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Interview Highlights

On his decision to take a role in Trance

"I got about 15 or 20 pages in, and I started to sense that something else was coming in the character and then something else did come. And then about every 10 pages, something else came. Until at the end, I was hunching at the bit, as we say in Scotland ... It just means I was desperate ... I was hungry to play this part."

On his Olivier-nominated title role in a London revival of Macbeth

"Yeah, the Olivier Awards! We also got nominated for best revival, go team! And we are over the moon, we are so proud."

"When I kick a door and I run on the stage, it's easy from that moment, but right now I'm sitting here going, 'How am I gonna do this tonight?' I feel like that quite a lot. But I probably find it more difficult doing this Macbeth than any of the action movies I've ever done.

"I've never been injured on an action movie. I've been injured playing this guy so much more than any action movie I've been on ... Different things every night. Just as soon as I make myself safe by going, 'I won't do that again cause then I get a sword in my face' something else happens and I put my shoulder out.

"We've all suffered in the cast. There's 15 of us in the cast, and we're all down to physio like twice a week having to get sports massages and all that, but that's kind of the joy of it. We've got a really brave, bold, violent, in-your-face scary production, and it's the kind of Macbeth I've always wanted to be in."

On his childhood in Glasgow

"I was brought up by my grandparents, so people go, 'Oh what was that like? That must have been hard!' and you go, 'No. It was just completely normal,' because the new norm seems to be whatever you make of it, doesn't it? I grew up in a council estate called Drumchapel. I think you guys call them projects? ... I lived there until I was about 19.

"It's not like, I'm not doing it down; I love Drumchapel and I go back all the time but yeah, it's not posh, do you know what I mean? And there are certainly rough aspects to it.

"I got my first professional acting gig when I was about 19. I went south during the summer vacation from college and I did this production of Romeo And Juliet and West Side Story, but when I came back to my grandparents' house, they'd completely thrown out all of my stuff and redecorated my bedroom. So I moved out five days later ... They maintain that they were gonna try and make me move out, but I took it that it was time to go."

On how he almost became a Catholic missionary

"About the age of 15 or so I did consider it, and specifically not just any old priest, I considered being a missionary, 'cause I thought the whole great romantic idea of going off to far-flung regions, and helping people and trying to do all that was not only a good thing to do and romantic thing to do, but quite an adventurous thing to do.

"So I thought about that, but then I did start getting more luck with girls about that time, and that sort of put the kibosh on wedding myself to God."

"Girls and adventure, and then acting kind of came along right at that moment as well, and so I am so, so thankful, especially since I turned my back on God, he has not punished me, thank you very much."

On what his grandparents think about his career

"They're proud as punch. They're besides themselves at times, and I love that, I really do love that.

"Because I do remember, they were amazing when I was growing up. They would support me in anything I would do. They wouldn't perhaps do it with the conviction and enthusiasm that would make me believe that I thought that they thought that I had any talent, or that I deserved my place in the world as an actor.

"You know, they never told me, 'You can be whatever that you want to be' because I think they felt — and I feel — that that's a lie, nobody can be whatever they wanna be. No kid can do whatever they wanna do. It's a total lie, but they have the right to try to do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do. And you know what? Life might kick you in the face, life might not let you do what you wanna do, but they always taught me that, you know, 'Go for it! Yeah, you wanna do that? Go for it son, you've gotta do it.'

"And that was really actually empowering, because from a very early age I knew that, you know, that life was risky but you gotta take those risks."

On his remarkably successful career

"I don't know what I thought it was gonna be. Honest to God, I did a movie and a couple of little TV shows when I was 16, didn't do anything again, got into drama school. Then I started working pretty much immediately after drama school. I wasn't really aware of what was going on, and I still hadn't really decided that I was an actor. I hadn't sort of said to myself 'Right, this is the rest of my life,' because you can't, because they're is still a big massive part of me saying, 'What if the work dries up tomorrow? Then I'm not an actor anymore,' you know.

