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In China, one struggle over censorship has been defused — for the moment, at least.

Journalists at one of the country's boldest newspapers have published a new issue after a weeklong standoff that started when censors replaced a New Year's editorial. Now the week's events are being parsed for signals about the direction of China's new Communist leadership.

The demands for free speech have spilled onto China's streets — something that has rarely happened since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. As Southern Weekly journalists in Guangzhou engaged in silent battle with officials inside their building, their advocates outside were louder.

This shows the popular demand for civil rights, says Zhang Hong, deputy editor of the Economic Observer in Beijing; he believes the dangers of silence now outweigh the risks of speaking out.

"If I am going to live in this country for the coming years, I have my daughter who will live here for coming decades — if we don't speak out, I cannot imagine what kind of a world it will be," Zhang says. "So it's risky, yes or no?"

Protests And Detentions

For days, messages supporting the journalists seemed everywhere: celebrities voicing their solidarity on China's version of Twitter; hidden acrostics on major websites; another paper printing a paean to porridge, a word that in Chinese sounds the same as Southern Weekly. It seemed to be a window of opportunity; then, it closed.

Outside Southern Weekly's headquarters in Guangzhou, a protester shouts that he's being kidnapped as he's bundled into a van by plainclothes police. Inside the building, journalists have struck an uneasy truce with censors. Details of the truce aren't known, but the paper is back on newsstands — without its political section.

The message of the handling of this week's events, Zhang says, is clear.

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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has been outspoken about the lack of freedom in his homeland and was imprisoned in what he and his supporters say was an effort to keep him quiet, told our colleagues at Boston's WBUR this week that the lack of truth in China is "suffocating ... like bad air all the time."

Asia

'Morning Edition,' June 2012: Ai Weiwei Says He Is Barred From Leaving China

Father Kevin Mullins steers his old Chevy pickup up a steep road to a hilltop dominated by a large statue of the virgin. She has a commanding view of this troubled corner of Christendom.

Here, the states of Texas, New Mexico and and Chihuahua, Mexico, intersect amid barren hills freckled with ocotillo plants and greasewood.

Getting out of the truck, the graying Catholic priest with the kind, ruddy face squints north. "From up here you can see across the I-10 there into El Paso. Also, you see the border fence down there. And then, further to the south, you have Ciudad Juarez."

Australian-born Mullins is a member of the Columban Fathers, who are committed to social justice. His Corpus Christi church is in Rancho Anapra, a hardscrabble barrio on the west side of Juarez that stares at El Paso across the sluggish Rio Grande.

It's been a tough four years in Ciudad Juarez, once the epicenter of Mexico's cartel war. Massacres, beheadings and disappearances became as commonplace as dust storms in the Chihuahua Desert. As the cartels took over and security vanished, packs of freelance thugs roamed the city, extorting at will. No one was spared.

"I heard on one occasion that a priest was threatened," Mullins says. "His parents would be shot, if the priest didn't pay up with the Sunday collection."

Giving last rites to bleeding bodies became as common as reciting the rosary. Father Mullins grew afraid, but he stayed. He says he wanted to be a witness to the suffering in his parish.

"On average, we'd have one or two murder funerals a week for ... at least three years," he says. "Mainly young people — males between the ages of 15 and 25."

New Life In The 'Murder City'

But Ciudad Juarez has gotten a reprieve. Violence is down sharply across the city: Children are playing outside again, shops and cafes have reopened, and some residents are moving back.

In 2010, there were more than 3,000 murders in Juarez — about one every three hours. It came to be called "Murder City."

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His second-term inauguration is a certainty. His cabinet choices may not be. President Obama's choice of Chuck Hagel to head up the Defense Department still faces hurdles, and there are questions about John Brennan at the CIA. Plus: Joe Biden tries for a consensus on guns. And Barney Frank wants to be the interim senator from Massachusetts. NPR's Ken Rudin and Ron Elving try to make sense of it all.

Father Kevin Mullins steers his old Chevy pickup up a steep road to a hilltop dominated by a large statue of the virgin. She has a commanding view of this troubled corner of Christendom.

Here, the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, Mexico, intersect amid barren hills freckled with ocotillo plants and greasewood.

Getting out of the truck, the graying Catholic priest with the kind, ruddy face squints north. "From up here you can see across the I-10 there into El Paso. Also, you see the border fence down there. And then, further to the south, you have Cuidad Juarez."

Australian-born Mullins is a member of the Columban fathers, who are committed to social justice. His Corpus Christi church is in Rancho Anapra – a hardscrabble barrio on the west side of Juarez that stares at El Paso across the sluggish Rio Grande.

It's been a tough four years in Ciudad Juarez, once the epicenter of Mexico's cartel war. Massacres, beheadings and disappearances became as commonplace as dust storms in the Chihuahua Desert. As the cartels took over and security vanished, packs of freelance thugs roamed the city, extorting at will. No one was spared.

"I heard on one occasion that a priest was threatened," Mullins says. "His parents would be shot, if the priest didn't pay up with the Sunday collection."

Giving last rites to bleeding bodies became as common as reciting the rosary. Father Mullins grew afraid, but he stayed. He says he wanted to be a witness to the suffering in his parish.

"On average, we'd have one or two murder funerals a week for ... at least three years," he says. "Mainly young people — males between the ages of 15 and 25."

New Life In The 'Murder City'

But Ciudad Juarez has gotten a reprieve. Violence is down sharply across the city: Children are playing outside again, shops and cafes have reopened, and some residents are moving back.

In 2010, there were more than 3,000 murders in Juarez — about one every three hours. It came to be called "Murder City."

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House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has sent President Obama the invitation that precedes each year's State of the Union address:

"Our nation continues to face immense challenges, and the American people expect us to work together in the new year to find meaningful solutions. This will require a willingness to seek common ground as well as presidential leadership. For that reason, the Congress and the Nation would welcome an opportunity to hear your plan and specific solutions for addressing America's great challenges. Therefore, it is my privilege to invite you to speak before a Joint Session of Congress on February 12, 2013 in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building."

