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Maximilian Schell, who won a best actor Oscar for his role in the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, has died in his native Austria after what doctors describe as a sudden illness. He was 83.

He was also nominated for best actor for the 1975 The Man in the Glass Booth and for best supporting actor in Julia in 1977, The Associated Press says.

But the Vienna-born actor's most famous role was as Hans Rolfe, a defense attorney representing accused Nazi war criminals at the post-World War II Nuremberg trials. In it, Rolfe delivers a courtroom monologue condemning those who acquiesced or promoted Hitler's rise to power. You can see a clip here.

Kerry Skyring, reporting for NPR from Vienna, reports:

"Handsome and charismatic, the son of a Swiss playwright and an Austrian stage actress, he was raised in Switzerland after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany."

"Schell ... went on to become a film producer and director. His recent appearances include the films The Freshman and Telling Lies in America.

"He died in the Austrian city of Innsbruck."

When oil supplies ran short and gasoline prices spiked four decades ago, angry drivers demanded relief. Congress responded in 1975 by banning most exports of U.S. crude oil.

Today, domestic oil production is booming, prompting U.S. energy companies to call for a resumption of exporting. Many economists agree.

But would that bring back the bad old days of shortages? Would you end up paying more at the pump?

Supporters of exports say Americans should not allow 40-year-old images of an energy crisis to distort how we see the world today. They argue that in the 1970s, a particular vision of oil markets got embedded into our national psyche, and now it's time to update our worldview to more clearly see what's happening.

To appreciate their argument, let your mind wander back. Pretend it's the fall of 1973:

War is raging in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, are looking for ways to hit back at supporters of Israel. They launch an embargo that blocks oil deliveries to the United States.

News reports label the embargo a "political weapon," intended to push America into an energy crisis. Soon, oil prices are quadrupling and lines of cars are snaking around gas stations with empty pumps.

The Great Plains Oil Rush

On The Plains, The Rush For Oil Has Changed Everything

When oil supplies ran short and gasoline prices spiked four decades ago, angry drivers demanded relief. Congress responded in 1975 by banning most exports of U.S. crude oil.

Today, domestic oil production is booming, prompting U.S. energy companies to call for a resumption of exporting. Many economists agree.

But would that bring back the bad old days of shortages? Would you end up paying more at the pump?

Supporters of exports say Americans should not allow 40-year-old images of an energy crisis to distort how we see the world today. They argue that in the 1970s, a particular vision of oil markets got embedded into our national psyche, and now it's time to update our worldview to more clearly see what's happening.

To appreciate their argument, let your mind wander back. Pretend it's the fall of 1973:

War is raging in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, are looking for ways to hit back at supporters of Israel. They launch an embargo that blocks oil deliveries to the United States.

News reports label the embargo a "political weapon," intended to push America into an energy crisis. Soon, oil prices are quadrupling and lines of cars are snaking around gas stations with empty pumps.

The Great Plains Oil Rush

On The Plains, The Rush For Oil Has Changed Everything

A classified document that's among the many secrets revealed by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden "shows that Canada's electronic spy agency used information from the free Internet service at a major Canadian airport to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary airline passengers for days after they left the terminal," CBC News reports.

The Canadian broadcaster has posted a "redacted PDF" about what Communications Security Establishment Canada, that nation's equivalent of the NSA, did during a two-week-long test.

The CBC says the document indicates that "the spy service was provided with information captured from unsuspecting travelers' wireless devices by [an unidentified] airport's free Wi-Fi system" over a two-week period in May 2012.

"The document shows the federal intelligence agency was then able to track the travelers for a week or more as they — and their wireless devices — showed up in other Wi-Fi 'hot spots' in cities across Canada and even at U.S. airports," the CBC adds.

The Canadian spy agency tells the CBC that it is "mandated to collect foreign signals intelligence to protect Canada and Canadians. And in order to fulfill that key foreign intelligence role for the country, CSEC is legally authorized to collect and analyze metadata. ... No Canadian communications were (or are) targeted, collected or used."

That explanation is similar to those provided by U.S. officials about the NSA's electronic surveillance programs — basically, that the NSA collects huge amounts of information (metadata) about phone calls and other electronic communications, but does not probe their contents or target those of U.S. citizens.

Canadian cybersecurity expert Ronald Deibert tells CBC News, however, that "I can't see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law."

President Obama has said that "critics are right to point out that without proper safeguards," the NSA's surveillance programs "could be used to yield more information about our private lives." But while he has said the NSA should no longer hold on to the massive amounts of data it has been collecting, he has also said that the information still needs to be gathered and stored by a third party in case it later needs to be analyzed.

House Republicans headed back to Washington on Friday from a resort along the frozen waters of the Chesapeake Bay. They were there for a three-day retreat aimed at mapping out a legislative strategy for this midterm election year.

One of the most pressing issues they face is the need next month for Congress to raise the nation's debt limit. GOP lawmakers seem leery of another debt ceiling showdown, and their leaders are pushing to act on immigration this year.

Lest there were any appetite among House Republicans for tacking a list of demands onto a raise in the statutory borrowing limit, Speaker John Boehner made clear at the GOP retreat that this time, threatening default was not in his playbook.

"We know what the obstacles are that we face," Boehner said, "but listen: we believe that defaulting on our debt is the wrong thing. We don't want to do that."

That marked a stark departure from what became known three years ago as "the Boehner rule," which was the speaker's insistence that a dollar be cut from the federal budget for every dollar the debt ceiling is raised. That rule prevailed in a debt ceiling deal three years ago, when huge deficits loomed.

But deficits are no longer the talk of Washington, and President Obama says this time, he wants the debt ceiling raised with no conditions attached. Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan acknowledged the weak hand his party is playing this time.

"The debt's going up, and we have I think a greater obligation than simply just to pass it along," Camp said. "But there is a political reality that the administration, and particularly the president, doesn't see it that way."

Even debt hardliners seem ready to toss in the towel.

"I think we'd be glad to set terms, but as we saw through the shutdown, they were not interested in talking about anything," said Rep. Marlin Stutzman of northern Indiana, who has Tea Party ties.

Meanwhile, House Republicans were presented at the retreat with a two-page list of principles their leaders say will shape a long-awaited immigration bill. Heading the list is tougher border enforcement, something immigration overhaul skeptics have been demanding and which Speaker Boehner endorsed.

