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Technology giant Apple is buying a large manufacturing space in Arizona, where high-tech glass for its devices will be produced. The move is being hailed in Arizona, where the economy remains slowed by the U.S. housing market crisis.

From Phoenix, Mark Moran of member station KJZZ reports for our Newscast unit:

"Between the people needed to get an abandoned building ready to makes Apple's sapphire glass and those who will actually make it, the tech giant's foray into Arizona will create about 2,000 jobs in an area still struggling to recover from the housing bust that left many more than that out of work.

"Apple bought an abandoned solar power company building in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, and expects its sapphire operation to start generating significant revenue for the company next year.

"The sapphire glass will actually be made by GT Advanced Technologies, a supplier for Apple, and used in the covers for the camera lenses in Apple's phones and the fingerprint-reading devices in some of its other products."

A Dutch charity that aims to expose and end "webcam child sex tourism" says it lured tens of thousands of men from around the world to a website where they asked a lifelike, computer-generated 10-year-old Filipino girl named Sweetie to perform sex acts for money.

The charity, Terre des Hommes, said about 20,000 people — most of them men — "made approaches to the virtual girl" over a 10-week period from April to June, as NBC News writes,

Terre des Hommes says it was able to identify 999 men and 1 woman from among those who came to its sting site and has given Interpol its information about those people. The 1,000 come from 71 different nations, the organization says.

The BBC adds that "254 were from the U.S., followed by 110 from the U.K. and 103 from India."

CBS News writes that "it remains to be seen if any of the people identified will be prosecuted, but the research demonstrated that it is relatively easy to find and identify such adults."

Terre des Hommes defines webcam child sex tourism as "when adults pay to direct and view live-streaming video footage of children in another country performing sexual acts in front of a webcam."

It adds that:

— "Sometimes parents or family members coerce children to engage in WCST. Sometimes children are trafficked and held captive in 'dens' with other kids who are forced to perform sexual acts in front of webcams. Sometimes child prostitutes sell webcam sex shows to predators around the world in order to supplement the income they make through street prostitution."

— "Based on our research and the findings of Terre des Hommes Netherlands' partners in the field, the age of child victims of WCST ranges from 6 to 17 years old."

In recent years, companies ranging from JPMorgan Chase to Walmart to Boeing have announced special hiring programs for veterans. Seattle coffee giant Starbucks is the latest.

All of these companies are trying to bring down a stubbornly high unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But to succeed, companies have to take the time to understand the skills of service members.

For 37 years, Carrol Stripling served in the U.S. Army, both active duty and reserves, mostly as a paralegal. She retired from the military in 2011, and then worked for the state of Washington until she got laid off this year.

Stripling says she faces a trifecta of possible obstacles: She's 62 years old; she has a military background; and as a woman, she's not who people think of when they imagine a veteran.

"It's real hard for veterans to say, 'I need help,' because we're taught from the very beginning to be self-reliant," Stripling says. "So it's difficult to say, 'I'm failing at this.' And basically, I feel like I'm failing at this."

Rob Porcarelli is a staff attorney at Starbucks who helped dream up the plan announced Wednesday. Starbucks will hire at least 10,000 veterans or their spouses over the next five years.

Porcarelli was a prosecutor in the Navy in the 1990s. But when he started hunting for a civilian job, he encountered prejudice. "In one interview downtown, the head of the department said, 'You know, Rob, I think you're going to find more of the intellectual type in the law firm environment.' And I remember thinking, 'Maybe he's joking. Did he just call me and all my friends stupid?' "

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates sits on Starbucks' board. He says sometimes people coming out of the service have a hard time translating their skills. That's why the company will have a recruiter specialized in hiring service members.

"It may be a little tougher for business at the beginning of the process, but I think the long-term benefits are tremendous," Gates says. The jobs will range from making lattes to supply chain management.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says it's complicated to tease out why transitioning back to civilian employment is hard, but companies can help.

"Businesses and business leaders have an obligation and a responsibility to do something about that and to meet these people more than halfway," Schultz says.

The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University estimates that a few hundred thousand veterans have been hired through targeted programs in the past two years. That's probably shaved a percentage point or two off their unemployment rate.

But Russell Burgos of Pepperdine University, who himself is an Iraq War vet, says it's hard to pin down the numbers. "We don't know how many people apply for jobs at job fairs, how many fill out applications, how many are hired, and I think most importantly, what the employment outcomes of those who are hired turn out to be," Burgos says.