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has been outspoken about the lack of freedom in his homeland and was imprisoned in what he and his supporters say was an effort to keep him quiet, told our colleagues at Boston's WBUR this week that the lack of truth in China is "suffocating ... like bad air all the time."

Asia

'Morning Edition,' June 2012: Ai Weiwei Says He Is Barred From Leaving China

We're pretty sure this won't happen.

But ...

You practically can't visit a news site these days without seeing a story about why President Obama should or should not order the Treasury Department to strike a platinum coin "worth" $1 trillion and deposit it with the Federal Reserve.

And why would Obama want to do that? Because, as we've said, the next big political battle in Washington comes in mid-February when the federal government again hits its "debt ceiling" and won't be able to borrow any more money. Republicans are saying they won't go along with an increase of the debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to some serious spending cuts. President Obama has said he's not going to go through another battle like the one in 2011 when much of the government almost had to shut down.

The Two-Way

What Does $1 Trillion Worth Of Platinum Look Like?

Back-to-back bomb blasts in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Thursday have claimed the lives of at least 80 people.

"The death toll has risen to 81 so far," Mir Zubair Mehmood, a senior police official, said at a news conference. He said 121 people were wounded. His comments were reported by the privately owned Geo TV.

Hamid Shakil, the deputy inspector general of police for the city, told the news channel that a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a snooker club. Ten minutes later, there was a second explosion, he said, that claimed the lives of people who had rushed in after the first blast. The dead include police personnel, journalists and rescue workers, Geo TV reported.

The BBC reports that the area is predominantly Shiite Muslim; Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni extremist group, claimed responsibility. A spokesman for the group said the second explosion was caused by a car bomb.

The twin blasts followed an explosion in a market area of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, earlier in the day. Eleven people were killed in that blast; 27 were wounded. The Associated Press reported that the United Baluch Army, a separatist group, claimed responsibility.

Here's more from the BBC about the backdrop to the blasts:

Balochistan is plagued by both a separatist rebellion and sectarian infighting between Sunnis and Shias.

The Taliban and armed groups that support them also carry out attacks in the province, particularly in areas near the Afghan border. Pakistan's military has been engaged in a long-running battle against those militant groups.

Regularly ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, Afghanistan has implemented what for it is a novel new program: selecting provincial and district officials on the basis of their skills, rather than connections.

By all accounts, Afghanistan's corruption is endemic at all levels of government. It's hoped the new effort will begin to curb graft, patronage and nepotism in the country's 34 provinces and roughly 360 districts.

Akin to states in the U.S., the provinces each have a governor, but they're appointed by President Hamid Karzai rather than elected. Their deputies and the governors of the lower level districts — roughly like counties — are appointed by an agency called the Independent Directorate of Local Governance.

For years, the agency's recruiting process has been less than transparent. But that has changed. Now governors win their positions by competing in a three-month evaluation process involving written and oral exams. And, in true Afghan style, a change like this required a grand swearing-in ceremony with speeches — and lots of them.

For nearly four hours, top public officials gathered in a gaudy hotel function hall in Kabul and decried corruption as they praised the latest group of deputy and district governors.

Afghanistan's second Vice President Karim Khalili said he hopes these new officials will alleviate what he called the pain of corruption, and bring good governance and positive change to the provinces.

Finally, 17 deputy provincial governors and 52 district governors took the oath of office. They join the 15 deputies and 140 district governors who took office over the last year under the new system.

A New Female Governor

Sahera Shekeib outscored two other candidates in her district in Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan. She's now the first female district governor in the country. There is also one female provincial governor, who is a political appointee in Bamiyan province.

Shekeib says that Afghan women have suffered for the last three decades.

"By seeking this position I paved a way to heal the pain of our mothers and sisters and help the upcoming generation," she says.

Shekeib has been working in different government offices for several years. Under the new system, a bachelor's degree and at least three years of work experience are required to become a district governor.

"So, I think we have a validation of why they're there and it certainly increases the legitimacy of their work," says Renaud Meyer. He is senior deputy country director for the U.N. Development Program, which helped implement the new recruiting process in collaboration with the Afghan government.

The program also includes sending the governors to France and India for additional training. But, one of the questions is how offices staffed with people used to the patronage system will respond to the new governors.

"I think ultimately one has to rely on the genuine belief that what people want is good public service delivery and I think it will be very difficult for those old, traditional systems to win over efficient and productive delivery of services," Meyer says.

It remains to be seen whether the new provincial officials can bring greater efficiency. The program calls for monitoring and an annual review of their performance. A big test will come with Afghanistan's 2014 presidential election.

"Obviously as we get nearer to the election time a lot of games and political influence will be played," Meyer says, "and we'll see how those who have been going through this merit-based recruitment will resist."

For now, the focus is on getting the rest of the deputy and district governors recruited and in place by the end of the year.

Lincoln may not be a political film for the ages, but it's certainly a movie that speaks to our own time.

Although the movie centers on the abolition of slavery, Lincoln taps into one of the deepest desires of our historical moment — the desire for politicians in Washington to get their acts together and compromise to succeed in passing major legislation.

"People like the idea of the system working," says John Powers, a critic for Vogue and NPR's Fresh Air. "In terms of the public fantasy, it's the perfect one for the Obama age because you have this tall, principled guy dealing with all these crazies who all come together to get important things done."

Lincoln was garlanded with 12 Oscar nominations on Thursday, including best picture. Daniel Day-Lewis was nominated for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln, as was Steven Spielberg for his direction.

The movie hasn't been a smash hit, but it's taken in $145 million at U.S. box offices — not bad for a talky, mostly interior historical epic.

Monkey See

In 'Django' And 'Lincoln,' Two Very Different Takes On America's Racial Past

Maybe you were hoping you'd never hear the phrase "fiscal cliff" again after Congress passed legislation Jan. 1 to address that tax-break-expiration deadline.

Sorry.

Three more cliff-type deadlines are fast approaching. They involve: 1) raising the federal debt ceiling 2) modifying automatic, across-the-board spending cuts and 3) funding the government to avert a shutdown.

The deadlines all hit between Valentine's Day and Easter, which means new rounds of chaotic congressional negotiations may start up just after the Jan. 21st presidential inauguration parade ends.