So it wasn't really until probably making The Last King of Scotland in Uganda, going to one of those exotic places, going to one of those incredible other places, and really getting in — that was probably the moment when I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm actually doing this. I'm actually doing what it is that I was keen to do when I was 15 or 16, not necessarily being an actor, but I'm having the life that I kinda hoped I might have at one time ... I thought, right, I better start treating this more seriously, not that I didn't treat the work seriously but I didn't really regard myself as someone who deserved my place in the industry.

Also that whole thing of people going, 'Your background doesn't suggest that you would make it here.' You look around and every single person, nearly every single person, anyway, is from a similar background. They're all from places, unlikely sources. Do you know what I mean? And that gave me great comfort, and I do feel like I have a place here, and at least I deserve it as much as anybody else, hopefully."

Interview Highlights

On when she first saw the movie

"I saw Clueless probably when I was about 8 or 9 years old. And, I had certain films that I would fall asleep so it was Clueless for quite a long time, and I used to just watch it every single night and knew every single line, every single quote."

On why she loves the performances in Clueless

"The performance by Alicia Silverstone is so kind of, it's so genuine, it seems like, you know, um, it's like people that you see in the valley, you know? The performances were so kind of fresh and the timing and everything was so great from each person that I think that will last a very long time."

There are still unanswered questions about the politically active 501(c)(4) "social welfare" groups. The anonymously funded entities' multimillion-dollar ad budgets helped to clog the airwaves last year.

How much did they really spend to intervene in the 2012 campaign? What kinds of sources supplied their money? What ties do they maintain with other nonprofit organizations, or for-profit companies?

The IRS is now trying to address some of the unknowns by asking organizations to fill out a questionnaire about their finances.

The questions of campaign transparency hang over some of the election's top spenders. Among the most prolific: Crossroads GPS, which spent $48.2 million on presidential campaign ads, and Americans for Prosperity, spending $38.1 million. Americans for Job Security, a 501(c)(6) business association, spent $14 million. The questions also apply to uncounted, smaller 501(c) groups that were active in presidential, congressional and Senate races.

The 501(c) groups don't reveal much about their finances — and most of what they do show comes months after Election Day. Meanwhile, tax law lets them hide their donors behind a veil of nondisclosure.

These groups say they're not political committees, so they don't disclose much to the Federal Election Commission, unlike virtually all other speakers in the presidential campaign.

Now, in a bid at fuller disclosure, the IRS wants 1,300 501(c)(4) social welfare groups, 501(c)(5) labor unions and 501(c)(6) business associations to complete a nine-page form. The questionnaire is a public document, but we'll never get to see the answers. This is, after all, the IRS.

The IRS calls the move a "compliance check." It asks a wide range of questions about a group's finances and internal structure. Some of the information will turn up, eventually, in a group's tax return on the Form 990. But other intriguing information will not. For instance, how did the group set the compensation for its most highly paid officers? Did it give them first-class or charter travel? How about country-club memberships? Any other perks?

The agency has targeted groups that are "self-declared." That is, they claim they qualify for 501(c) tax-exempt status, but they've never filed the application with the IRS. That lets them avoid the application form asking the group to describe its proposed tax-exempt activities.

The IRS says the questionnaire is meant "to help us understand" the self-declared groups and to learn "how they satisfy their exemption requirements."

But the IRS may be weighing other factors, too. The questionnaire's most explicit questions are about 501(c)(4) political activity, and the document follows months of critics' complaints that the IRS has treated 501(c)(4) groups too gently.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan began asking last summer about IRS enforcement policies. In official remarks, he cited data that showed undisclosed spending on political ads had more than quadrupled what it was during the 2008 election. He also said — as have other critics — that IRS regulations contradict a statutory limit on 501(c)(4) political involvement.