"You can't begin the process of immigration reform without securing our borders, and the ability to enforce our laws," Boehner said. "Everyone in our conference understands that's the first step in terms of meaningful reform of this problem."

Unlike the sweeping immigration bill the Senate passed last year, there is no path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants laid out in the House GOP principles. Only those brought by their parents might acquire expedited citizenship under the House plan. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is a leading voice in the House GOP on immigration.

"I do not think you should have a special path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrant. I've been pretty clear about that," Ryan said. "This is why we're not going to take the Senate bill and we're not going to engage in a process that could result in the Senate bill."

The principles do call for giving legal status to unauthorized immigrants who meet a series of conditions. That strikes Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger as problematic.

"If you legalize somebody without a pathway to citizenship, you're creating, in essence, a class of people that have no chance of becoming citizens," Kinzinger said.

But many House Republicans don't even want legalization of those immigrants. One of them is North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry.

"Those that willfully broke the law should not be allowed to just continue to break the law," McHenry said. "So for me, as matter of principle, I don't think that legalization of those who willfully broke the law should be a part of our agenda."

And Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador questions the timing of tackling immigration during an election year.

"It's a great issue for Republicans to resolve; it's a bad issue for us to resolve this year," Labrador said.

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, who heads the House GOP re-election effort, foresees an immigration bill only after most primaries are over.

"My hunch is it doesn't come up, you know, tomorrow," Walden said. "It's probably months out."

If the retreat aimed to reach a consensus on these divisive issues, none emerged; a closing press conference was cancelled.

Ben Bernanke hands over the reins at the Federal Reserve to Janet Yellen on Friday. The Fed's vice chair will be the first woman ever to lead the nation's central bank. It's a position many view as the second most powerful in the country.

The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Yellen has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Charlie Saydah, a former classmate, says she was probably the smartest kid in the class. Yellen was "clearly smart, and she was smart among a lot of smart kids," he says.

But she couldn't attend Stuyvesant, the competitive public school for Brooklyn's best and brightest.

"She didn't go because, you know, she was a girl," Saydah says. And back then, in the early 1960s, Stuyvesant only admitted boys. Saydah, a retired journalist, said that meant girls dominated the regular public schools, like Fort Hamilton High in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

Saydah says he graduated 26th out of that class. "Everyone ahead of me was a girl," he says.

Janet Yellen graduated first.

"I would have expected her to not only succeed but excel in anything she did," Saydah says.

Economy

Bernanke's Fed Legacy: A Tenure Full Of Tough Decisions

People in China rang in the Year of the Horse overnight with the traditional barrage of fireworks, but Lunar New Year's celebrations in some cities were quieter than usual. After severe pollution choked much of eastern China last year, many people swore off the ancient tradition so they could protect their lungs and the environment.

Shanghai resident Shen Bingling used to celebrate by wheeling a luggage cart full of fireworks onto a street and joining the neighbors in igniting a frenzy of pyrotechnics. Chunks of burned paper would rain down and the air would fill with clouds that smelled of sulfur. Shen, who works as a doorman in a downtown apartment building, says he wouldn't dream of doing something like that today.

"According to our Chinese people's tradition, to have good fortune you should set off fireworks," says Shen, 55, who wore a red scarf in honor of the Lunar New Year. "But for the sake of the air now, you shouldn't."

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A classified document that's among the many secrets revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden "shows that Canada's electronic spy agency used information from the free Internet service at a major Canadian airport to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary airline passengers for days after they left the terminal," CBC News reports.

The Canadian broadcaster has posted a "redacted PDF" about what Communications Security Establishment Canada, that nation's NSA, did during a two-week long test.

The CBC says the document indicates that "the spy service was provided with information captured from unsuspecting travelers' wireless devices by [an unidentified] airport's free Wi-Fi system" over a two-week period in May 2012.

"The document shows the federal intelligence agency was then able to track the travelers for a week or more as they — and their wireless devices — showed up in other Wi-Fi 'hot spots' in cities across Canada and even at U.S. airports," the CBC adds.

The Canadian spy agency tells the CBC that it is "mandated to collect foreign signals intelligence to protect Canada and Canadians. And in order to fulfill that key foreign intelligence role for the country, CSEC is legally authorized to collect and analyze metadata. ... No Canadian communications were (or are) targeted, collected or used."

That explanation is similar to those provided by U.S. officials about the NSA's electronic surveillance programs — basically, that the NSA collects huge amounts of information (metadata) about phone calls and other electronic communications, but does not probe their contents or target those of U.S. citizens.

Canadian cyber-security expert Ronald Deibert tells CBC News, however, that "I can't see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law."

President Obama has said that "critics are right to point out that without proper safeguards," the NSA's surveillance programs "could be used to yield more information about our private lives." But while he has said the NSA should no longer hold on to the massive amounts of data it has been collecting, the president has also said that the information still needs to be gathered and stored — by tech and telephone companies — in case it later needs to be analyzed.

Panama says it will release most of the crew of a North Korean ship that was seized six months ago after it was found carrying Soviet-era jet planes and weapons from Cuba in violation of U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang.

Panama says it will release 32 crew members, but that the captain and two others will remain in custody to face charges of trafficking.

The container ship, the Chong Chon Gang, was stopped on the Atlantic side of the Canal in July. Officials said its cargo – which reportedly included 25 containers of military hardware, including two Cold War-era MiG-21 fighter aircraft, air defense systems, missiles and command-and-control vehicles – had endangered Panama's internal security.

The weapons were found in the ship's hold stored under hundreds of bags of sugar.

Havana had said at the time that it was sending the "obsolete" defensive weapons to North Korea to be repaired, a view echoed by North Korea's state-run Central News Agency.

But a U.N. team sent to investigate issued a preliminary reporting saying the shipment violated sanctions imposed over North Korea's nuclear program, which bans weapons exports and the import of all but small arms, the BBC says.

The BBC says that earlier this month, the ship's owners agreed to pay $670,000 to have it released, sans the cargo.

The captain and the two other crew members face a possible 12-year sentence in Panama if convicted on charges of arms trafficking.

Vodka is our enemy, the Russian proverb goes, so we'll utterly consume it. This embrace of the enemy has a lot to do with the country's abysmal life expectancy rates, with one quarter of Russian men dying before age 55. But when the drinkers start cutting back, death rates drop almost immediately, a study finds.

