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If your boss was fired, would you walk off the job in protest?

That's what's happening at the New England grocery store chain Market Basket, which has 25,000 employees. Business at Market Basket stores has slowed to a trickle as workers disrupt operations, stage protests and ask shoppers to stay away.

They say CEO Arthur T. Demoulas treats them well, and they want him reinstated.

Outside the Market Basket store in Somerville, Mass., a dozen workers wave protest signs as cars honk in support. Gabriel Pinto, a bagger, says he wants the new top executives gone.

"We're here to get support from all the customers and try and make sure no one comes in. We want Artie T. back," Pinto says.

He's referring to Arthur T., not his cousin and boardroom rival Arthur S. Demoulas. Their battle for control of the company has now spilled over into the 71 supermarkets.

Inside the Somerville store, only three checkout aisles are open. None of them has a line. The entire produce section is barren.

At the deli counter at the back of the store, Adelaide Leonardo is stocking the display case with cheese that may just end up spoiling. Fliers are taped to the glass. One says: "Boycott Market Basket." Another says: "Bring back A-T-D, our one true leader."

Leonardo agrees. "We know everybody. We know the customers," she says. "We are family here."

Yet family is the reason Market Basket is in a muddle. Cousins Arthur T. and Arthur S. are both grandsons of a Greek immigrant, also named Arthur Demoulas, who opened a small grocery in working-class Lowell, Mass., nearly a century ago. Two of his sons grew it into a regional supermarket chain. Their sons have been feuding for decades. An epic legal battle between the two in the 1990s featured a courtroom fistfight. Last month, Arthur S. gained control of the board and ousted Arthur T. That's when workers surprised themselves with their power to grind business to a standstill.

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"It's a terrible infection, and it's taken a terrible toll on the health care system," Frieden says. More than 100 doctors and nurses in the region have gotten infected, and about 70 of them have died.

Two leading doctors in Liberia and Sierra Leone died this week, and two American aid workers are in serious condition at a clinic in Monrovia.

Dr. Kent Brantly, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Nancy Writebol, of Charlotte, N.C., were working with the Christian aid group Samaritan's Purse when they caught the virus. They are both in "grave condition," the group said on its website.

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Director George A. Romero grew up on classic movie monsters — and he says he never dreamed he'd be responsible for creating the modern zombie that now lurks alongside those monsters. "I never expected it. I really didn't," he tells NPR's Arun Rath. "... All I did was I took them out of 'exotica' and I made them the neighbors ... I thought there's nothing scarier than the neighbors!"

Zombies are everywhere in Hollywood — there's a new batch of films every year, and AMC's The Walking Dead continues to kill it in the ratings. All these zombies can be traced back to Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The 1968 movie wasn't just a low-budget, black-and-white film about corpses that came back to life to feed on people — it was also a commentary on the racial and social tensions of 1968 America.

Romero went on to direct another five films in the zombie canon — most recently 2009's The Survival of the Dead. Romero has chosen to tell his latest zombie tale — which takes place in New York City — in the form of a comic book. The Empire of the Dead is being published by Marvel, and the first five installments are being published as a book.

Members of Congress face a deadline next Thursday – 90 days before the election – to put constituent newsletters in the mail. Carefully timing the mailings is just one fillip in the fine art of congressional communications, especially those that might suggest campaign messages.

"It's either a congressional perk that looks a lot like someone campaigning with tax dollars, or it's part of your constituent service responsibility," says Rep. Rob Woodall, a Georgia Republican, in an acknowledgement that while congressional mass mail is as old as the republic, so are voters' suspicions about its real purpose.

For starters, official congressional mail travels without a stamp. Instead, there's just the lawmaker's signature – called a "frank" – where the stamp would be. The frank implies free postage, but that's not accurate.

"Congress used to have free mail," says Woodall. "Congress now has weird mail" – weird because the frank hides the cost, which is buried in congressional accounting.

Woodall and Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, have introduced legislation to get rid of the frank. Lawmakers would pay regular postage, just like small businesses do.

"I'll buy a bulk permit," says Woodall. "I'll get that done."

The bill isn't likely to get a vote in the remaining weeks of this Congress. And meanwhile, he says, "For us — we'll do a big mailing before the blackout period." So will many of his colleagues.

A Senate history says Congress once went 18 years without the frank, from 1873 to 1891, before deciding life was better with franking. But the practice was long open to easy abuse. In the early 1800s, a senator "attached his frank to his horse's bridle" and mailed the animal to Pittsburgh.

Nowadays, the Congressional Research Service says the volume of franked mass mail spikes twice every two years: in the holiday season of the first year, and leading up to the pre-election blackout.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) just sent off a newsletter, which he calls "basically a four-page newsletter, describing all my great activities."

"It's not so much that I'm timing it. It's to get it done while I can get it done, that's all," he says.

Congress has rules, of course, intended to tamp down the political subtext of newsletters. But there's still a good amount of leeway.

"Members of Congress can send out a newsletter that puts out exactly how they voted on key pieces of legislation and explains it in very nonpolitical terms, or they can send out a newsletter that basically says they walk on water," says Brad Fitch, president of the nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation, which advises members on how to run their offices.

Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, points to legislation requiring that mass mailings be printed on official letterhead, "so that these glossy newsletters could not be easily fabricated and sent out to constituents."

But not all members of Congress contribute to the logjam at the congressional mail rooms.

Rep. Danny Davis, another Illinois Democrat, and a nine-term incumbent from a working-class district in Chicago, says he used to issue newsletters. Now, he says, he can't afford to. The money saved on mail goes into constituent aid, dealing with housing, utility shutoffs and other critical problems.

"We're inundated with service requests, all day long, every day," he says.

Davis says he reaches constituents, using means ranging from printed posters to local radio shows. He says he believes in an enlightened citizenry, but his constituents' needs are more pressing than a congressional newsletter before the election.