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After five days of airstrikes aimed at Islamist rebels, French troops are engaged in their first ground battles with those forces in Mali, according to several news outlets.

France 24 reports that "French special forces began fighting on the ground with Islamist rebels in central Mali on Wednesday, according to regional security sources, six days after the European power launched an air offensive in the country."

The BBC writes that "French troops have been fighting Mali's Islamist rebels in street battles in the town of Diabaly, Malian and French sources say. In the first major ground operation in the conflict, French special forces were fighting alongside Malian troops."

Meanwhile, "foreign workers at a gas field in Algeria were believed to have been kidnapped Wednesday in what the U.K. government described as an 'ongoing terrorist incident,' " NBC News reports. Reuters says there may be more than 40 hostages, and that Americans may be among them. It adds that "the raid, claimed by an al-Qaida affiliate, came after Islamists had vowed to retaliate for France's military intervention in Mali."

We reported Monday that the militants had vowed to "strike at the heart of France. ... In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar intends to step down at the end of March, his office confirms to NPR's Jeff Brady.

Word of Salazar's plan broke over night. According to The Denver Post, the former senator from Colorado intends to "return to Colorado to spend time with his family."

As the Post writes:

"Salazar has said in his four years he is most proud of improving the relationship the federal government has with American Indians, cleaning up the oil and gas program after former departments were plagued with scandal and nepotism, and broadening a clean energy agenda.

"The secretary established seven new national parks and 10 new wildlife refuges. He also launched 18 utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands. ...

"He has also dealt with several natural and environmental disasters, including the explosion of a BP-operated deep water oil well, Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. ...

"In his push to grow regulations for domestic energy production on federal lands — particularly post Deepwater Horizon — he often tangled with House Republicans, many of whom have called him one of the worst Interior secretaries in the history of the United States."

Whole Foods has played a key role in propelling organic foods into the mainstream. The specialty supermarket chain has more than 300 stores and plans to continue expanding. But outspoken founder and co-CEO John Mackey is not the crunchy granola liberal one might conjure while perusing aisles of earnestly labeled blue corn chips and gently misted red peppers.

In fact, he's a self-styled libertarian: a vegan who sells sustainably raised meat, a man who compares the government's health care overhaul to "fascism" but wants to improve American diets.

And he thinks big businesses have an obligation to change customers' perception that big corporations are "primarily selfish and greedy." (Not that he's opposed to profits. In fact, Whole Foods posted a 49 percent boost in quarterly earnings in November.)

Mackey sat down with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep to discuss his philosophy and the new book he co-authored, Conscious Capitalism. Part 1 airs Wednesday, Part 2 on Thursday.

Mackey tells Inskeep that companies must have a higher purpose than just making money.

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If you didn't know any better, you might think that even if new gun control proposals from President Obama become stalled in Washington's gridlock, the states will rush in to fill the void.

After all, under its Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York has responded to December's Newtown tragedy by moving quickly on legislation to ban assault weapons and to make it harder for seriously mentally ill individuals to legally obtain firearms.

Meanwhile, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a fellow Democrat, has announced that he is championing new restrictions to require anyone seeking a gun permit to take a mandatory training course and submit fingerprints to state authorities.

And yet one more Democrat, Gov. John Hickenlooper in Colorado, a state in a traditionally pro-gun region of the country, is calling for universal background checks for would-be gun purchasers. He would require anyone buying a firearm, even at a gun show or in a private sale, to pass a criminal background check.

There's an old newsroom adage that three is a trend. And the activity in these three states could certainly lead an observer to assume that there's a widespread movement in the states to act on gun control with a swiftness not found at the federal level.

But sometimes three doesn't really signal a larger trend. This is one of those times.

While the three aforementioned states and several others are considering new restrictions on guns following the pre-Christmas massacre of grade-schoolers and educators in Connecticut, there isn't much evidence of things on the state level shifting toward greater gun control.

The states considering further restrictions are all blue states.

In fact, in several red states, the shift is in the exact opposite direction. In Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming, for instance, legislation has been introduced recently that would loosen gun restrictions or underscore gun owner rights.

While the gun control issue isn't a totally partisan one, the push for new limits is more likely to occur in states with Democratic governors and legislatures than in states in which the GOP controls the governor's mansion and legislature.

Keeping in mind that 30 states have Republican governors and 26 state legislatures are GOP-controlled, compared with the 19 that are controlled by Democrats (four are split; Nebraska's is nonpartisan), it's obvious that the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates have a substantial firewall in the states.

The firewall means that legislation in the states is likely to be only so effective, since — as has been seen in history — guns can easily make their way into states with strict restrictions from states with looser laws.

In 1993, Virginia instituted a gun sale restriction that limited buyers to one handgun a month, after research found that a disturbing number of guns sold in the state were being used in crimes elsewhere on the East Coast.

That restriction was repealed last year by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Robert McDonnell on the grounds that it interfered with the Second Amendment rights of citizens. The repeal, however, has once again raised fears that a flood of Virginia guns will find their way into the hands of criminals.

Something else to keep in mind is that not every Democratic governor is a sure champion for tough new gun control laws.

Take Gov. Jerry Brown of California who, in the past has described himself as a gun owner and hunter. Though Brown has signed gun control legislation during his governorship — for instance, a ban on openly carrying unloaded handguns in public — he has been relatively muted on the issue post-Newtown. He's made no promises on whether he would sign future gun-control bills.

So while it should be fairly obvious that new restrictions on guns face significant obstacles in the nation's capital, it's just as true that such efforts face significant headwinds in most states, as well.