Levin said the politically active 501(c)(4)s "pretend to be acting in the social welfare but are instead engaging in partisan politics." He said, "It is time the IRS enforces the law, or at least its own regulation."

Levin, who will not seek re-election in 2014, chairs the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and he has said he'll hold hearings this spring on the IRS enforcement issue.

Meanwhile, the questionnaire may be raising eyebrows among the social welfare groups, but it isn't causing alarm.

"I think the IRS doesn't know what to do with these organizations yet," says Jason Torchinsky, with the high-powered conservative law firm HoltzmanVogelJosefiak. "They're trying to figure out what to do."

So are the tax-exempt groups that the IRS picked to fill out the questionnaire. The IRS says compliance is voluntary, but refusal could lead to an audit.

In 1982, advice columnist Dear Abby published a letter from someone who'd just moved from a conservative Midwestern town to bohemian Portland, Ore.

Suddenly the advice seeker was interacting with gay couples and wanted to know: Should a letter be addressed to "Mr. John Doe and Friend?'"

Is it proper to say, "This is so-and-so and his lover"?

The writer went on: "'Would it be proper to introduce a gay couple as, 'Mr. Jones and his live-in friend, companion, or partner?' "

Abby advised the writer to ignore labels.

But 30 years later, straight and gay people are still struggling with the same questions.

"Each of these terms has its own problems," says Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com. "For instance, 'partner' sounds very official or contractual. 'Companion' sounds unromantic or even euphemistic. 'Lover' might just be too explicit. 'Boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' are inappropriate for a lot of people, unless they're a teenager."

When the love that dare not speak its name finally opens its mouth, people can get tripped up on the words.

Winnie Stachelberg, executive vice president at the liberal Center for American Progress, has been with the same woman for 25 years. She says she often uses the word "spouse," because it describes a relationship people understand.

"Friends of mine introduced themselves to a senator as 'partners,' and the senator immediately thought that they were business partners and made a comment, and then they had to quickly correct him," she says. "I remember that quite vividly."

'No, We're Both Husbands'

Now that some states allow gay people to marry, the words "husband" and "wife" are part of the lexicon.

The terms are unambiguous, but their usage is novel. And that sometimes catches people off guard.

Steve Kleinedler, executive editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, married his husband in 2004 and then suddenly lost him in a fatal accident five years later.

"The funeral director — very innocently and not meaning to offend at all ... was stymied by the form. She turned to me and says, 'Well, which one of you is the wife?' And you know, I kindly explained, 'No, we're both husbands,' " he says.

A few months earlier, Kleinedler had updated the definitions of "marriage," "husband" and "widower" to encompass same-sex couples. When the new edition of the dictionary came out, Kleinedler saw himself in those words.

Today, people may be taken aback when a man mentions his husband or a woman introduces her wife. But retired Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who married his husband last year, believes the words will sound normal in no time.

"Maybe because I was in politics I've stayed in touch with a lot of younger people, but even among people my own age, I have not found that very widespread," Frank says. "The whole point of this is that we are not subject to the same gender roles. And by the way, these days, even wives aren't wives in that sense."

'A Natural Progression'

The Associated Press uses a manual called the AP Stylebook to spell out its rules and standards. Many news organizations, including NPR, turn to the stylebook for guidance.

Just last month, under pressure from outside groups, AP added a stylebook entry to say married same-sex couples should be called husbands or wives.

"Married couples are married couples, and so it's a natural progression," says David Minthorn, one of the stylebook's editors. "Same-sex marriage is much more frequent now than even 10 years ago, and we have to take account of this."

The AP Stylebook also has an entry for "widow" and "widower."

And this is what Minthorn found, flipping through the stylebook during an interview: "Our stylebook definition of widow and widower: 'In obituaries: A man is survived by his wife, or leaves his wife. A woman is survived by her husband or leaves her husband.' So we may have to update that somewhat too, to account for same sex, right?"