Indeed, President Obama's choice for his second-term Treasury secretary is a budget-battle warrior, Jack Lew. During his first term, Obama had chosen a banking expert, Tim Geithner, to head the Treasury Department. Now Obama needs a budget expert like Lew, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget, to lead the White House negotiations with Congress.

To understand why this winter may be so bitter in Washington, let's take a look at each of the "cliffs" — those dates when Congress could tip the U.S. economy over into recession — or worse.

January 9, 2013

Maybe you were hoping you'd never hear the phrase "fiscal cliff" again after Congress passed legislation Jan. 1 to address that tax-break-expiration deadline.

Sorry.

Three more cliff-type deadlines are fast approaching. They involve: 1) raising the federal debt ceiling 2) modifying automatic, across-the-board spending cuts and 3) funding the government to avert a shutdown.

The deadlines all hit between Valentine's Day and Easter, which means new rounds of chaotic congressional negotiations may start up just after the Jan. 21st presidential inauguration parade ends.

Indeed, President Obama's choice for his second-term Treasury secretary is a budget-battle warrior, Jack Lew. During his first term, Obama had chosen a banking expert, Tim Geithner, to head the Treasury Department. Now Obama needs a budget expert like Lew, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget, to lead the White House negotiations with Congress.

To understand why this winter may be so bitter in Washington, let's take a look at each of the "cliffs" — those dates when Congress could tip the U.S. economy over into recession — or worse.

January 9, 2013

On average, YouTube streams 4 billion hours of video per month. That's a lot of video, but it's only a fraction of the larger online-streaming ecosystem. For video-streaming services, making sure clips always load properly is extremely challenging, and a new study reveals that it's important to video providers, too.

Maybe this has happened to you: You're showing a friend some hilarious video that you found online. And right before you get to the punch line, a little loading dial pops up in the middle of the screen.

Buffering kills comedic timing, and according to a study published by University of Massachusetts professor Ramesh Sitaraman, it kills attention spans, too

"What we found was that people are pretty patient for up to two seconds," Sitaraman says. "If you start out with, say, 100 users — if the video hasn't started in five seconds, about one-quarter of those viewers are gone, and if the video doesn't start in 10 seconds, almost half of those viewers are gone."

If a video doesn't load in time, people get frustrated and click away. This may not come as a shock, but until now it hadn't come as an empirically supported fact, either.

"This is really the first large-scale study of its kind that tries to relate video-streaming quality to viewer behavior," Sitaraman says.

The study looked at close to 6.7 million viewers who watched almost 23 million videos play. That's around 216 million minutes of video time.

The threshold of unbearable loading time depends on the device.

"We found that people who had a lot of connectivity had also a lot of expectation potentially, and so they abandoned much sooner," Sitaraman says.

For about half of the people who used a high-speed, fiber-optic connection, five seconds is too long. Mobile users will wait longer. For a business that serves an ad base of 800 million people a month, every second counts — the more users who click away, the bigger the problem.

"When we started to look into this problem, we found that the existing player we had was not up to the task," says Andy Berkheimer, an engineering manager for YouTube.

For the past two years, Berkheimer's team has been working on a project to make sure that those punch lines are delivered without the pauses.

"We had to rewrite our whole player to give us more flexibility in how we handled network conditions," Berkheimer says.

The problem, for YouTube and video providers alike it, has to do with bandwidth. Think of streaming video as being like a stream of liquid information. Bandwidth is the size of the pipe.

"No matter where you are, no matter what type of device you're using, no matter what type of network you're on — at any time while you're watching a video, bandwidth can change," Berkheimer says.

So if that bandwidth, or pipe, constricts too much, the video stops playing. To solve this problem, YouTube's engineers chop the video into a bunch of tiny pieces. From moment to moment, depending on how much bandwidth is available, they swap these pieces in and out as the video streams.

If there's a ton of bandwidth, a high-definition piece flows down the pipe. But if that pipe constricts, even for a second, a lower-quality piece is swapped in.

Switching around different versions of video shortens load time, Berkheimer says. And less load time means more video, more eyeballs and more money for ads. But what's the cost?

Some films aren't always seen in their best light. Filmmaker Gregory Wilson used state-of-the-art camera equipment to film a cheetah running full speed in superslow motion. HD captures every stunning detail of the cat's fluid motion. But when you watch his video online, who knows how it will look?

"I would hope that the quality could be the best that it could be and that it would be more on par with what I had originally captured," Wilson says.

Since businesses need that video to run no matter what it looks like, the rest of us will likely see grainy cheetahs rather than stuttering punch lines.

Update: At 6 a.m. ET. Jan. 10, White House Announcement:

The White House has officially confirmed that President Obama will nominate his chief of staff, Jacob "Jack" Lew, to be the next Treasury secretary. According to a statement, the announcement is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET today (Thursday).

NPR's Scott Horsley had more about the nomination on Morning Edition.

Related post: Signature? Doodle? Check How A Treasury Secretary Lew Might Sign Your Dollars.

Our original post:

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, as expected, is President Obama's choice to be the next treasury secretary, both Bloomberg News and The Associated Press are reporting.

Bloomberg, which broke the story, says it's getting that word from "a person familiar with the process" and that the announcement will be made Thursday. The AP is citing "sources." NPR has not independently confirmed the news.

Lew would replace Timothy Geithner, who earlier announced that he wants to leave the administration early in the president's second term.

The 57-year-old Lew, as NPR's Mara Liasson reported in December, "has had years of experience toiling in the fiscal trenches. ... Before he was White House chief of staff, Lew was Obama's budget director — a job he'd also held in the Clinton White House. After serving in the Clinton administration, Lew followed the well-worn path from White House to Wall Street."

Bloomberg wraps up his resume this way:

"As a former aide to the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat, and a two-time director of the Office of Management and Budget, Lew has experience on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. He's spent most of his career in government, with a brief detour to Wall Street, where he worked as a managing director for Citigroup from July 2006 until joining the administration when Obama first took office."

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is releasing Thursday much anticipated new mortgage rules, which will restrict the kind of subprime lending practices that caused both the financial and housing sectors to crash five years ago.

