Most Recent Posts

Police in France say that a 21-year-old Muslim convert who confessed to stabbing a French soldier was apparently motivated by his religious beliefs, in an eerie echo of an attack last week in London, in which a British serviceman was killed.

Pvt. Cedric Cordiez, 25, was approached from the back and stabbed in the neck at a shopping mall in a suburb of Paris on Saturday. He was treated at a military hospital and released on Monday, officials said.

The New York Times reports that Paris public prosecutor Francois Molins on Wednesday announced the arrest of Alexandre Dhaussy, 21, who authorities say confessed to the crime. Molins said investigators believe that Dhaussy had "acted in the name of his religious ideology."

Molins said authorities were treating the attack as a terrorist act, and that Dhaussy had been caught on surveillance video apparently saying a prayer minutes before stabbing Cordiez.

"The nature of the incident, the fact it took place three days after [the London attack], and the prayer just before the act lead us to believe he acted on the basis of religious ideology and that his desire was to attack a representative of the state," Molins said at a news conference. "It seems clear the intent was to kill."

The Times says that Dhaussy had been known to authorities since 2009, "when he was submitted to an identity check for praying in the street."

Last year when New Orleans' main paper, The Times-Picayune laid off dozens of newspaper employees and cut its circulation to three times a week, residents were shocked.

Sharron Morrow and her friends had bonded over the morning paper at a local coffee shop for the past 20 years.

"I've stopped my subscription, and I mourn the paper almost every day," she says.

Shifting Media Players

Newspaper circulation has been rapidly declining all over the country. Advertising revenue has plummeted while online revenue has been making small gains. The The Times-Picayune re-branded itself as The Times-Picayune NOLA.com, representative of its new Web-centered focus.

Multimillionaire John Georges was one of the local movers and shakers furious at the Times-Picayune's changes. He tried to buy the company, but the New York-based owners refused to sell it, so Georges decided to start his own daily paper.

He bought The Advocate, a daily paper based 80 miles away in Baton Rouge, and launched a New Orleans edition.

"We fought the Battle of New Orleans once before; some think we are going to fight it again in the newspaper," he says.

To lead the charge, Georges hired Dan Shea, a managing editor laid off from The Times-Picayune during cutbacks. In the weeks since his hiring, a slew of prize-winning reporters have jumped from The Times-Picayune to The Advocate. Shea says subscriptions in New Orleans are growing.

Enlarge image i

China's infamous bureaucracy has bedeviled people for ages, but in recent years, daily life in some major Chinese cities has become far more efficient.

For instance, when I worked in Beijing in the 1990s, many reporters had drivers. It wasn't because they didn't drive, but because they needed someone to deal with China's crippling bureaucracy.

I had a man named Old Zhao, who would drive around for days to pay our office bills at various government utility offices. Zhao would sit in line for hours, often only to be abused by functionaries.

I left China in 2002 and returned two years ago to work as NPR's correspondent in Shanghai. These days, I just walk across the street with my bills and pay them at a 24-hour convenience store. It takes about three minutes and the clerks are unfailingly polite.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

How To Sneak Into A Chinese Village When Police Don't Want You There

The makers of Smithfield Ham, an icon on America's culinary scene for decades, are selling the publicly traded company to China's Shuanghui International Holdings Limited for about $4.72 billion in cash. The deal also includes an exchange of debt.

The purchase values Smithfield Foods at $7.1 billion — a figure that would make the purchase "the largest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company," according to Bloomberg News.

In addition to Smithfield, the company's brands include Armour, Eckrich, Gwaltney, Kretschmar, and others. The company's roots stretch back to 1936, when the Luter family opened a packing plant in Virginia.

Terms of the purchase value Smithfield's stock at $34 a share — a premium of more than 30 percent over the company's closing share price yesterday. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale, says the company's shares rose sharply before the markets opened Wednesday.

The deal will require approval from U.S. regulators before it is final.

"This is a great transaction for all Smithfield stakeholders, as well as for American farmers and U.S. agriculture," Smithfield president and CEO Larry Pope said. "We have established Smithfield as the world's leading and most trusted vertically integrated pork processor and hog producer, and are excited that Shuanghui recognizes our best-in-class operations, our outstanding food safety practices and our 46,000 hard-working and dedicated employees."

Shuanghui International is the majority owner of Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co. — "China's largest meat processing enterprise and China's largest publicly traded meat products company as measured by market capitalization," according to a news release.

"China is the world's biggest producer and consumer of pork and the third-largest market for U.S. pork," Reuters reports. "In recent months, a series of food safety scandals have dented consumer confidence."

Smithfield's headquarters will remain in Virginia, according to a press release announcing the deal this morning. The companies also said that Shuangui will not close any Smithfield facilities, and will leave all employee agreements — and the existing management team — in place.

The purchase would further solidify an economic relationship between China and Virginia that has been growing. The state has sent several trade missions to Asia in recent years, helping China become what Gov. Bob McDonnell calls "far and away our largest trading partner," as member station WAMU recently reported.

McDonnell made that comment earlier this month, when he announced Virginia's $638 million of agricultural exports to China in 2012. Pork and poultry placed third on the list of the state's exports; the top spot was taken by soybeans.