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As she's done before, the woman at the center of the political storm over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of some conservative groups from 2010 into 2012 invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions during a brief appearance before a congressional committee on Wednesday.

Questioned repeatedly by House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Lois Lerner gave the same answer during the 10 minutes or so she that was being questioned:

"On the advice of my counsel, I respectively exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question."

Pope Francis, fresh from getting his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone, now graces the pages of a new Italian fan magazine devoted to His Holiness.

But the pontiff tells an Italian newspaper that he views all the attention as "offensive."

Il Mio Papa (My Pope) "hit the newsstands [Wednesday] with a 69-page first edition full of photos of the pope, his life story, his appeals for peace and articles about what people think of him," Reuters writes. The first issue seemed timed to coincide with Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and comes barely a week ahead of the first anniversary of Francis becoming pope, on March 13.

The magazine, published by ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's media empire and looking much like a typical supermarket tabloid, includes a pull-out centerfold of a smiling, cassock-clad Francis and advertisements for weight-loss cures, laxatives and beauty creams, Reuters says.

Aldo Vitali, the editor of Il Mio Papa, writes in the premiere issue that its purpose is "not so much to celebrate" the pope, but to help spread his message.

Reuters notes that Vitali is also the editor of an Italian television listings and celebrity news magazine.

Meanwhile, in an interview with an Italian newspaper on Wednesday, Francis says the level of hype that surrounds his papacy is "offensive."

The Associated Press reports:

"Francis told Italian daily Corriere della Sera he doesn't appreciate the myth-making that has seen him depicted as a 'Superpope' (as an Italian street artist recently painted him) who sneaks out at night to feed the poor (as Italian newspapers have suggested)."

"'I don't like ideological interpretations, this type of mythology of Pope Francis,' the pope told Corriere. 'If I'm not mistaken, Sigmund Freud said that in every idealization there's an aggression. Depicting the pope as a sort of Superman, a star, is offensive to me."

"'The pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly and has friends like everyone else. A normal person.'"

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The economy often absorbs the impact of snowstorms, such as this week's storm, without much trouble, but this winter the weather is doing more damage than usual.

Sal Sambataro, the manager of Il Cortile in Manhattan, N.Y., says that when the weather is better, people are packed into the family-owned Italian restaurant. On a recent day, though, the temperature is close to 15 degrees and the doorman wears a furry hat. Business is slower than usual.

"Business is off about 50 percent because of the weather," Sambataro says. "People don't want to go out. They don't want to go out in the ice and snow and the storm."

He says it's been tough as rents keep rising though business has been lower since the recession. It's not just the weather: A look outside Il Cortile's window will show you the impact. Sambataro counts four For Rent signs across the street.

"All that went out of business this year," he says.

If somebody needs a new car or a bigger house, bad weather might keep them home for a while. But they'll eventually buy. With restaurants, it's different.

"If you stay away a week or two, that doesn't mean when the snowstorm is over with that you'll start eating hamburgers at double the pace," says Chris Christopher, an economist with IHS Global Insight.

Restaurants, airlines, hotels and many other businesses are losing sales this winter, Christopher says. The good news is that people do buy things they want or need, they just might do it when it stops snowing.

"Most things they do recover quite a bit," Christopher says.

Still, a big problem for economists is that much of the data is hard to decipher, such as job gains and figures on overall national economic growth. Perhaps we're blaming too much of that on the weather.

Chris Mayer, who follows housing as an economist at Columbia University, agrees.

"There's no statistical way to figure out, to disentangle two things," he says. "So we've seen existing home sales fall over the last six months."

How much is that the bad weather and how much are other factors, such as rising interest rates that make it more expensive to buy a house? The tight credit and challenges people have getting into the housing market could be biting harder, and there's just no way to know.

For the moment, trying to figure out the direction of the economy is like sailing through the fog; we won't really know what course we're on until we get past all this bad weather.

Some experts say the weather has cost the economy billions of dollars, but it's hard to say exactly how much.