The new rules come at a time when regulators and banks are trying to find a middle ground between overly lax and overly tight lending standards.

About a decade ago, mortgage lenders started broadening their base of customers by offering an array of exotic loan products with esoteric names: subprime, Alt-A, or low-doc loans that required little to no documentation of income. Teaser rates and option ARMs that offered low initial monthly payments that later ballooned.

Those loans got millions of borrowers into loans they ultimately couldn't afford, and it resulted in one of the worst crashes in modern history.

Reckless Lending

"It's important not to forget where we came from," says Richard Cordray, director of the consumer watchdog agency that issued the new rules. "We have a financial crisis and a lot of pain and misery in this country that was caused by reckless lending and toxic products that should never have been offered and that this rule will see are never offered again."

Cordray says these products are now things of the past.

"We've gotten tens of thousands of mortgage complaints at this point. A big number of them are people who are in trouble now because of reckless lending practices that occurred before the crisis," he says. "If the consumer bureau had been in place 10 years ago, I think none of that would have occurred."

The Two-Way

Big Banks Agree To Pay $8.5 Billion To Settle Foreclosure-Abuse Claims

Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki plan to remain with President Obama's administration as his second term begins, according to a White House official. The news that the three will remain in their current posts comes amid the departure of other Cabinet officials, including Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who submitted her resignation today.

As Mark reported this morning, President Obama is expected to nominate White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew to succeed Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. And the departing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will be replaced by former Sen. Chuck Hagel, if the Senate approves the president's nomination.

While Sen. Hagel, a Republican, is expected to encounter some resistance to his appointment in the Senate, the positions of Attorney General and Health and Human Services Secretary would almost certainly be more contentious.

Sebelius had been "expected to stay on at least through next year, when the biggest components of the Affordable Care Act are set to take effect," as The Hill reports.

And Holder, who has come under fire for his handling of the fallout from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' "Fast and Furious" gun operation, has previously been reported as likely to stay for "about a year" into Obama's second term.

The president has already nominated Sen. John Kerry to take the position of Secretary of State after Hillary Clinton leaves the post.

The confirmation of the intentions of Holder, Sebelius, and Shinseki to remain in their jobs leaves open the possibility that other changes might be on the way.

Three Kurdish women, one of them a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that seeks autonomy for Kurds in Turkey, were found shot to death today in Paris.

From Paris, correspondent Eleanor Beardsley tells our Newscast desk that the French interior minister, Manuel Valls, was heard on television saying that the deaths were "without doubt an execution." The women's bodies were found inside the offices of a pro-Kurdish center. Eleanor says that "hundreds of Kurds living in France gathered in protest" outside the building after word spread of the murders. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul that there are calls for protests by Kurds in Turkey as well.

The Wall Street Journal writes that "the Turkish government said [the killings] could be aimed at derailing new peace talks seeking to end a war that has killed 40,000 people since 1984." As the BBC adds, "Turkey has recently begun talks with the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, with the aim of persuading the group to disarm."

The BBC identifies the victims as:

— Sakine Cansiz, a "founding member of the PKK and first senior female member of the organization." She spent time in Turkish prisons in the '80s and "was a commander of the women's guerrilla movement in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq."

— Fidan Dogan, "Paris representative of the Brussels-based Kurdistan National Congress (KNC) political group."

— Leyla Soylemez, a "junior activist."

In 2010, Peter reported for Morning Edition that:

"If Turkey could solve its Kurdish problem, the benefits would be significant both at home and abroad. But the Turkish political landscape is heavily mined. Analysts say Turkey may be making headlines for its moves away from the West and toward Arab and Iranian interests, but on the Kurdish question Turkey lines up squarely with Washington and Tel Aviv, as a state locked in a deadly battle with terrorists. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.N., the United States and European Union."

While the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to be secretary of defense has drawn opposition from groups who question his views on policy toward Israel and Iran, the nomination of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to be CIA director may be delayed by senators who want to know more about last September's attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.:

"Said the Senate should not confirm any Obama nominee for the nation's top spy post until the administration elaborates on the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi," The Associated Press writes.

" 'My support for a delay in confirmation is not directed at Mr. Brennan, but is an unfortunate, yet necessary, action to get information from this administration,' the South Carolina senator said in a statement. 'I have tried — repeatedly — to get information on Benghazi, but my requests have been repeatedly ignored.'

"He added that the administration's 'stonewalling on Benghazi' must end."

The results of this year's baseball Hall of Fame voting will be revealed on Wednesday.

Given the exit polling, it appears both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, as well as other candidates stained by accusations of steroid use, will not be admitted.

Among other reasons for not voting for them, I would suspect that accusations against Lance Armstrong for using performance-enhancing drugs in cycling is bound to have some carry-over effect. At a certain point, when the circumstantial evidence for drug use is so compelling, who can possibly believe these guys?

Of course, on the other hand, you may subscribe to the belief that through all the eons of humankind on this earth only a handful of baseball players circa the end of the 20th century learned the secret of how to get stronger, naturally, even as their bodies aged.

And after all, it isn't as if the Hall of Fame voters are obliged to employ the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. It's just a matter of denying somebody an honor, and given all the reasonable reasonable doubt involved that seems like a fair enough penalty to assess to the cheaters.

Good grief, they won't let Pete Rose, the player, into Cooperstown for breaking baseball law even though what he was convicted of came years after he was finished as a player.

But, unfortunately, Bonds and Clemens and their colleagues under suspicion can remain on ballot purgatory for as many as another 14 years, which will be even worse than having to periodically go through the interminable debate about raising the debt ceiling.

It's too bad, too, because arguing who gets into Halls of Fame used to be a bit of fun, except perhaps for the poor devils whose Hall-worthiness is being scrutinized.

The Two-Way

Clemens And Bonds Put On Baseball Hall Of Fame Ballot

Clive longs for company and cohesion in his dessicated post-painting, post-married life. But he discovers almost immediately that he has wildly underestimated the power of the home place and the Proustian sense of "how memories reside in the landscape and arise when you revisit an area." Mooning over Laurette, his first girlfriend — long divorced herself, and living nearby in her old family farmhouse with a flirtatious female companion — Clive takes up painting again in order to re-create the grandest erotic encounter of his early manhood.

