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"Joy Covey, who helped take Amazon.com Inc. public as the Internet retailer's chief financial officer, died Wednesday when her bicycle collided with a van on a downhill stretch of road in San Mateo County," the Los Angeles Times writes.

She was 50.

San Francisco's KGO-TV reports that:

"According to the California Highway Patrol, Covey was riding downhill on Skyline Boulevard when she crashed into a Mazda minivan Wednesday afternoon. The minivan, driven by a 22-year-old Fremont man, was heading uphill and made a left turn onto Elk Tree Road directly in front of Covey. Covey crashed into the right side of the van and was pronounced dead at the scene. CHP officials say the driver is cooperating with their investigation."

As Udayan's involvement in the movement deepens, the authorities come looking for him at his parent's home. He lives there with his young wife, Gauri, and in this excerpt from the book, a soldier demands that Gauri tell him where her husband is hiding:

We think he might be hiding in the water, the soldier continued, not removing his eyes from her.

No, she said to herself. She heard the word in her head. But then she realized that her mouth was open, like an idiot's. Had she said something? Whispered it? She could not be sure.

What did you say?

I said nothing.

The tip of the gun was still steady at her throat. But suddenly it was removed, the officer tipping his head toward the lowland, stepping away.

He's there, he told the others.

The French, it seems, aren't eating bread the way they used to. The average French person consumes just half a baguette a day, down from a full baguette 40 years ago.

Those statistics worry the French bakers' lobby, the Observatoire du Pain.

Bernard Vallius, who heads the group, says it used to be that people ate a sit-down lunch and dinner with family or friends every day. Now people – especially the young and those who live in cities - eat sandwiches or skip lunch altogether and snack, he says.

He calls bread is the silent pivot of every French meal. And the bread lobby has launched a campaign to make it speak up. Inspired by the California Milk Board's campaign, "Got Milk?", the Observatoire du Pain came up with the slogan, "Cou cou, tu as pris le pain?" which translates roughly as, "Hi there, did ya pick up the bread?"

The slogan is plastered on billboards and inscribed on bread bags in 130 cities around the country. "What we want to do is just to make sure that people have the reflex, going home at night, to buy the bread. That's all," says Vallius.

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For Democrats running in coal-producing states like Kentucky and West Virginia, the Environmental Protection Agency's new limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants provide a carboniferous chance to demonstrate independence from President Obama.

Those Democrats will probably take advantage of every chance they get to separate themselves from the president in voters' minds, since their Republican opponents will be working overtime to portray them as reliable Obama votes if they're elected to Congress.

Combine that with Obama's massive unpopularity in these states — in 2012 he got a little more than a third of the vote in Kentucky and West Virginia — and the need to stiff-arm Obama's EPA is self-explanatory.

Democrat Natalie Tennant, the West Virginia secretary of state trying to succeed longtime Sen. Jay Rockefeller, didn't even wait for the EPA's announcement to oppose Obama. She used the coal issue to put daylight between herself and Obama in her announcement video released four days earlier.

"When Washington Democrats take the wrong course, hurting our coal industry, I will do everything in my power to stop them, including standing up to President Obama," she says.

Distancing herself from Obama meant creating little to no space on the issue between her and the Republican she hopes to beat, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito.

Similarly, Kentucky's Democratic Secretary of State Alison Gunderson Grimes, sounded a lot like the Republican she wants to unseat, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

"Yet again President Obama's administration has taken direct aim at Kentucky jobs," she said in a statement. "The EPA's ruling practically prohibits construction of new coal-fired plants, which will threaten Kentucky jobs and raise energy prices that hurt Kentucky's middle-class families."

It's natural to assume that carrying the same party identity as Obama and his top EPA official Gina McCarthy would necessarily hurt Tennant and Grimes. But these are states with strong Democratic traditions, though for different reasons. Numerous Democrats in both places have the experience of voting for fellow Democrats in local and state races and Republicans for president.

So there are many people in both states who can appreciate Democrats who break from the president on any number of issues.