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But what does it look like from space?

NASA's Earth Observatory released a pair of satellite images today that show Beijing and the surrounding areas on Monday and 11 days earlier, on Jan. 3.

NASA explains what seen on Monday's image:

"The brightest areas tend to be clouds or fog, which have a tinge of gray or yellow from the air pollution. Other cloud-free areas have a pall of gray and brown smog that mostly blots out the cities below. In areas where the ground is visible, some of the landscape is covered with lingering snow from storms in recent weeks."

One month after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, gun control is on the national agenda. The White House will outline its proposals this week, and national surveys find a majority of Americans support options such as requiring background checks for both private and gun-show sales.

As NPR's Richard Gonzales found when he visited a large traveling gun show this past weekend, it seemed that the momentum behind new gun control proposals had brought a spike in business for gun sellers.

The San Francisco Gun Show was held at the Cow Palace, where Richard reported seeing "a line of a couple thousand people winding through the parking lot. And the line of cars to get into the parking lot is six blocks long."

He spoke to an attendee about the show's draw this year.

"Everybody is freaked out right now. So who knows?" hunter Robert Gonzales tells Richard with a sigh. Asked to explain, Gonzales answers, "They're freaked out that they're not going to be able to buy weapons I guess, you know. Cuz I been coming to this Cow Palace for years and I've never seen it this bad."

President Obama said Monday that he will unveil the White House's plan later this week; he was to meet with Vice President Biden today, to discuss the options Biden's gun control task force is recommending to the president.

"Some of them will require legislation," Obama said. "Some of them I can accomplish through executive action."

According to two national surveys released today, a majority of Americans support creating a federal database to track gun sales, requiring background checks for gun-show sales, and increasing the number of armed guards at schools.

Background supports drew the most support in the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey, with 85 percent in favor. The survey also found that 64 percent supported putting more armed guards or police in schools.

Another study, from The Washington Post and ABC, found similar result, with 52 percent of those responding said the Newtown shootings made them more likely to to support gun control. And both surveys found that more than 50 percent of Americans support banning assault style weapons.

On today's All Things Considered, Pew Director Michael Dimock tells Audie Cornish that despite the broad support, some of the options spur deep partisan divides. For instance, "among Republicans, you get fewer than half who would favor a federal government database on guns," he says. By contrast, 84 percent of Democrats are in favor.

And 44 percent of Republicans support a ban on assault weapons, while 69 percent of Democrats say they would support such a ban. Similar divides exist on the issues of banning semi-automatic weapons and ending the sale of ammunition online.

In Metairie, La., where Mike Mayer owns the Jefferson Gun Outlet, Mayer tells Richard that many of his customers are looking for the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, like the one used in the Newtown shootings.

"For a standard AR, something that we would sell normally for $899 is selling right now for $1850," Mayer tells Richard.

"What it really showed was because different cultures — the military, civilian, whatnot — all have their own lexicon, you can be having a conversation where you think you're communicating effectively ... but you're not," he says.

He says it's the responsibility of the military to explain to civilian leaders what its strategic goals are and what resources are needed to achieve them.

The Article That Ended His Career

McChrystal resigned after comments that he and his staff made about members of the Obama administration in what he believed to be an off-the-record setting to a Rolling Stone reporter. The magazine published the comments in an article titled "The Runaway General" in the summer of 2010.

Related NPR Stories

McChrystal Piece Stirs Debate On Covering Military July 2, 2010

Retail sales rose 0.5 percent in December from November, the Census Bureau says. That may be a sign that as 2012 ended consumers were still in a shopping mood even as lawmakers in Washington struggled to keep the federal government from going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

Bloomberg News says the better-than-expected sales figure, which is adjusted to hopefully smooth out the effects of the holidays and show the "real" growth, is a sign that consumers were looking "beyond the year-end budget battle among U.S. lawmakers."

"Consumers continue to spend at a decent pace," Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit, told Bloomberg.

Such spending is critical: Consumers purchase about 70 percent of the goods and services companies produce.

For the year, retail sales were up 5.2 percent.

Also this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wholesale prices declined 0.2 percent in December from November and were up just 1.3 percent for the year.