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"PIGS" are a hot topic in Germany's capital.

Attend any press briefing about how German Chancellor Angela Merkel is going to solve the European debt crisis and you're likely to hear that acronym, which stands for "Portugal, Ireland (or Italy), Greece and Spain."

But recently, pigs of an altogether different variety made headlines in Berlin.

Four people were injured — including a policeman — when a 265-pound wild boar attacked them in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg in late October. The police officer shot and killed the animal, which had been injured while crossing a busy highway.

Shocked residents said that they'd seen boars in the nearby park, but didn't know they were dangerous. Some residents squealed on neighbors, accusing them of throwing food from their balconies to the pigs. Feeding wild boars in Berlin is illegal and offenders face fines of up to $6,500.

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR

Wild boar, shown here inside an enclosure in a Berlin city park, are considered smart and quickly learn how to avoid hunters.

Publishers, reporters and authors gathered Tuesday at the New School in New York City to celebrate this year's exceptional nominees for the National Book Awards. NPR recorded the 10 nominated authors for fiction and nonfiction reading from their works. These 10 books — which tell the stories of a young drug smuggler, lovable philanderers, holograms in the Saudi desert, and more — inspired, informed and entertained readers in 2012.

Fiction Nominees

Linda Wertheimer and Steve Inskeep have the Last Word in business.

Aatish Taseer is the author of Stranger to History.