"High mortality absolutely is caused by hazardous alcohol consumption," says Dr. David Zaridze of the Russian Cancer Research Center of Moscow, who with his colleagues tracked Russian drinking habits for a decade.

Indeed, the most striking thing about this study, which was published Thursday in The Lancet, is how closely changes in the country's mortality rates followed changes in Russian government policies on alcohol.

When the Soviet Union put prohibition in place in the mid-1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev, alcohol use dropped 25 percent. Death rates among men under 55 dropped. Drinking started creeping back up, and so did deaths. Both spiked after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. "The first event of the free market was cheap vodka and cheap cigarettes," Zaridze told Shots. "Of course the Russians who hadn't seen cheap vodka started to drink again."

Mortality rates rose again during the hard times after the collapse of the ruble in 1998, but have been declining for almost a decade, a change Zaridze says is due to tighter regulation of vodka sales starting in 2006 under Vladimir Putin.

That includes restricting retail sales to licensed liquor stores and banning night sales. "Since 2006 the per-capita sales of strong alcohol have declined by 33 percent," Zaridze told Shots. "This has been followed by decrease in mortality. This is our aim, our final aim."

Women's death rates also reflected alcohol policy, but less strongly. In Russia, vodka remains a man's drink, consumed neat. And though consumption of beer and wine has risen in recent years, vodka remains the alcohol delivery system of choice.

This is the first study to track the drinking habits of a large group of Russians, following 151,000 people for more than a decade. The men who drank the most, three or more half-liter bottles of vodka a week, were much more likely to die before age 55 than those who said they drank less than one bottle a week.

A lot of that vodka was downed in binges, which may also contribute to the high death rate. Some deaths were from alcohol poisoning or cancer. Others were due to violence, accidents or suicide.

But the fact that Russians are drinking less doesn't mean social attitudes about alcohol have changed, Zaridze says. "I don't think so, unfortunately."

In Russia, he says, "drinking is a socially accepted way of life. Everyone drinks; educated people, not educated people, all social classes. It is accepted and appreciated." But people need to realize, he says, that "alcohol kills [the] nation."

That's not an impossible shift, Zaridze says, pointing to other European countries with a long history of extreme consumption of spirits. "Even our Nordic neighbors, the Finns, the Swedes, they had a real problem with drinking. But they have changed."

You know, when it comes to studies about how women think, I must admit that I always plunge in with great and girlish (!) excitement, because as much as the stereotyping may officially bother me, let's face it: there is part of me that thinks, "Oh, this is going to be good."

That's how I felt about the headline, "Study: Women most attracted to guys in trucks." Ooooh, tell me more, Yahoo Car And Truck Section! I am on pins and needles. (And in heels, metaphorically speaking.)

Well, it turns out that Insure.com, which specializes in providing insurance quotes and is brimming with expertise about psychology and gender roles, asked 2,000 men and women what kinds of cars attractive people drive. Gamely going along with the idea that hot people drive certain kinds of cars (to me, it's a little bit like being asked how tall people take their coffee, but whatever), the respondents offered up some wisdom. Or should we say, "wisdom."

It turns out that women think desirable guys drive — in this order — pickup trucks, sports cars, SUVs, sedans, hybrid/electric cars, UPS trucks, minivans, and mail trucks. Now it goes without saying that the most hilarious part of this data is that minivans are between UPS trucks and mail trucks. Whoever missed the opportunity to make the headline, "Women say dudes in minivans hotter than dudes in mail trucks, uglier than dudes in UPS trucks," you are fired. FIRED.

This is a study, for real, that imagines that a group of women are sitting around, Sex And The City-style (the only way women do anything according to studies like this), and one of them says to the other one, "My new boyfriend drives a minivan." And everybody makes a little face. You know, they're all judging. Like we do. And then another one says, "My new boyfriend drives a UPS truck." And everybody else goes, "Well, GAME SET MATCH, I cannot compete with that."

Men provided this list in order, from hottest to least hot: sports cars, sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks, hybrid/electric, minivans. Ladies who deliver things, you are not even included. Packages, mail, whatever — unless it's kids to soccer practice, your delivery routine makes you un-hot. Off the hotness scale!

Let's turn it over now to Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor of Cars.com, who is here to explain why these survey results seem "very accurate." Joe says that — and I am quoting Joe directly here, lest you think I have made Joe up and he is a puppet I am operating made out of popsicle sticks and old copies of Cosmopolitan — "A woman walks up to a black pickup truck and says to herself, 'Here's a guy who can help me move, bring me large gifts from Crate & Barrel and do repairs around my condo.'"

Joe! Joe! You have cracked the code! It's true. Women do not actually mean "hot" when they say "hot." They don't mean lusty hot, or symmetrical-face hot, or big-shoulders hot. They mean "transported a bar cabinet to my door on his back" hot. They mean "carried a couch" hot. They mean "oiled my hinges" hot. (Hey. HINGES AT THE IMAGINARY CONDO. Don't be gross. This is for science.)

Joe goes on to clarify that women also like a clean black pickup truck, because it means that the guy washes his own car, and therefore will also wash the woman's car. That's right. We may have jobs, we may have our own incomes and retirement funds and condos in our own names in need of repair, but driving through a car wash is too much to ask. Maybe we're confused: Are we supposed to drive forwards or backwards? What's all this water? WHAT ARE THESE SHEEPDOG THINGS WHIRRING AGAINST MY WINDOWS? I need a guy with a clean black pickup truck to wash my car for me. Hey, there's one now! My car is dirty! Come date me, Captain Pickup!

(I'm not going to lie: if I met a guy who called himself "Captain Pickup," I might have dinner with him, just out of respect.)

Joe has an idea, too, about why men express a preference for women in BMWs, and he explains it in terms of his own feelings as a single dude: a high-performance BMW means she's rich ("I don't want to carry the entire relationship") and she's not a nag about his super-fast driving.

Thanks, Joe! Vroom vroom!

From here, we move on to Edmunds.com editor Mike Magrath and senior analyst Jessica Caldwell. Mike has a slightly simpler idea about the appeal of a truck that is not dependent on the idea that women spend most of their time asking men to move furniture: it's "rugged," Mike says. What, nothing about how if it's clean, the guy will wash my car for me? Hmph.

