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President Obama met with middle class taxpayers on Wednesday who had written to the White House about the impact of tax hikes on their pocket books.

Melissa Block speaks to Republican Senator Bob Corker about his plan for dodging the "fiscal cliff."

Alexander Murphy recalls visiting a Guatemala museum some years ago and gazing up at a huge relief map of the country. Something about the borders struck the University of Oregon geography professor as out of place.

"And then I realized, 'Wait, all of Belize is shown as part of Guatemala,' " Murphy says. That's when he remembered a decades-old territorial dispute between the two Central American neighbors.

Maps, like statistics, can lie — or at least tell only one side of the story. As often as not, they can belie the level of actual governmental control or the ethnic and social realities on the ground. And competing views over "who owns what" invariably fuel nationalistic fervor.

Enlarge He Yuan/EPA/Landov

A map in China's new passports shows disputed islands and territorial waters as belonging to China, which has angered several of its neighbors.

One of the most well-known American women in China is someone many Americans have never heard of. Jessica Beinecke is host of Voice of America's OMG! Meiyu, an English-language learning web show that teaches American slang expressions to Chinese students.

Beinecke's fun, offbeat videos have racked up more than 15 million views over the last year — on Youtube and other Chinese sites.

She has become a breakout star in China and even has a fan club based in Beijing. Each week, Beinecke asks her viewers what words or expressions they would like to learn. Their responses have led to her explanations of expressions like "eye gunk," "big mouth" and "buttering up."

Beinecke talks with NPR's Neal Conan about explaining American English to Chinese students.