There's a lot more virtual eros in the companion novella, the title piece Harrison calls "The River Swimmer." The main character, a Midwestern boy named Thad, is in years not yet a man, but in experience triumphantly erotic. He swims great lakes and rivers, has visions of water babies swimming around him beneath the surface, and becomes involved with beautiful, attractive and willing girls his own age — with, as it happens, overbearing and successful fathers who sometimes try to kill him, and sometimes nearly succeed. In his outsized — almost cartoonlike — philosophical ambition, Thad declares "I just want to feel at home on earth ..." He already feels quite at home in water, which makes up a large part of our planet's surface, so when he strives to achieve his goal of feeling at home — not unlike that longing of Clive, his much more mature companion in this volume — he seems to have a good chance. No fathers wielding tire irons or tempting him with a life of luxury seem capable of deterring him much from his goal.

A boy with hopes as vast as oceans, a mature man entering into the solemnity of wholeness in a narrow range of life: together they make up what Tom Wolfe once announced — and failed to produce — as "a man in full."

What does the male version of quality of life really mean? Something like this, something like this. And female readers who don't give over some time to studying Harrison's version of it will be as foolish as the men.

Forget Fifty Shades of Grey. In China, "bureaucracy lit" is flying off bookstore shelves. With the books' stories of Machiavellian office politics, they're read avidly, both as entertainment and as how-to guides for aspiring civil servants.

So what is the secret to success in the corridors of power?

Here is a five-point guide to success, with tips gleaned from the pioneers of bureaucracy lit.

Lesson 1: Cultivate your connections.

A friend of mine is a lower-level civil servant. His boss had a passion for soccer. And so the entire office was soccer-mad, playing games every week, watching overseas matches together, talking about the sport constantly.

All of a sudden, the boss was transferred and a new one appointed. His love was photography. Immediately, all the underlings were snapping photos and buying expensive camera equipment with office funds. Soccer was never mentioned again.

Wang Xiaofang, the author of 13 bureaucracy lit books, describes why cultivating official connections is so important.

"Even the dogs and chickens of government officials go to heaven. Our officials, once they get power, they have power for life," he says. "This system of bureaucracy and power worship has become our cultural tradition. It is inside our bones."

Lesson 2: Learn to compromise, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

The ultimate example is described in Wang's book, The Civil Servant's Notebook. The fictional Old Leader is a fan of the "urine cure." To show loyalty, his unfortunate underling overcomes his own disgust and drinks his own urine for five years. He's rewarded with a promotion.

Businesses complained that the uncertainty surrounding the "fiscal cliff" froze their decisions about hiring and expanding, which hurt the economy. Washington has now managed half a deal, which settles tax issues, at least for the time being. But has that removed enough uncertainty to boost some business hiring and investment?

Vickers Engineering in New Troy, Mich., makes parts for auto companies, agriculture equipment manufacturers and the oil and gas industry. Scott Dawson, the company's chief financial officer, says the fiscal cliff deal on taxes helped his company move forward, by extending a provision that allows firms to rapidly deduct the value of new equipment from their tax bill.

"Now we can invest in more equipment, which allows us to take on more projects, which allows us to hire more people," he says. "That was one of the things that really we were waiting until they came to this agreement on how we were going to pursue our capital plans for 2013."

However, Vickers Engineering was already in an expansion mode, riding the revival of the auto industry. It has almost doubled its annual revenues to $30 million in the past two years. The fiscal cliff agreement will help the company complete a near doubling of its workforce by the end of this year.

But Dawson says another part the deal, the tax hike for people making over $450,000 a year, could be a drag. That's because Vickers' owners will pay more in taxes and have less money to invest in new equipment.

Dyke Messinger runs a small company called Power Curbers in Salisbury, N.C., which builds machines used to construct curbs and gutters for streets and highways. Messinger says he is ready to hire three or four workers.

But the reason Messinger is hiring is not the fiscal cliff deal but rather that the construction industry is getting back on its feet. "The economy has strengthened enough in the construction sector that we can foresee increased business, which will allow us to bump up hiring, bump up our spending on a variety of things that we were holding back on before," Messinger says.

Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, says the situation at Power Curbers underscores that what is most important to small businesses is what is happening in their sector of the economy.

"You know, if demand is strong and the economy is growing and people are demanding products and services, then they feel confident on expanding and when that's not happening they don't feel confident," he says.

Shane says if you're not confident in the underlying economy, removing a little uncertainty about the government's fiscal situation may not be the answer to your problems.

Government contractors, especially in defense, may have the greatest uncertainty right now, says Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council, an association of government contractors. "For the most part, I think what we're seeing are companies being very, very conservative and very, very disciplined in terms of their investments in people and in technology and so forth," he says.

What these companies want, Soloway says, is for policymakers to proceed with the second step in the fiscal cliff, cutting government spending — even if it means some pain for them.

"Rip the Band-Aid off and let's deal with this," he says. "If there's going to be substantially reduced spending, which we all expect, at least let's get it on the table, know what's coming so we can plan against it. That's when you'll start to see normalcy and investment decisions start to move forward."

But most analysts expect negotiations over spending cuts and the debt ceiling will once again go right down to the wire.

Get recipes for Sweet Potatoes With Ginger And Lemon, Yellow Split Peas With Coconut, Ginger-Tamarind Fish Soup, Tamarind Shrimp, Tamarind Beef and Ginger-Lamb Coconut Curry.

Saying they're following the example of last year's Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, a coalition of "gun rights" activists announced today that they're calling on like-minded Americans to visit gun stores, gun ranges and gun shows on Jan. 19 in a show of unity they're calling "Gun Appreciation Day."

It's no coincidence that the 19th is Saturday of the weekend when President Obama will be sworn into office for a second time. Organizers say the date was chosen "to send a message to Washington two days before Obama's second inauguration." They're worried about what they see as the "Obama administration's post-Sandy Hook assault on gun rights."

On Dec. 14, a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., before taking his own life.