Jessica, meanwhile, points out that there are women who like a "more cosmopolitan" type of fellow in a Range Rover or Tesla. But she doesn't want to see a guy in what she calls "chick cars." She actually says that she would think twice about dating a guy who drove a VW Beetle because telling your friends about him would be "humiliating."

(I kind of get a feeling that Joe and Jessica should get coffee, because they have been watching, or living vicariously through, the same movies about the same kinds of women.)

There are some other findings as well, such as Men Hate Dents and Ladies Are Bothered By Loud Exhaust. And in the end, Joe says, "Your car always reflects something about you. You don't always know what, but it must reflect something."

Truer words were never said, Joe. Truer words were never said.

Hey, is that your mail truck? Roooowwwwr.

The sedation that put race car legend Michael Schumacher into a medically induced coma after he suffered a serious head injury while skiing in France last month is gradually being reduced "to allow the start of the waking up process," the German driver's manager said Thursday.

ESPN's F1 website reminds us that the 45-year-old Schumacher "suffered a severe head injury on Dec. 29 when he fell and hit a rock while skiing in the French Alps. Surgeons performed two operations to remove blood clots around his brain since when he has been kept in a coma." The coma was induced to help reduce and control swelling in the brain. Schumacher was wearing a helmet when he crashed.

The process of reducing sedation and bringing Schumacher out of the coma "may take a long time," manager Sabine Kehm says.

It's too soon to say too much about Schumacher's post-coma prospects, though experts are expressing concern.

The French newspaper L'Equipe reported this week that doctors say there have been "encouraging signs" from recent neurological tests.

But the BBC has spoken with "two experts — Professor Gary Hartstein, Formula 1's chief medic between 2005 and 2012, and Mr. Colin Shieff, neurosurgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London":

"Both Hartstein and Shieff believe it will be difficult for Schumacher to return to the same level of health he had before his accident.

" 'It is extremely unlikely, and I'd honestly say virtually impossible, that the Michael we knew prior to this fall will ever be back,' Hartstein said. ...

"Shieff agreed that outcome was 'extremely unlikely.'

" 'It is generally accepted that the longer a patient is in a reduced state of consciousness, the less likely they are to make a good recovery,' he said. 'It is still possible to regain consciousness, but this is far from certain.' "

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has released its draft report into the causes of a devastating 2010 explosion at a Tesoro refinery on Puget Sound. The accident killed seven workers, and the community has been increasingly upset by how long the investigation has dragged on.

Now the draft report is out, and it's accompanied by a fascinating computer animation that's quite instructive — especially to the uninitiated.

Watching the video below, you get a much better appreciation for how a witch's brew of chemicals can eat away at steel tanks, and the very real dangers faced every day by the people who refine the petroleum products that we take for granted.

The CSB is an independent investigative agency, and its recommendations aren't necessarily binding. But, given the death toll, there may be more pressure on the refinery industry to emulate the European system of aggressively identifying potential hazards, such as hydrogen-weakened steel, in order to minimize them.

Amy Chua is known as the Tiger Mom. Ever since writing a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother about raising her daughter according to the strict — and very high — expectations of her own Chinese-immigrant parents, she's been a lightning rod for controversy about parenting and our notion of success in this country.

Now Chua, along with her co-author Jed Rubenfeld has published an op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times called "What Drives Success?" that is sure to reignite discussion. Chua and Rubenfeld present what they call "The Triple Package" as a way to understand why certain cultural groups in the United States — including, they say, Mormons, Jews and Americans of Indian, Iranian, Lebanese and Chinese backgrounds — outshine others.

Chua and Rubenfeld write:

It turns out that for all their diversity, the strikingly successful groups in America today share three traits that, together, propel success. The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you've done is not good enough. The third is impulse control.

Get recipes for Guacamole, White Bean Dip (above), Salsa Verde With Roasted Tomatillos and Pimiento Cheese.

Harris chooses as his narrator the participant in these events with the sharpest sense of justice: the newly promoted Colonel Georges Picquart (a real and rather important character from French history). As the story opens, he's taking over command of the Statistical Section, the operations arm of the French Army's intelligence division. With this good soldier, a life-long bachelor "married" to his career, as our guide, we move through the boulevards and drawing rooms and dining rooms of Parisian society with an ease and pleasure associated with the high life, enjoying the gossip, the cuisine, the marriages and adulterous love affairs (including his own, with the wife of a senior official in the Foreign Ministry) of the Belle Epoque. Finding his new office a jumble of files and cash (for bribing informants), the new colonel goes about the business of putting his new command in order just as the events of the Dreyfus case come to light.

Picquart, as he himself puts it, soon learns his "first lesson in the cabalistic power of 'secret intelligence': two words that can make otherwise sane men abandon their reason and cavort like idiots." Despite evidence he unearths that suggests the real spy in the French military may be someone other than Dreyfus, his commanding officer, the at first quite sympathetic General Charles Arthur Gonse, orders him to cease his investigations. "This is an army," the general pronounces, "not a society for debating ethics. The Minister of War gives orders to the Chief of Staff, the Chief of Staff gives orders to me, and I give orders to you. I now order you formally, and for the final time, not to investigate anything connected with the Dreyfus case, and not to disclose anything about it to anyone who isn't authorized to receive such information. Heaven help you if you disobey. Understand?"

More Robert Harris

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Well, it's safe to say we're shocked — shocked — to find that Oscar campaigning was going on in here.

Tuesday night, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences — the Oscars people — rescinded the Best Original Song nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone," from the movie Alone Yet Not Alone.

If you don't know what Alone Yet Not Alone is, you are alone yet not alone, because nobody was talking about this movie before the Oscar nominations came out, but a lot of people have been talking about it since then, asking a single searching question: "A what yet a what?"

Alone Yet Not Alone was the 314th biggest domestic earner of 2013, making $133,546 over three weeks in 11 theaters. It's a story about faith in God, and it boasts endorsements from Rick Santorum, Focus On The Family founder James Dobson, and Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council.

But the association that resulted in the yanking of the nomination was with Bruce Broughton, once an Academy Governor and still a member of the executive committee of the music branch. Broughton wrote the music for the song "Alone Yet Not Alone," and the Academy found that during the voting on nominations, he'd reached out to members of the music branch (which he helps govern) to tell them about his song that could maybe be nominated.

