rate fell three-tenths of a percentage point as 347,000 people left the labor market.

These are some leading theories to explain the falling jobless rate:

Baby boomers are retiring. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago says that except for an uptick during the housing boom, the labor force has been shrinking for a decade because boomers are aging out of the workforce.

Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, made the labor-force participation rate soar in the 1980s, especially as women started working. Now we are seeing the predictable reversal of that trend, which would have played out no matter what economic policies had prevailed in recent years.

Many economists say retirements are causing about half of the labor force shrinkage. Others say it's 60 percent, and yet others believe it's more like 40 percent.

More people are claiming disability. An economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia says the labor force has been shrinking in part because of soaring Social Security disability claims. And those disabled people are as lost to employers as the retirees.

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Virtual money could have very real effects for companies that help people transfer money.

There are now more than 70 virtual currencies, with the largest players being Bitcoin, Ripples and Litecoin. Another group tried to launch Coinye last week, though its backers abandoned their efforts on Tuesday after receiving a cease and desist letter from lawyers representing Kanye West. Some stores accept Bitcoins as payment.

Analysts say not all these currencies will last and very few people actually use them at the moment. But in the long run, virtual currencies could disrupt the market for traditional finance companies like banks, or remittance companies like Western Union, which handle money transfers. For one, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital payment platform, on Monday, the first country entering the game.

A Rush For Virtual Gold

Few of the many virtual currencies will last, says Nick Holland, senior analyst at the research firm Javelin Strategy & Research. In the latest forecast, his group estimated the virtual currency market would have doubled to more than $10 billion by the end of last year. He says they haven't seen signs that suggest otherwise.

"It's something of a gold rush right now; there are a lot of them out there," Holland says. "A lot of them will not make it at all; a lot of them are just science projects that people are playing around with."

However, if the currencies themselves don't stay, the idea driving them will, according to Holland and Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto.

"It's surprisingly difficult to transfer money between banks, and the question is, 'Why should that be?' " Gans says. "Some of these [virtual currencies] are trying to see if they can eliminate that, but of course the banks will come in and say, 'Well, we were charging people for those things in the past; we won't anymore.' "

Banks and companies like Western Union charge a fee for transfers, as much as $45 for international wire transfers, and you need the recipient's name, bank account information and the bank's routing number; with virtual currencies, some claim this could be cheaper and almost instantaneous. Holland and Gans compare it to how Skype disrupted the market for telecommunications companies: Making calls over the Internet made business harder for traditional phone companies charging for long-distance calls.

Actual Use Still 'A Drop In The Ocean'

But just to take Bitcoin as an example, the exchange rate is far from stable. Also, Holland cautions that just as voice-over-IP technology like Skype took years to become mainstream, the same will be true for virtual currencies, even ones that have been making headlines lately.

"Look at Bitcoin as a canary in the mine," Holland says. "The actual usage among the population at large is a drop in the ocean."

But, some significant players have noticed that drop.

On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital money transfer platform, at the National Retail Federation's convention in New York City. Although it is not a virtual currency, Holland and others say this shows that governments are starting to pay attention; a sign that virtual currencies are more than just a fad. Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently released its first assessment of Bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency can become "a major means of payment for e-commerce" that "may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer problems."

It's All Politics

Bitcoin Takes Stage In Texas Senate Campaign

Then you get to see who liked you. More important: who liked you for you. Not you changing your behavior to impress anyone or please anyone. Not you on "date behavior." Just you being you. And anyone will tell you that's the whole point. You want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, and who likes you most when you're most being yourself, so that when you are in a relationship, the person will truly be compatible with the real you.

That's all you have to do.

It really is that simple.

Now: when someone does contact you, and it seems like it might be a match, should you wear another shirt on the date besides the red T- shirt, so it doesn't seem like you only have one shirt? Or should you wear the red T- shirt as always, in case the first date doesn't go well and you want a simple way to check if you caught anyone else's interest while you were out on the date?

That is a very interesting question, and one that I think about a lot. I will let you know what I do when that comes up.

Hear The Stories

Chef Furard Tate is the kind of man who never sits still. He flits from the order desk at Inspire BBQ back to the busy kitchen, where young men are seasoning sauce, cooking macaroni and cheese, and finishing off some dry-rubbed ribs smoked on a grill.

"We grill on a real grill," Tate says. "None of this electric stuff."

But as important as the food is, Tate says it's also important that it's made by young hands who must learn a slow, consistent process.

Washington, D.C., has a thriving restaurant market with a plethora of restaurants serving its multi-cultural residents. But this barbecue eatery offers more than food on its menu.

Inspire BBQ aims to reclaim troubled young people, teach them a trade, and give them a chance at success.