That's why Starbucks plans to have a program manager to help with veteran retention, and the company says it will provide updates on hiring.

Stripling, the Army vet, says she's applied to Starbucks before. but not as a barista. "I've already done my entry-level career," she says.

This summer, she applied there for paralegal positions. And even with her decades of experience, she didn't get a response. She plans to apply to Starbucks again. And this time, she hopes she'll get somewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case questioning the use of prayer at government meetings. But first, the marshal will ask "God" to "save the United States and this honorable court."

In 1983, the high court ruled that legislatures could begin their sessions with a prayer, as long as there is no attempt to proselytize or disparage any faith, and as long as the process for selecting the prayer-giver is not discriminatory. Since then, dozens of other cases have tested the constitutionality of prayers at government venues other than legislative sessions, with often conflicting rulings in the lower courts. Wednesday's case could produce some guidelines for the future. It involves almost exclusively Christian prayers that took place at one town's board meetings in upstate New York.

Until 1999, the town of Greece, N.Y., opened its board meetings with a moment of silence. But when John Auberger was elected supervisor, he instituted formal prayers, given by a rotating group of clergymen — a group that until 2008 was exclusively Christian. Often prayers were "in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who lives with you," for instance.

Two women objected to the prayers at board meetings and sued to stop the practice. One is an atheist; the other, Susan Galloway, is Jewish.

Galloway doesn't object to nonsectarian prayers, but she says that prayers alienate people from their government when they are connected to a particular religion. She has felt uncomfortable, she says, when she does not bow her head or stand as invited to do during the prayers.

"I don't feel like ... I'm welcome at my town government anymore," Galloway said in an interview with NPR. "My grandmother had to leave Russia because of the Cossacks. My father had to leave Germany because of Hitler." She feels strongly that Americans must "make sure that our government and religion are separate, because we are a diverse country." This is necessary, she says, to recognize diversity and "protect the minorities' rights."

Supervisor Auberger is no longer granting interviews, but earlier this year, in an interview with PBS, he explained why he instituted and has fought for prayers at board meetings. "Our Founding Fathers believed in the right for us to pray and have that freedom of expression in prayer," Auberger said, and the town of Greece is simply continuing that tradition. There are no guidelines for what prayers are appropriate, he said, because that would amount to censorship.

So, what if someone were to say, "Believe in Jesus or you'll burn in hell"?

"We could not object," Auberger says, "because our purpose is to allow ... a freedom of expression in their prayer."

The town of Greece has in fact become more diverse in its prayers since the lawsuit was filed in 2008. Among those who have offered prayers are a Jewish layman, the leader of a Baha'i assembly and a Wiccan priestess. But the prayers are still overwhelmingly Christian.

"The houses of worship in the Greece community are predominantly Christian," says lawyer Tom Hungar, who represents the town, and the prayer-givers who volunteer will inevitably reflect that make-up. "But anyone is free to pray," he says, and "the plaintiffs in this case were both offered the opportunity to deliver invocations."

"The plaintiffs don't want to give the prayers," responds Douglas Laycock, who represents those challenging the prayers. The town's claim of equal access, he says, is a myth — the board never announced that all comers were welcome to deliver the invocation, nor does it publicize its policy.

"The prayers here advance Christianity and they proselytize Christianity," Laycock says.

Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and one of the nation's leading scholars in this area, will tell the justices that town board meetings are very different from sessions of the legislature. Often the board meetings include high school classes, community members who are being honored, and those seeking action from the board.

"The way these meetings are structured, everyone is drawn into participation in the prayer," says Laycock. "You're either part of the prayer or you're visibly outing yourself as a religious dissenter." Ultimately, the challenge is "about protecting religious liberty for everybody, not just the majority but also the religious minorities," he says.

And if the town wants to have prayers at the beginning of meetings, Laycock contends, it should have guidelines for nonsectarian prayers.

But lawyer Hungar, representing the town, counters that the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the courts should not be in the business of parsing prayers. "Government is not supposed to be in the business of telling prayer-givers what the content of their prayers should be," he says.

The history of this country, Hungar observes, began with public professions of religion. Indeed, prayers opened sessions of the first Congress — the Congress created by the same Constitution that included, as its First Amendment, a ban on government establishment of religion.