Among the groups that are on board with Gun Appreciation Day: the Second Amendment Foundation and the Conservative Action Fund, a so-called SuperPAC.

The 19th, by the way, is also a National Day of Service when, as the White House hopes, Americans will honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "through a day of service and volunteering."

As for what the White House may have planned on gun policy, The Washington Post reported over the weekend that:

"The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation's gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration's discussions.

"A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said."

President Obama's choice of John Brennan to lead the CIA appears to be less controversial than his decision to nominate former Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.

The top Republican on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said in a statement Monday that he looks forward to working with Brennan at the CIA. Still, the Brennan nomination will raise questions about Obama's national security policy.

Brennan was widely regarded as Obama's choice to lead the CIA in 2009. But his service at the agency under President George W. Bush raised concerns among human rights groups, as it came at a time when the agency was using what critics considered torture on suspected terrorists.

So the president instead made Brennan his counterterrorism adviser. Serving at the president's right hand might be a heady experience, but in accepting the president's offer to head the CIA, Brennan said there's no place he would rather work.

"Leading the agency in which I served for 25 years would be the greatest privilege as well as the greatest responsibility of my professional life," he said.

The Two-Way

Obama Nominates Hagel For Defense, Brennan For CIA

Jobs may be scarce around the United States, but not in western North Dakota. A massive oil boom in Williston and the surrounding area is transforming the landscape and culture of this once-tranquil region.

Producer Todd Melby, who has been covering the boom for public media, composed an interactive documentary with radio stories and videos called "Rough Ride: The Oil Patch Tour." This guided tour through the oil patches illustrates the growth of oil fields over time.

Melby tells Tell Me More guest host Celeste Headlee that the documentary includes user comments: "People give their own tips on how to get a job in western North Dakota, if they want to be like the many thousands of people who've come here from all over the country to get that oil, and to get the big money that there is out here to make."

Music included in the interactive highlights the downsides of "fracking," as this method of oil and gas extraction is called. Singer-songwriter Kris Kitko's song mentions potholes in the road and the fact that housing rents have tripled.

There's opposition to fracking for environmental reasons and because of the changes it brings. And some residents don't like the fact that North Dakota's once quiet, pristine countryside has been inundated with trucks barreling down roads.

Melby says an interactive documentary like his enhances the reporting on a topic like oil drilling: "Radio is a fantastic medium, but video and online data and interactive content really adds another dimension, so people can just understand a story better."

'No Shutdown Time'

Melby spoke with Bryan Johnson, a former police officer who worked in Los Angeles for 15 years. Johnson sells fire-retardant clothing for the oil field workers.

"I never thought I'd see a place where I felt driving on the roads would be more dangerous than driving 5 o'clock rush hour in Los Angeles," he says. "Coming up here, the traffic on this two-lane highway is — I've never seen anything like it. It's just amazing that these guys are — they're nonstop. And it's not, you know, midnight it's over. It's 3 o'clock in the morning, they're still hauling. There is no shutdown time."

"Traffic is huge," says Melby, noting that the counties in western North Dakota lead the state in traffic fatalities. But even with negative effects, he says, most people in North Dakota are embracing oil-drilling.

"The state now has an enormous amount of money in its coffers. And remember, North Dakota only has 700,000 people, and it's got a budget surplus of more than $1.5 billion."

An Oil Field Worker's Story

Anita Hayden, 23, works as a roustabout pusher in McGregor, N.D., fixing and maintaining drilling sites. She moved there from the small town of Baker, Mont., with her boyfriend to work.

There was no time for much training, Hayden notes. "I pretty much jumped into the role of the pusher, and I learned as I went. Usually it doesn't happen like that."

She's hoping to put some money away and ultimately move back to Montana to do ranching.

"There's quite a few young people that have just come over because they don't have a job, they don't have girlfriends," Hayden says. "They're just trying to save money — you know, work for two or three years and figure out what they're going to do afterward."

Black Gold Boom is produced in collaboration with Localore, a national initiative of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). It's one of several interactive public media stories that NPR's Tell Me More is highlighting.

Time was that a Swiss bank account was synonymous with confidentiality and keeping assets from prying eyes. No more.

Last week, Switzerland's oldest bank, Wegelin & Co., pleaded guilty in a New York court to helping Americans hide $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service over a decade-long period. Wegelin's plea, and a $57.8 million fine, forced the bank to shut its doors. It follows a $780 million settlement with UBS in 2009 that forced the Swiss banking giant to identify the names of its U.S. account holders.

The prosecution of the Swiss banks is part of a U.S.-led international push that has been building for years. It takes advantage of newly enacted U.S. law and freshly negotiated bilateral tax treaties and global protocols.

Patricia Brown, an international tax expert and former Treasury Department official who now heads the graduate tax program at the University of Miami School of Law, says the effort is aimed squarely at shutting down offshore tax havens and secret accounts, illegal under U.S. law, ranging from the Caribbean to Europe and Asia.

"The number of places where people can hide is getting much smaller," says Brown, who was the Treasury Department's deputy international tax counsel between 1999 and 2008. "It's getting much harder for countries like Switzerland to thumb their nose at the U.S."

Although Switzerland, as the world's largest tax haven, has come in for particular scrutiny, the pressure is also being felt in the Cayman Islands, Barbados, the Bahamas and Singapore, all of which have in the past been prime destinations for secret cash.

Stephen Shay, a professor at Harvard University, says the effort to clamp down on secret offshore money gained steam from UBS's illegal activities and the case of Liechtenstein's LGT Group, which was been under investigation since 2008 for allegedly hiding millions of euros on behalf of German tax evaders.

The UBS settlement in turn bolstered international efforts to clamp down on tax havens — many of which have agreed to undergo review to promote transparency.

Congress Clamps Down

In 2010, Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, that calls for overseas banks to begin full disclosure of U.S. account holders beginning next year. All along, Washington has been pursuing new bilateral treaties to share tax information.

"Countries are almost universally agreeing to exchange tax information," says Shay, who like Brown is a former high-ranking Treasury official.

