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Forms of gonorrhea that don't respond to the last line of antibiotics have rapidly spread in Great Britain, expanding the reach of drug-resistant disease.

The number of gonorrhea cases with decreased sensitivity to the front-line drug cefixime increased by nearly six times from 2004 to 2011 in England and Wales, a team from the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency reported Tuesday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Drug-resistant gonorrhea is a growing trend worldwide, with cases rising in Asia, North America and Europe. Japan has even documented a superresistant strain of gonorrhea that can thwart all available drugs.

Sixty years ago, doctors had a large arsenal against gonorrhea, including penicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and doxycycline. But one by one, each of those antibiotics stopped working. Now there are only two drugs left: cefixime, which is taken orally, and ceftriaxone, which is injected into muscle.

Last summer, evidence emerged that cefixime had stopped working against gonorrhea in the U.S. The data were so worrisome that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounded the alarm and issued new guidelines for treating the sexually transmitted disease. Then in January, Canada documented the first case of cefixime-resistant gonorrhea.

Gonorrhea, aka "the clap," is the second-most-common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S., with more than 300,000 cases reported in 2011.

In the current study, epidemiologists tested drug sensitivity for more than 7,000 gonorrhea cases in England and Wales. Strains that showed signs of resisting cefixime steadily increased from 2004 to 2010, when 17 percent of cases didn't respond to normal doses of the medication. This percentage then fell to 10.8 in 2011.

The gonorrhea cases that didn't respond well to cefixime also showed resistance to ceftriaxone.

These two drugs are in the same class of antibiotics. So many scientists worry that once the bacterium conquers one of them, it will eventually knock out the other, too.

The world doesn't have any backup treatments for gonorrhea. Once this class of antibiotics is gone, we've got a big problem.

I'm surrounded here at NPR Books by people with sophisticated, grown-up tastes — happy to dive into the latest Claire Messud or Daniel Alarcon or James Salter. Meanwhile, give me — any day — a book about teenagers (and preferably dragons). A good YA novel is a polished gem of solid storytelling, but more than that, it draws us back in time to the teenagers we once were — or never were, or wanted desperately to be. Here are five (well, really six) books that capture the roller coaster of adolescent experience: that delicate thump in the gut when you realize that suddenly a friendship is more than a friendship. Or the rock-solid conviction that YOU are the chosen one, the heroine of your own drama (whether or not you want to be). Or just that all-over twitchy feeling, lying on the living-room couch and staring out the window, of longing for your real life to begin.

The sad thing about this week's ScuttleButton puzzle is that Edward Snowden has already revealed the answer.

ScuttleButton, of course, is that once-a-week waste of time exercise in which each Tuesday or Wednesday I put up a vertical display of buttons on this site. Your job is to simply take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and, hopefully, you will arrive at a famous name or a familiar expression. (And seriously, by familiar, I mean it's something that more than one person on Earth would recognize.)

For years, a correct answer chosen at random would get his or her name posted in this column, an incredible honor in itself. Now the stakes are even higher. Thanks to the efforts of the folks at Talk of the Nation, that person also hears their name mentioned on the Wednesday show (by me) and receives a Political Junkie t-shirt in the bargain. Is this a great country or what?

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state — you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

(Why do people keep forgetting to include their name and city/state?)

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be among the first on your block to receive notice about the column and the puzzle. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck!

By the way, I always announce the winner on Wednesday's Junkie segment on TOTN — seven or eight days after the puzzle first goes up. So you should try and get your answer in as soon as possible. But logistically, you have about a week to submit your guess.

Here are the buttons used and the answer to last week's puzzle.

Re-elect Nixon in '72 — President Nixon carried 49 states against Democratic challenger George McGovern.

Member/Kennedy for President Club — Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.

Senator D Huddleston — Not sure, but this could be from the Kentucky Democrat who served from 1973-84.

Praise Allah — The Islam prayer (officially, "Praise be to Allah").

picture button of the Three Stooges' Mo Howard — I soitenly had to include this one.

So, when you combine Re + Member + D + Allah + Mo, you may just very well end up with ...

Remember the Alamo! The famous expression travelers use when looking for a car rental at the airport.

The winner, chosen completely at random, is Jackie Kennedy of Paducah, Ky. Yes, that Jackie Kennedy. She gets not only the coveted Political Junkie t-shirt — but the Official No Prize Button as well!

NPR Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep recently traveled to Damascus for a series of reports on the ongoing war in Syria. He sent this postcard from the road.

Dear Salt:

On my first day in Damascus, I went walking in the ancient bazaar — narrow stone-paved streets surrounding a great stone mosque. The mosque is so old, it used to be a church during the Roman Empire, and before it was a church, it was a pagan temple. The bazaar is surely as old as the mosque, for Damascus is a historic city of trade.

My colleague Nishant Dahiya directed me toward an incredible aroma he'd detected at the door of a spice shop. I bent down and sniffed the gray stuff. It was oregano. It filled a bag about the size of a five-gallon gas can. The smell was strong but not hot, rich but sharp. The shopkeeper, noting my appreciation, grabbed a scoop and put a little on my hand to taste.

Some days later, we were exceedingly hungry while driving on a highway outside Homs. Our driver, Neda, pulled over at a roadside stand. "They have za'atar," she said. Nishant knew exactly what she meant. I'd never heard the word.

Three men lounged on plastic chairs at the stand, which was right by the highway median, in a clearing in the bushes. One worked a black baking oven. I never found out what the other two did. A glass case held several of the round, flat Middle Eastern flatbreads called khubs. Some were smeared with cheese; some with a paprika sauce; and some with za'atar. I chose the latter two, and the man shoved them into the hot coal oven with a paddle — the way an Italian cook might insert a pizza.

The paddle was one of only two special utensils the cook used. The other utensil was a common tree saw, with an orange handle, absolutely identical to the one in my storage closet at home. I presume he used the saw to hack down roadside trees to feed the fire.

When the bread emerged, I smelled an incredible aroma that I knew I had experienced somewhere before. After a moment, the image came to me: Damascus, the bazaar, the great bag of oregano just a few days ago.

"It has other ingredients, too," said Nishant. "Sesame seeds crushed into it." He said it's eaten all over the Middle East.

I immediately wanted to write you about this, Salt, but Nishant discouraged me. He said za'atar is far too common to be interesting. He reacted as if I had proposed to ask you the story behind ketchup. And this made me wonder: what is the story of ketchup?

But I digress. Over the hours that followed, it became apparent that Nishant might just be right. It seemed that I was the only person around who did not know from za'atar. Completely by chance, I heard from a friend in Pakistan who loves it. Then the subject came up over dinner in Damascus, and a friend informed us that when she was growing up, she was urged at school exam time to "Eat your za'atar!" Apparently, some people think it's brain food.

Anyway, the roadside serving of za'atar on bread was an astonishingly simple food, simple enough to love it. The za'atar was just spread over the hot bread like butter on toast. That was it. I'd eat it again. While I wait to encounter it again, Salt, here's what I want to know: Where does za'atar come from? How long has it been around? What, besides oregano, is in it?

And is it brain food?

— Steve

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