Now, it's not that the Oscars never nominate little movies that few people have heard of — and it's certainly not that they shouldn't nominate little movies that few people have heard of. But when the song you wrote that few people have ever heard from the little movie that few people have heard of bags a major Oscar nomination, and you're on the executive committee of the relevant branch, and it turns out that you campaigned via e-mail for your own song? Well, the Academy decided to draw the line there, saying through President Cheryl Boone, "Using one's position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one's own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage."

On the one hand, this seems an utterly reasonable thing to do — it does indeed seem like having a member of the governing committee of a group of people reach out to them to remind them that perhaps they'd like to consider his work creates at the very least the appearance of an unfair advantage.

But on the other hand, it is a bit of a fig leaf on a process that is well-understood to involve plenty of nudging, needling, calling, advertising, wheedling, and any number of other approaches that do not amount to looking solemnly to one's peers and saying, "Do what you think is right."

Just yesterday, Vulture ran a history of what it called the "Oscar campaign shenanigans" of super-producer Harvey Weinstein. It cited reports that Weinstein spent $5 million just trying (successfully) to get a Best Picture win for Shakespeare In Love, and detailed persistent accusations that Weinstein has participated in various "whisper campaigns" against other Best Picture contenders.

Whether or not all of those accusations are true, the Academy is certainly dogged by an increasing sense that they are true. It's possible to have a very successful awards show even if people sort of suspect that your entire process contains very much wining as well as a great deal of dining — just ask the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the Golden Globes.

But every awards show has its little niche, the thing it tries to be good at. The Globes are sometimes edgy and usually boozy — a fun show in support of a pretty goofy process. The Grammys focus on performances and have essentially given up on matching any critical sense of what music is actually best.

For the Oscars, the thin layer of alleged dignity and respectability that has survived even the years of highly publicized campaigning is, among other things, what the show is selling. The Oscars, while gentle comedy is encouraged, should feel like a grown-up evening, so the popular understanding goes. The Oscars are supposed to be about champagne sipped demurely, not white wine in barrels brought directly to your seat. You still can't wear what people deem too va-voomy a dress to the Oscars, or people will talk. (Sometimes in weird, uncomfortably coded language.) The Academy is not looking to become a less boozy Golden Globes.

So without actually drilling down into the ugly business of everything other than quality that affects who takes home which little naked statue, pulling a nomination that's been raising eyebrows since it was announced is as good a way as any to make the point that while it might not seem like it, some things are too detrimental to the appearance of a meritocracy, even for the Oscars.

The sedation that put race car legend Michael Schumacher into a medically induced coma after he suffered a serious head injury while skiing in France last month is being gradually reduced "to allow the start of the waking up process," the German driver's manager said Thursday.

ESPN's F1 website reminds us that the 45-year-old Schumacher "suffered a severe head injury on Dec. 29 when he fell and hit a rock while skiing in the French Alps. Surgeons performed two operations to remove blood clots around his brain since when he has been kept in a coma." The coma was induced to help reduce and control swelling in the brain. Schumacher was wearing a helmet when he crashed.

The process of reducing sedation and bringing Schumacher out of the coma "may take a long time," manager Sabine Kehm says.

It's too soon to say too much about Schumacher's post-coma prospects, though experts are expressing concern.

The French newspaper L'Equipe reported this week that doctors say there have been "encouraging signs" from recent neurological tests.

But the BBC has spoken with "two experts — Professor Gary Hartstein, Formula 1's chief medic between 2005 and 2012, and Mr Colin Shieff, neurosurgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London":

"Both Hartstein and Shieff believe it will be difficult for Schumacher to return to the same level of health he had before his accident.

" 'It is extremely unlikely, and I'd honestly say virtually impossible, that the Michael we knew prior to this fall will ever be back,' Hartstein said. ...

"Shieff agreed that outcome was 'extremely unlikely.'

" 'It is generally accepted that the longer a patient is in a reduced state of consciousness, the less likely they are to make a good recovery,' he said. 'It is still possible to regain consciousness, but this is far from certain.' "

"That's more flaring than we would like, and we are working very, very hard to get the percentage of flaring down," Dalrymple says. He points out that an industry task force is working on the issue. "The gas processing companies are building plants really as fast as they can."

Now, another interest group is weighing in on the issue: royalty owners. These are the people who own the rights to the underground oil and gas. When gas is wasted, they lose money. Some of them have filed class-action lawsuits against oil companies. NPR contacted four of those companies, but all declined interview requests.

Sarah Vogel is one of the plaintiffs and also a former North Dakota agriculture commissioner. She owns a farm on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. "It is fabulously beautiful and windswept. ... We just got electricity last year, and running water," she says.

It used to be quiet and dark at night, Vogel says. "We'd just see the stars. Now, at night, we see flares."

Derrick Braaten, an attorney in Bismarck, N.D., who is representing Vogel, says the lawsuit is essentially "requesting that the royalty owners be paid their royalties on the gas that has been flared."

He says that could amount to tens of millions of dollars in gas — gas now being wasted instead amid North Dakota's rush for oil.

Archaeologists excavating a site in central Rome say they've uncovered what may be oldest known temple from Roman antiquity.

Along the way, they've also discovered how much the early Romans intervened to shape their urban environment.

And the dig has been particularly challenging because the temple lies below the water table.

i i

A Hong Kong real estate tycoon made headlines two years ago when he offered a $65 million bounty to the man who could win his daughter's heart and marry her. In an open letter today, the daughter says she hopes he can accept that she is indeed a lesbian.

Cecil Chao, a billionaire property developer who himself has never married, made the offer after learning that his 34-year-old daughter, Gigi Chao, had married her partner, Sean Eav, in France. Homosexuality is not a criminal offense in Hong Kong, but same-sex marriage there is not legally recognized.

Last week, the elder Chao reportedly increased his offer.

"My wish is: she [will be] married with children who can inherit the hard work of my life," Chao told The Edge, a Malaysian business magazine.

After the initial "marriage bounty" in 2012, Gigi Chao, who is a model, arrived at her management company's building one day "to discover a crowd of Casanovas camped out in the lobby," according to Hong Kong Tatler.

The magazine writes:

"Bearing boxes of chocolates and bunches of red roses, the jet-setting lotharios had flown in from Africa, the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to win her heart — and her father's dowry."

Financial planners all say: The sooner you start saving, the better off you'll be in retirement.

