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What's a baker to do when all foodies can talk about, on both sides of the Atlantic, is the cronut craze, a croissant-doughnut that NPR reported on earlier this year? Simple: Come up with an equally addictive hybrid dessert.

Inspired by the increasing appetite for "mash-up" desserts — fusing two calorie- and fat-filled items into one — Britain's Evening Standard newspaper tasked food writer and blogger Victoria Stewart with commissioning a winning dessert combination to rival the cronut.

"We were keen to get something new, as we always try to move the story on a bit," says Stewart.

American baker Bea Vo was tapped because of her background in hybrid desserts. Vo opened the first of her three London bakeries, Bea's of Bloomsbury, in 2008, and she was already beloved by customers for her "duffin," a cake doughnut filled with jam, which she created a few years ago. With a loyal following for her inventive desserts, Vo was given a list of experimental fusion foods to whip up for the Standard.

"One of them was the muffle, a muffin and waffle. We did make one, but the fruit caramelized too quickly," Vo tells The Salt. "The trick to fusion desserts is to bring out the best of both." Which is why Vo's invention — the "townie" — has been a huge success. The brownie-tartlet has a gooey center and a crisp outer shell.

"I immediately saw it and thought, 'Why hasn't anyone done that before?' " Vo tells The Salt. She says the fact that brownie dough isn't very wet prevents the shell from getting soggy, and also allows for under-baking the brownie to give the center that highly sought after gooeyness.

But while Vo knew it would work, she didn't expect to sell more than a few dozen. Instead, she sold 800 townies in 10 days and garnered attention from U.S. TV networks. "This is one of those unusual things that really had its own life," she says.

Citing the billions of people worldwide who can't access the Internet, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the leaders of other technology firms are launching an ambitious project to narrow the digital divide Wednesday. The plan focuses on widening access via mobile phones.

"There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy," Zuckerberg says. "Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making Internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it."

To accomplish that goal, a website for the Internet.org project lists areas for possible gains, from a proposal to make smartphones more affordable to a push to make mobile devices work in more languages.

Other ideas include making apps and processes more efficient, so the data costs of using a smartphone are lower, and giving mobile phone providers and phone makers incentives to make their products more affordable.

Their goal is to increase the number of people who use the Internet, which is estimated to be more than 2.7 billion this year, according to the United Nations.

"By reducing the cost and amount of data required for most apps and enabling new business models, Internet.org is focused on enabling the next 5 billion people to come online," according to a new release.

This summer, Google has been testing its own plan to help provide Internet access in areas where such services are rare. Called Loon, the project calls for floating antenna-equipped balloons high into the atmosphere.

The new project is launching with the support of Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung — all of them companies that could eventually profit from the addition of billions of new customers. As smartphone and digital markets in Europe and elsewhere reach a saturation point, developing nations present the biggest chances for growth.

But a push for profits is not the main factor behind the new initiative, Zuckerberg tells The New York Times.

"We're focused on it more because we think it's something good for the world," he says, "rather than something that is going to be really amazing for our profits."

In terms of Internet access, wide disparities exist between different regions and economic tiers. As the "World in 2013" report from the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union states, it's more expensive to get online in a developing country than in a developed one, in relative terms.

Here are some highlights from the report, published in February by the Swiss organization:

In the developing world, 31 percent of the population is online, compared with 77 percent in the developed world.

Europe is the region with the highest Internet penetration rate in the world (75 percent), followed by the Americas (61 percent).

In Africa, 16 percent of people are using the Internet – only half the penetration rate of Asia and the Pacific.

90 percent of the 1.1 billion households not connected to the Internet are in the developing world.

In developing countries, 16 percent fewer women than men use the Internet.

Another finding of that report was that in developing nations, people often pay far less for mobile broadband than for fixed services.

Before it launched the Internet.org project, Facebook's efforts to widen access to the web have included Facebook Zero, a text-only version of its services that has been a hit in Africa. The company has also worked to spread efficient and affordable computing infrastructure through its Open Compute effort.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Barnes & Noble, the bookstore chain nowadays rarely divorced from the word "struggling," reported more bad news Tuesday. Founder Leonard S. Riggio announced he had suspended his plans to buy the company's nearly 680 bookstores — right as the chain reported a quarterly net loss of $87 million. Riggio said in a statement: "While I reserve the right to pursue an offer in the future, I believe it is in the company's best interests to focus on the business at hand." The New York Times' DealBook reports that after Riggio's February announcement that he planned to purchase the stores, he "struggled with whether to follow through on his proposal, according to a person briefed on the matter. Mr. Riggio never made a formal offer to the board, and in recent weeks became leery of both the shareholder lawsuits that might arise from any bid and the distraction it might become to the company." Shares of Barnes & Noble fell 12 percent in trading Tuesday.

NPR's Noah Adams recalls the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard, who died Tuesday morning at age 87: "Leonard had wonderment in his soft voice. He'd remember characters he'd dreamed up — the confused victims, the steel-willed but often blundering bad guys. I loved hearing him talk, and I'd already asked him to read several pages of his work. You could hear the New Orleans of his birth and the pure fun of creating the plots. I found myself wishing I'd asked for another day in his world."

Robyn Creswell considers the Egyptian novelist and dissident Sonallah Ibrahim: "Ibrahim has become a sort of oracle for many Egyptian students and writers... Along with his fiction, Ibrahim is revered for having publicly refused the Arab Novel Award, a prize given by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, under Mubarak. In 2003, Ibrahim attended the awards ceremony, but instead of delivering an acceptance speech he excoriated the regime for its feckless foreign policy, its endemic corruption, and its use of torture, all of which, he said, gave him no choice but to refuse the prize."

James Patterson tells The New York Times about his favorite books: "I avoid the same kinds of books that I do people — long-winded, sanctimonious, goody two shoes, self-important, mean-spirited."

Beatrice Kozera, the woman who inspired "Terry, the Mexican girl" in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, died Thursday at age 92, The Associated Press reports. The report added, citing a family friend, that "Kozera learned only a few years ago that her 15-day relationship with Kerouac in the farmworker labor camps of Selma in 1947 was featured in his famous Beat Generation novel and eventually a movie."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed to ease restrictions on medical marijuana for chronically ill children, but he won't go as far as lawmakers would like.

NPR's Joel Rose reports that Christie, a Republican, has rejected part of a bill that would allow young patients access to an ingestible form of marijuana at state-approved dispensaries without the approval of a psychiatrist and pediatrician.

His partial veto sends the bill back to the Democratic-controlled Legislature for approval before it becomes law.

The Associated Press reports:

"Like the 19 other states that allow medical marijuana, New Jersey lets children use it. But unlike all but a few, the state law and regulations currently in place — considered perhaps the most stringent among states that allow medical pot at all — have additional hurdles for young patients. ...

"It attracted broader attention this week when parent Brian Wilson confronted the governor during a campaign stop in a diner. Wilson believes his 2-year-old daughter, Vivian, would benefit by using a certain form and strain of pot for Dravet syndrome, a rare and sometimes deadly form of epilepsy.

"In a moment captured on video that made news shows and websites, Wilson told the governor, 'Please don't let my daughter die.' "