"The signal seems to be that it doesn't matter where you move your money, we can still get you," he says. "This signal is being heard not just in Switzerland, but in the Caribbean and the Far East."

Meanwhile, the IRS has been encouraging U.S. citizens with undisclosed offshore accounts to come forward, a process known as "voluntary disclosure." It's not exactly an amnesty, but the IRS can waive steep penalties that would be levied on top of any back taxes owed, says Scott Michel, an attorney who has represented clients going through voluntary disclosure.

He stresses that not all undisclosed offshore accounts are tied to someone who is a tax evader. The account users range from people who are diverting money intentionally to those who simply discover an undisclosed account as part of an inheritance, says Michel of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Caplin & Drysdale.

In any case, it's clear that in the past several years, especially since the start of the Obama administration, that "the tax division of the Justice Department and the IRS are clearly focused on the offshore area," Michel says.

First UBS and now Wegelin have given them plenty to work with. "The government here is a little bit like a cat pulling on a ball of yarn — they keep on unraveling evidence that leads them in different directions," he says.

With FATCAm it's going to get a lot harder for anyone who chooses to forgo the voluntary disclosure route, he says, because U.S. banks will be reluctant to deal with any foreign bank that doesn't comply with new disclosure rules.

"Every bank anywhere in the world, for the most part, is going to have to start providing the IRS with information about Americans who have accounts at those financial institutions," Michel says.

FATCA puts banks in the role of policeman, forcing Americans with money overseas to comply, he says.

Bank Secrecy 'Eroding'

"Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes," Michel says. "I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution."

Asked whether the end is near for the tax haven, the University of Miami's Brown laughs. "I wouldn't go that far," she says, "but I would say there has been progress in the last five years that I would have expected to take 15, at least."

Harvard's Shay credits the recent push for greater disclosure partly to the 2008 financial crisis. Lack of transparency at the banks was a major contributing factor to the crisis. Now that governments have leverage to demand changes, they aren't about to give it up.

"I am hopeful that we are in the process of seeing a sea change," says Shay. "You have to keep the pressure on at all times, but we are in a very, very different place than we were pre-UBS."

President Obama this afternoon nominated former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to be his next defense secretary and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

In those two, the president said, he has chosen men with experience in the field and who "understand the consequences of decisions we make in this town" on the men and women who serve America around the world,

The president praised Hagel, who would be the first former enlisted man to lead the Pentagon, as someone who understands what it is like to fight and bleed in dirt and mud because of his decorated experience with the Army in Vietnam. Obama praised Brennan for his long experience at the CIA and White House and for being a key part of a team that in the last four years took more al-Qaida leaders and commanders off the battlefield than at any other time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Both men could face some opposition during the Senate confirmation process, as we explain below.

We updated this post during the announcement at the White House.

Update at 1:58 p.m. ET. President Is Trying To "Redefine Tough":

As the NPR coverage ends, Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving says that the president's nominations of Hagel, Brennan and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., (to be secretary of state) signal that Obama wants to be "a president who redefined tough."

Brennan, Ron said, is "known for his toughness" and for being one of the leading proponents of the use of drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. Hagel is known "as an independent thinker" and is a decorated war veteran. And Kerry also comes with the background of service in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

Update at 1:50 p.m. ET. Obama Urges The Senate To Act Quickly:

In his concluding comments, the president says he hopes the Senate will move quickly to confirm Hagel and Brennan because "we don't like to leave a lot of gaps" in key posts.

Update at 1:39 p.m. ET. Brennan Says It Would Be His "Greatest Privilege":

After hailing the men and women of the CIA as "dedicated, courageous, selfless and hardworking," Brennan says they achieve things that will "never be known outside the hallowed halls of [CIA headquarters] and the Oval Office."

Serving as CIA director, Brennan says, would be the "greatest privilege and greatest responsibility of my professional life."

Brennan adds that he considers himself "neither a Republican nor a Democrat" and looks forward to working with lawmakers from both parties.

Update at 1:35 p.m. ET. Hagel Pledges To "Always Do My Best":

In brief remarks, Hagel tells the president he will "always do my best ... for our country ... for those I represent at the Pentagon and for all our citizens."

Update at 1:30 p.m. ET. Panetta Is Off To Deal With "A Different Set Of Nuts":

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, after praising the choices of Hagel and Brennan, says that after 50 years in public service he's looking forward to returning to his walnut farm in California where he'll be "dealing with a different set of nuts." That gets a good laugh.

Update at 1:25 p.m. ET. Brennan Is "Tireless":

Turning to his remarks about Brennan, the president says he is "legendary ... for working hard. ... I"m not sure he's slept in four years." And Obama notes that with Brennan in a top counterterrorism position, "more al-Qaida leaders and commanders have been removed from the battlefield than at any time" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Online resources:

— John Brennan's White House biography.

— Former Sen. Chuck Hagel's Atlantic Council biography.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, has landed in North Korea. His trip there is a bit of a mystery.

Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has been a vocal proponent of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology. North Korea doesn't even let its citizens access the open Internet, and its population is overwhelmingly poor — so it's not exactly a coveted audience for advertisers.

And Google has rubbed the authoritarian regime of China the wrong way by challenging its "Great Firewall." In 2010, Google pulled its servers out of mainland China, and the company has refused to self-censor its search results there.

But, there is speculation that Schmidt's presence in North Korea could have an upside for Google by positioning him as the company's global ambassador. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told Wired that Schmidt "seems to be doing an exceptional job at government relations."

Pfeffer noted that Google avoided recent antitrust problems in the U.S., and that Schmidt may be setting himself up as an international man of mystery who can help the company as it faces antitrust regulators in Europe.

North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, also recently gave a speech laying out a series of policy goals for his country that included expanding science and technology as a way to improve the North Korean economy in 2013.

Victor Cha, a director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, told Wired that Schmidt's visit was a "good opportunity for the North Korean leadership to signal to the world that they're serious about going forward."

Cha said that Kim, who was educated in the West, may also be seduced by all the cool new technology. "He's got to be interested in this stuff," Cha said. But, Cha added, "as soon as he allows open access to it, he can kiss his leadership goodbye."