"When an adult realizes that a young person took that process and is actually learning how to make everything, it actually means even more, because it reminds us that: My education started at home," he says.

i i

Lots of consumers are smitted with local food, but they're not the only ones. The growing market is also providing an opportunity for less experienced farmers to expand their business and polish their craft.

But they need help, and increasingly it's coming from food hubs, which can also serve as food processing and distribution centers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that there are about 240 of them in more than 40 states plus the District of Columbia.

Donna O'Shaughnessy and her husband, Keith Parrish, are first-generation farmers in rural Chatsworth, Ill., about two hours south of Chicago. They sell dairy products and meat, and raise a host of animals, including a few colorful peacocks.

For many years, they ended each year in the red. But business took off about five years ago, with restaurant owners as far away as Chicago putting in orders.

They say they owe a lot to a year-round local food hub called Stewards of the Land, started in 2005 by Marty and Kris Travis, farmers in nearby Fairbury, Ill. It's one of two the couple started in rural Illinois.

The Travises became middlemen to fill a hole in the market. "As we go, we can incubate these farms, and get them on their feet to do their own things," Marty says.

Members of their food hubs include about 40 small family farmers, each of whom pays a small fee to join. In exchange, they get cheaper liability insurance, and access to a much larger pool of clients and training.

"The new generation of farmers is a little over half the group," says Marty. "Many of them were under the age of 18 when they joined. We're very interested in growing great produce, but we're also very passionate about growing great farmers."

One up-and-coming farmer is Derek Stoller, 16, of Fairbury, Ill. He joined Stewards of the Land when he was just 9-years-old and growing Indian corn. Since then – working in his parents' backyard and putting his family to work – he has moved on to other things like beets, parsley and carrots, grossing about $15,000 in 2012.

The Salt

Here's How Young Farmers Looking For Land Are Getting Creative

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

Amazon has patented "anticipatory package shipping," a system that ships products before customers have actually bought them — based on what it predicts they will buy. The Verge explains: "Amazon plans to box and ship products it expects customers to buy preemptively, based on previous searches and purchases, wish lists, and how long the user's cursor hovers over an item online. The company may even go so far as to load products onto trucks and have them 'speculatively shipped to a physical address' without having a full addressee."

E. L. Doctorow tells The New York Times about his reading habits: "Sometimes I put books down that are good but that I see too well what the author is up to. As you practice your craft, you lose your innocence as a reader. That's the one sad thing about this work."

Biologist and author Lewis Wolpert has admitted using other writers' work without attribution in two of his books. In a statement quoted in The Observer, Wolpert said: "I acknowledge that I have been guilty of including some unattributed material in my last book to be published, You're Looking Very Well (2011) and in the initial version of my yet unpublished book Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?. This lack of attribution was totally inadvertent and due to carelessness on my part. It in no way reflects on my publishers, Faber and Faber, and I take full responsibility. When downloading material from the internet as part of my research, and coming back to it after a gap of maybe weeks or sometimes months, I simply did not recall that I had not written these passages myself." Wolpert added that he "would never ever knowingly claim someone else's material as my own."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

Richard Powers' Orfeo holds some of the most beautiful music writing you'll ever encounter. In the book, Peter Elds, a composer who spends his evenings playing with DNA in his home lab, is suspected of bioterrorism and goes on the run. He wants "only one thing before he dies: to break free of time and hear the future." Powers is the king of the elegantly unexpected adjective: a stillborn smile, a curt ratatouille, stark raving mod. The finale of Mozart's Jupiter "spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running." Powers spoke to NPR's Audie Cornish last week: "The great beauty of being a novelist is that you can spend three or four or five years vicariously pursuing those imaginary Walter Mitty-like lives that you never got to pursue in the real world. I do have a stack of youthful compositions sitting on the bottom of my closet, so it was a great pleasure to spend these years working on this book — not just rediscovering the 20th century and this avant-garde tradition, but also to imagine myself into the life of somebody who sees and hears and feels the world through sound."

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 spans the Nobel laureate's long career, from 25 Poems, which he published as a teenager, to his latest collection, White Egrets. The collection is edited by the poet Glyn Maxwell, who once wrote of Walcott's poetry: "The verse is constantly trembling with a sense of the body in time, the self slung across metre, whether metre is steps, or nights, or breath, whether lines are days, or years, or tides." Walcott is at his greatest when he writes about the sea — which he does constantly — as in a section from The Prodigal:

"When we were boys coming home from the beach,

it used to be such a thing! The body would be singing

with salt, the sunlight hummed through the skin

and a fierce thirst made iced water

a gasping benediction, and in the plated heat,

stones scorched the soles, and the cored dove hid

in the heat-limp leaves, and we left the sand

to its mutterings, and the long, cool canoes."