But that advice often goes unheeded by young workers focused on paying down student debt and car loans. And even for those who can afford to set aside a little cash, investing can seem complicated and risky.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama said he's got a way to fix all of that. He calls it myRA — a difficult-to-say-aloud name that is supposed to get people thinking about "my retirement account."

This new way of saving would be different from a traditional tax-deferred individual retirement account, or IRA. For one thing, workers can't lose money in myRAs; the government would protect the principal and help savings grow a bit faster than inflation.

Participating employers could help workers steer portions of their paychecks into the retirement accounts through automatic deductions. But they would face few costs because they would not administer the accounts.

The White House says about half of all workers do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, such as 401(k) plans. The myRAs are aimed at those left-out workers.

"I want more people to have the chance to save for retirement through their hard work. And this is just one step that we can take to help more people do that," Obama said Wednesday while visiting the U.S. Steel Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, Penn., southeast of Pittsburgh.

It took four years in a prison cell for Palestinian Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub to decide to work as an Israeli informant. Not that he ever planned it that way. Rajoub is in his 60s now. He grew up in a Palestinian village near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He says he was 19, an emotional young man, when he got involved in fighting Israel.

"It was my right," he says, "to fight Israel and the occupation."

Rajoub looked up to an older brother, who he says was part of the military branch of the Palestinian political group Fatah and was killed by Israeli soldiers. Rajoub joined Fatah's fighting wing too, and says he took part in an attack on Israelis in the mid-1970s that landed him in Israeli prison.

Life inside was oppressive, Rajoub says, but the worst part of it came from fellow Palestinians. Fatah members, he says, wrongly accused him of passing information to Israeli intelligence.

It is a charge that is difficult to disprove, particularly inside a prison community where suspicions run deep and risks are high. Being accused of working as an informant was potentially so dangerous that Israel moved Rajoub from the general prison population into a solitary cell.

"I was in the Israeli cell alone for four years, waiting for Fatah to realize I was not an informant," Rajoub says. "But an apology never came. I thought a lot during those four years. I realized that my problem was with Fatah, not with Israel."

A Key Role That's Often Invisible

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, informants have long played a key role. Palestinians pass information to Israeli security agents for a variety of reasons, including personal gain or needing something from Israel, such as a work permit. In Rajoub's case, the motive was revenge. He wanted to hit back at Fatah, feeling it had betrayed him.

Still, it hurt.

"It was a painful decision," Rajoub says, choking up. "Whenever I remember that moment, I cry."

Rajoub stayed in prison, but in special cells full of other informants like him. Their job was to put on a show of being real prisoners, to fool other Palestinians into revealing information Israeli intelligence couldn't get.

Former Israeli intelligence officer Chaim Nativ calls it theater - and a useful part of interrogation. Nativ worked in the Arab section of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service for 30 years.

i i

First, he's Time magazine's "Person of the Year." Then, he's Rolling Stone's cover story: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in the Catholic Church.

Now, he's "SuperPope," the latest incarnation of Pope Francis, who has rapidly become one of the most popular leaders on the planet.

He made his debut recently, on a street named after the Roman comic playwright Plautus. It's just an ordinary street corner like many in Rome – no notable fountain, sculpture or building to gaze at.

On Wednesday morning, however, crowds gathered, aiming their cameras at a new piece of street art.

“ He's very modern. He shows concern for the young and for the poor. The previous popes didn't really understand people but Francis does because he's humble.

Steve Beshear couldn't help but chuckle during the State of the Union speech when President Obama said, "Kentucky's not the most liberal part of the country."

Obama was singling out his fellow Democrat for being the rare Southern governor who has fully implemented the Affordable Care Act, expanding Medicaid and running a state health insurance exchange that launched far more smoothly than the federal model.

Kentucky, the home of prominent Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, is not a blue state. It's not a place, like Connecticut or California, that has shown interest in restricting gun rights or recognizing same-sex marriages.

"I understand that the national persona of Kentucky in most people's minds reflects the face of our congressional delegation, but that's not what Kentucky's all about," Beshear says. "No, it's not a liberal beacon in the country, but it's not a radical right-wing place, either."

Beshear has gotten a lot of attention for embracing Obamacare, but that's not the only victory progressives have enjoyed in his state. Kentucky was the first state to adopt the Common Core educational standards, which have become anathema among many conservatives.

Jack Conway, the state's Democratic attorney general, is leading dozens of his peers in investigating lending practices among for-profit universities, which disproportionately support Republicans in terms of campaign donations.

And earlier this month, the Kentucky House approved a bill that would restore voting rights for felons.

Not Obama Country

A Gallup poll out this week showed Kentucky among the 10 states that gave Obama his worst approval ratings.

That's not a surprise. In 2012, Obama lost 116 of the state's 120 counties.

In fact, that year, even his performance in the state's Democratic primary was unconvincing. The president lost to "Uncommitted" in 67 counties.

"You'd be missing the boat to be suggesting that there's some shift to the left here," says Stephen Voss, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky.

In addition to McConnell and Paul — respectively, the Senate Republican leader and one of its best-known Tea Party-aligned stars — Republicans hold five out of six U.S. House seats in Kentucky. The GOP also controls the state Senate.

But Democrats enjoy a majority in the state House and hold all but one statewide office.

"We have a fairly strong Democratic Party, compared to most of the South," Voss says. "A lot of the voters here oppose the national Democratic Party, but they are not loyal Republicans. They're not even especially ideological."

Targeting McConnell

National Democrats are hopeful about their chances of unseating McConnell this fall. Assuming he survives a primary challenge from his right, he will face Allison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's secretary of state and daughter of a longtime Democratic operative.

But Democrats shouldn't be overly optimistic. "Grimes has an uphill battle for obvious reasons," says Dewey Clayton, a University of Louisville political scientist.

"All in all, the state is generally conservative," he says. "Even the Democrats for the most part tend to be more conservative than Democrats nationally."

While Democrats may tilt fairly conservative, not all the state's Republicans are as ideologically-driven as their counterparts in other places. Parts of the state have been Republican since the Civil War, but that's for "reasons that have nothing to do with what the party stands for today," Voss says.

Health And Education Expansions

When the state House moved to restore voting rights for non-violent felons, the chamber was cheered on by none other than Rand Paul.

"The right to vote is a sacred one in our country and it is the very foundation of our republic," Paul said in a statement.

Beshear speaks in less grandiose terms about the progressive victories he's pulled off. An additional 175,000 Kentuckians are on Medicaid, he says, representing more than a quarter of the state's previously uninsured population.