Schmidt is part of a delegation being led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has made more than a half-dozen trips to North Korea over the past 20 years. Richardson called the trip a private humanitarian mission.

Speaking about Schmidt's presence, Richardson said, "This is not a Google trip, but I'm sure he's interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect. So this is why we are teamed up on this."

Schmidt also brought along his daughter and Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who now heads Google's New York-based think tank.

U.S. officials are critical of the four-day trip, which comes less than a month after North Korea launched a satellite into space using a long-range rocket, which Washington considers a test of ballistic missile technology. Officials say the launch is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring North Korea from developing its nuclear missile program.

A State Department spokesperson said officials "don't think the timing of the visit is helpful."

China has indicated that it will stop handing down sentences to its controversial labor camps, which allow detention without trial for up to four years. According to Chinese media, some 160,000 prisoners were held in "re-education centers" at the end of 2008.

Critics of the system greeted the announcement — which was slim on details — with cautious optimism.

Pressure to change the system has been mounting after a number of high-profile cases, including that of Ren Jianyu, who had been a young village official.

He became an outspoken critic of labor camps after spending 15 months in one. He was sent there by police, at the age of 24, without trial or even seeing a lawyer. His crime? Criticizing the local government in Chongqing by retweeting or forwarding 100 messages containing "negative information."

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Ten of the nation's major mortgage servicing companies, including household names such as Bank of America and Citibank, have agreed to pay $8.5 billion to resolve claims that they abused some homeowners when they foreclosed on mortgages during the recent housing crisis, the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency announced late Monday morning.

According to the Fed, $3.3 billion of the settlement will be "direct payments to eligible borrowers" and $5.2 billion will go toward "other assistance, such as loan modifications and forgiveness of deficiency judgments."

It adds that "eligible borrowers are expected to receive compensation ranging from hundreds of dollars up to $125,000, depending on the type of possible servicer error."

Along with BofA and City, the companies in the agreement are: Aurora, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

The New York Times, which last night broke the news that the settlement was about to be announced, writes that the deal should "resolve claims of foreclosure abuses that included flawed paperwork used in foreclosures and bungled loan modifications. ... The settlement concludes weeks of feverish negotiations between the federal regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the banks, and will end a troubled foreclosure review mandated by the banking regulators."

Earlier today, Bank of America agreed to pay the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) $3.6 billion in cash and will to buy back $6.75 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities to resolve claims related to securities sold to Fannie Mae by the bank and Countrywide Financial Corp. (which BofA acquired in 2008).

In some ways, Katia Abreu is still an old-fashioned farmer, one who rides her chestnut mare, Billy Jean, to tour her farm in Tocantins state in north-central Brazil.

She glides the horse along a gravel road, which soon turns to dirt, and along fields of sorghum and corn. She has plans for more.

"Soon, we're going to produce fish and lamb," she says. "There will be soybeans and fields of tall grass for cattle. Lots of cattle."

Agriculture has boomed in Brazil, and the country now rivals the United States in food production — everything from beef to soybeans, chicken to corn. This has been a key part of Brazil's economic growth in recent years, though it also has environmentalists worried about farms cutting into forests.

The environmentalists are facing one tough farming advocate in Abreu, a senator, landowner and head of the country's most powerful Big Agro association.

This farm, one of three Abreu owns, has 12,000 acres — sizable even by Brazilian standards. And so is Abreu's influence. She's president of Brazil's National Agriculture Confederation, which represents 5 million farmers and ranchers. And she heads the influential Ruralist bloc of land-owning senators and representatives in Congress.

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Few Western countries are as conservative about home ownership as Germany, where less than half the country's citizens own property.

German banks have tough lending rules. Would-be buyers are usually asked to provide hefty down payments to secure mortgages, meaning few Germans even think about buying a home until they are settled and financially secure.

But the European debt crisis appears to be changing the traditions around home ownership. The resulting surge in homebuying, some officials warn, is driving prices too high and threatens the nation's economy.

In the trendy Berlin neighborhood of Mitte, real estate agent Anne Riney is showing her client Christian Ehrler a two-bedroom apartment for sale. Ehrler is hoping to buy the $476,000 place with a bank loan covering the full cost.

With such a big loan, he's taking the unusual step of using his parents' home in southern Germany as collateral.

"It's a good thing to invest, and in such a good location, the prices will increase for sure," Ehrler says of his plans. His goal is to get a mortgage with an interest rate lower than 3 percent — less than half the rate his parents paid for their mortgage.

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Looking for a London pied-a-terre? How about a four-bedroom duplex overlooking Hyde Park? It could be yours, if you're prepared to spend $25 million.

In most of the United Kingdom, property prices are slumping. But in some of London's most upscale neighborhoods, they're going crazy.

Robin Perona sweeps the sidewalk at Egerton Crescent, a gracious semicircle of white townhouses in fashionable Chelsea.

In the 1990s, they cost about $700,000 each. Today the average price is some $13 million — or 8 million British pounds.

Perona shakes his head when told he's sweeping Britain's most expensive street.

Too Expensive For Britons

Across central London, mega-rich foreign buyers are pricing merely wealthy Britons out of the market.

In Bayswater, Joshua Ayres, of the property firm Hamptons International, is showing The Lancasters, 75 fully decorated luxury apartments. During a tour, Ayres shows the master bedroom, kitchen and living room of one apartment, saying all the units "have these grand double-height rooms."

The developers bought up five adjoining white stucco mansions, preserved their historic facades, then married the grandeur of 19th-century interiors with the latest technology and luxury.

"We have all underfloor heating, ceiling heating in these double-height rooms, as well," Ayres adds.

There's a spa (of course), 24-hour valet parking, and a staff of five is always on duty.

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As 2013 begins with wealthy Americans in line for bigger tax bills, they're not alone. Tax fairness takes the spotlight worldwide this year, as cash-strapped governments look to impose more of the burden on well-heeled companies, individuals and institutions, and to catch and punish tax cheaters.

This week, as the U.S. Congress averted a plunge off the fiscal precipice, British Prime Minister David Cameron sent a letter to leaders of the Group of Eight countries that make up about half of the world's economic output.

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