He's especially tickled that the state has just "jumped" to 10th in the country in Education Week's survey of student achievement. That's up from 34th.

Not only has Kentucky embraced the new national education standards (which is the term of art for information and skills students are expected to master at each grade level), but the state last year became the first to answer Obama's call to raise the age at which students can drop out of school — to 18 from 16.

"Whereas decades ago, education was a cause for embarrassment in Kentucky, today Kentucky's really on the cutting edge of education reform," Beshear says.

Meet Me In The Middle

Some political observers in Kentucky believe that Beshear has been pushing more progressive policies in his second term because he can't run again for governor. (His son, Andy, is running for state attorney general next year.)

Others think Beshear has his eye on a spot on the next national ticket or perhaps a cabinet post.

Whatever the governor's personal ambitions, his comfortably high personal approval ratings have shown that his largely conservative state can be governed in a fairly progressive fashion.

"We have to make a decision whether we're going to be a progressive, modern, forward-looking state," says Greg Fischer, Louisville's Democratic mayor. "My hope is that we come to this commonsense middle of moderation. That's what most people want."

A Hong Kong real estate tycoon made headlines two years ago when he offered a $65 million bounty to the man who could win his daughter's heart and marry her. In an open letter today, the daughter says she hopes he can accept that she is indeed a lesbian.

Cecil Chao, a billionaire property developer who himself has never married, made the offer after learning that his 34-year-old daughter, Gigi Chao, had married her partner, Sean Eav, in France. Homosexuality is not a criminal offense in Hong Kong, but same-sex marriage there is not legally recognized.

Last week, the elder Chao reportedly increased his offer.

"My wish is: she [will be] married with children who can inherit the hard work of my life," Chao told The Edge, a Malaysian business magazine.

After the initial "marriage bounty" in 2012, Gigi Chao, who is a model, arrived at her management company's building one day "to discover a crowd of Casanovas camped out in the lobby," according to Hong Kong Tatler.

The magazine writes:

"Bearing boxes of chocolates and bunches of red roses, the jet-setting lotharios had flown in from Africa, the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to win her heart — and her father's dowry."

Get recipes for Guacamole, White Bean Dip (above), Salsa Verde With Roasted Tomatillos and Pimiento Cheese.

"I'm not speaking about anything's that off-topic, this is only about the president," Grimm told Scotto before walking away.

Then, while the camera was still recording, Grimm returned to say:

"Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this f——-g balcony."

Scotto asked: "Why? Why? This is a valid question."

To which Grimm said: "No, no, you're not man enough, you're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy."

Later, Grimm issued a statement that says, in part, "I was extremely annoyed because I was doing NY1 a favor by rushing to do their interview first in lieu of several other requests." He also accused the reporter of "taking a disrespectful and cheap shot at the end of the interview."

NY1's political director, Bob Hardt, says in a statement that the news outlet is "certainly alarmed and disappointed by the behavior of Representative Grimm and demands a full apology from him. This behavior is unacceptable."

Scotto tells CNN that "I'm a New York City reporter. I'm used to push back, but I never encountered anything like that." He also says "I'm not taking it personal."

NY1 adds that:

"The FBI earlier this month charged 47-year-old Diana Durand with using straw donors to exceed the maximum allowable contribution to Grimm's campaign committee. After contributing $4,800, the maximum amount allowed under federal law, Durand allegedly offered to reimburse four friends if they contributed to the campaign.

"Grimm is not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the probe."

Archaeologists excavating a site in central Rome say they've uncovered what may be oldest known temple from Roman antiquity.

Along the way, they've also discovered how much the early Romans intervened to shape their urban environment.

And the dig has been particularly challenging because the temple lies below the water table.

i i

The annual State of the Union speech isn't just stagecraft: the message is mandated by the U.S. Constitution (trivia alert: Article II, Section 3). It's intended to give Congress a status update on the country and make recommendations where needed, but the tradition has evolved over time.

"The era of big government is over."

Significance: As much as anything else, the State of the Union speeches are political tools. In a re-election year, with a failed health care proposal and the disastrous 1994 election behind him, Clinton's rhetoric crept towards the middle in an attempt to signal he was a different kind of Democrat. Video / Transcript

China's new moon rover, the Jade Rabbit, may be dead. Chinese officials recently announced the rover was experiencing mechanical difficulties, and now observers believe it's done for.

The rover was part of a headline-grabbing push by China to get to the moon. On December 14, the nation's Chang'e 3 lander gently touched down on the lunar surface. It was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing there in nearly four decades.

Hours later, the lander lowered its Jade Rabbit rover onto the lunar landscape. And the rover stole the show.

It may have been the rover's name, or the small Chinese flag it appeared to be waving. Whatever the reason, the little six-wheeled machine captured the imagination of the Chinese.

On Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, an unofficial first-person account began chronicling the rover's adventures, as it drove in a circle around the lander and used instruments to study the lunar soil. The account quickly gained many thousands of of followers.

Then late last week, the little rabbit got into trouble.

"Well we don't exactly know what happened, there's not a lot of detail," says Emily Lakdawalla, a blogger and senior editor with the Planetary Society, a non-profit that supports space exploration. The rover was preparing for the lunar night time, which lasts for two weeks. It was supposed to fold up to shield its delicate electronics from the cold. That didn't happen — and now, Lakdawalla says, its circuity is done for.

"It'll just break, it will physically break because of the incredibly cold temperature, and there's no way to fix that," she says. "You can't send Triple-A up onto the moon to fix your broken car. It's done."

Lakdawalla says that lunar dust may be to blame for the rover's inability to fold up. The dust is extremely fine, and it clings to anything it touches. It finds its way into cracks and mechanical systems, where it can jam things up.

"It's very difficult to work with," she says.

The rover's untimely demise is making a lot of people sad, inside China and out. But Lakdawalla says it doesn't diminish the huge success of the mission. And she thinks the Jade Rabbit's life, however brief, has energized the Chinese.

"The Chinese public, rather than being disappointed by this are emboldened by it," she says. "Once you've tasted a little bit of success in space exploration you want to do more, you want to achieve greater things. And it's nice to see that spirit taking off."

China is already planning numerous manned and unmanned space missions for the future, including another trip to the moon to pick up a sample and return it to earth.

As for the rover: it's last, unofficial words translated as "Goodnight earth!"

In recent years, rampant borrowing has driven a significant chunk of China's economic growth. The bill is now becoming clearer — and it's big. Late last year, China revealed that local governments owe nearly $3 trillion – more than the gross domestic product of France, the world's fifth-largest economy.

One city with a sizable debt problem is Wuhan, an industrial hub that lies along the Yangtze River in central China's Hubei province. With a population of 10 million, Wuhan has a growth rate of 11 percent and is known for its car factories and many universities.

According to China's state media, it also owes more than $33 billion, nearly twice Wuhan's GDP. Banks became so concerned that they cut off funding for a 17-mile highway. A local current affairs TV show covered the debacle.

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Multi-millionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins tried to apologize — kind of — for comparing the protests against the techno-affluent to Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi rampage that led to 91 killings and 30,000 Jews sent to concentration camps.

Perkins' feelings about a "progressive war" against the top one percent of earners were published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend and touched many a nerve in the long-simmering class tensions in the Bay Area. His letter led to denouncements from his own VC firm and from other tech leaders, including Marc Andreessen, another prominent venture capitalist.

All Tech Considered

Billionaire Compares Outrage Over Rich In SF To Kristallnacht

Class tensions in the San Francisco Bay Area got even hotter this weekend, over the public musings of Tom Perkins, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The billionaire wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal comparing the class tensions between the San Francisco middle class and the techno-affluent to one of the most horrific events in Western history — Kristallnacht, or "Night of the Broken Glass," a series of coordinated attacks against Jews in 1938 Nazi Germany.

The context here is that in recent years, some Bay Area residents have become increasingly outraged over rising income inequality, housing prices and how newly-rich tech entrepreneurs are changing the city and its culture. (We explored this from several angles in December, look back on the series here.) The simmering resentment has erupted in louder calls for housing policy changes and protests over the private buses that take tech workers to Silicon Valley headquarters, like those of Google. And some protestors have even stalked a Google employee to his home and blocked him in.

The events have clearly frustrated Perkins, a "Silicon Valley pioneer," according to his bio. In his letter titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" Perkins attempts to draw a line between the "demonization of the rich" in San Francisco to the assault on Jews by the Nazis at the start of World War II — an assault that led to 91 deaths and 30,000 jailed in concentration camps. Some excerpts from Perkin's brief letter:

"I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'

As far as factories go, this one was about as ballyhooed as they come. In 2012, President Obama visited Intel's Ocotillo campus in suburban Phoenix, the day after his State of the Union address.

Obama stood beneath a towering crane at the construction site — a crane so big it could lift 4,000 tons. The president then boasted that Intel's $5 billion factory, known as Fab 42, would someday crank out even more high-powered computer chips for laptops and phones.

"The factory that's being built behind me is an example of an America that's within our reach — an America that attracts the next generation of good manufacturing jobs," Obama said.

What a difference two years make. That multi-billion dollar factory Obama was raving about is finished, but there's nothing happening inside it.

Earlier this month, Intel announced it would delay opening the factory in Chandler, Ariz. A few days later, the computer-chip maker said it would cut more than 5,000 jobs from its global workforce.

In a statement, Intel said the new factory space would be set aside for future use. Many of the 1,000 or so jobs the project was supposed to have created have been relocated to other buildings on this sprawling industrial complex.

So what happened?

The company's stock has actually stagnated since the day Obama made his visit to Arizona. Intel hit headwinds when demand for personal computers plummeted in favor of tablets and mobile phones, says Morningstar Analyst Andy Ng, who follows the semiconductor industry.

"When I think about Intel, it's a company in transition," Ng says. "When you look at what Intel was planning for Chandler, I don't think they figured that the PC market and the demand for PC processors would decline so quickly."

The problem is that 60 percent of Intel's business comes from the processors inside PCs. The company said this month that revenue would be flat in 2014, a big reason for the 5 percent cut in its global workforce by the end of the year.

"Remember this is a big organization too ... so you can't just right the ship overnight," Ng says.

And some industry experts believe Intel has recognized its imbalance; Ng says it's transitioning well into the race for smartphones and tablets. He sees potential in the company's push for building cloud storage and server capacity for the crush of new mobile devices popping up around the world.

Related NPR Stories

All Tech Considered

Long Before Most, Intel Chased The Smart Watch

Syrian peace talks in Geneva have produced their first tangible result — an agreement to allow women and children to escape the city of Homs, which has been under government siege for more than a year.

"What we have been told by the government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the old city are welcome to leave immediately," Brahimi told reporters.

Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad confirmed the agreement, but said it was "armed groups" that were preventing their movement.

"I assure you that if the armed terorists in Homs allow women and children to leave the Old City of Homs, we will allow them every access, not only that, we will provide them with shelter, medicines and all that is needed," Mekdad said.

Homs is one of the first cities to rebel against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Brahimi acknowledged on Sunday that it was only a small step in what he hoped would be a broader peace deal between the two sides, which have been fighting since 2011 in a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives.

"You may gain one hour and lose one week," he said of the uncertain nature of the talks.

As we reported on Saturday, on the first day of talks as representatives eyed each other warily, Brahimi lamented that "we haven't achieved much."

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

You've gotta love the Grammy Awards.

They've got a zillion categories showcasing all kinds of great and interesting music (really!) in all kinds of genres (really!). But when it comes to awards night, you see a tiny selection of awards (eight or nine, maybe, in three hours), together with a bunch of performances ranging from the flawless to the weird thing that happened last year involving Frank Ocean's video legs.

And every year, Stephen Thompson of NPR Music joins me for a live discussion in which we try to come to terms with our love of some of this music, our frustration with other parts of this music, and our advancing age. We sort of love the Grammys, the way you love a relative you wouldn't necessarily want to move in with, but who always sends you home from dinner saying, "So THAT happened."

Sunday night's ceremony is scheduled to include a Lifetime Achievement Award for The Beatles (finally, some love for those guys!), all kinds of filler (yay!), and of course performances from folks including Madonna, Katy Perry, and — have no fear — Taylor Swift, because it appears that that's the law.

Our comment section below will be open, and we especially love using it to entertain ourselves during the commercials, so please leave your comments right down there (running them in the chat box is way too distracting for everyone, we've found) and we'll try to surface some of our favorites.

We'll be here at about 7:45, warming up for the 8:00 show. Please join us.