More evidence that the only constant in life is change.

Dawn Maestas runs a tattoo-removal business in Albuquerque, N.M., and her clients include women who want the names of abusive partners removed.

Some of them have been tattooed forcibly, like the 22-year-old client who visited StoryCorps with Maestas.

"I was with a guy for five years. He was much older. He was really abusive toward me. After a while when I tried to finally end it, he kidnapped me, held me hostage and tattooed his name all over my body against my will," says the woman, who did not want to be named.

Maestas removes the tattoos for free because she, too, has lived through domestic violence. She understands.

"Every time that you had to get dressed and undressed, you would have to look at that tattoo and know where it came from," she tells her client. "When you walked in my office, it was dj vu. I knew the loneliness, the embarrassment, and I was so angry that life had done to you what it had done to me."

Maestas says her ex made references to her tattoo of his name all the time. "That he owned me," she says. "This is a person who locks his arms around your legs at night, and you have to ask for permission to use the restroom. So, you know, it's not just a tattoo. It's ... like being in a car accident — every time you pass that intersection you remember the impact."

Maestas' client is grateful for the understanding.

"I don't feel like this prisoner in my body anymore. You just helped me in so many ways. You are my counselor, like, my mom, my big sister — you already know what I'm going through," she says. Maestas replies that she is honored to be that person.

(Later, after this movie's account ends, Jean will begin his career as a silent-film director. His initial leading lady will be Andree, under the screen name Catherine Hessling.)

Tensions arise between Pierre and Jean's disparate demands for Andree's body, yet Renoir is no melodrama. Despite sporadic flare-ups, the movie is primarily — and appropriately — picturesque. It's a valentine to both Renoirs, and also to Andree, who by all accounts inspired the painter to a final, unexpected burst of genius.

Director and co-writer Gilles Bourdos sagely hired Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (known for working with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai) to craft the film's lustrous shots. His camera glides through the scenes, emphasizing the artfulness of his framing by shooting through windows, curtains, leaves and other semi-porous barriers.

Renoir doesn't present a particularly dynamic tale, and its attempts at stage-like drama — notably the sometimes epigrammatic dialogue — can seem overdone. But the performances are assured, the ambiance impeccable and the themes resonant.

Bourdos has demonstrated his storytelling skills in such films as 1998's Disparus, a historical spy saga; Renoir, by contrast, is less attuned to narrative than to images and ideas, notably in its contrast of creation and destruction.

Art critics have complained that his loosely rendered nudes depict "decomposing flesh," Renoir notes, as World War I does real violence to skin and sinew, bones and brains. Looks like that's another one the reviewers got wrong.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage girl shot in the head by a Taliban gunman last fall for advocating girls' right to an education, plans to publish a memoir this fall titled, I Am Malala. "I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can't get education," she wrote in a press release. Reports put the deal around $3 million, but no one at publisher Little, Brown was willing to confirm the number.

Did you know that Sylvia Plath wrote a children's book?

Brandee Barker, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's spokesperson, allegedly told a critic of Sandberg's book, Lean In, "There's a special place in hell for you." Taylor Swift joke, hoax or nervous breakdown?

Nathan Englander, on needing coffee to write, in an interview with The Daily Beast: "I used to drink coffee Balzac-style, literally 90 gallons of coffee a day. I'm three years clean on decaf. I thought the muse was contained in the act of consuming enough caffeine until you were at the edge of psychosis — you know, until you're writing with the lights off because you also think you're hiding from the CIA."

Atlas Shrugged: Part III, is coming soon to a theatre near you. (Prompting the question — did anyone know that there were Atlas Shrugged: Parts I & II?)

The California Department of Education's new recommended reading list, released last week, has caused a stir because of a backlash against the handful of books featuring gay and transgender characters. In particular, comments from Sandy Rios, a radio show host and Fox News contributor, sparked outrage. Rios said, "The reading lists are very overtly propagating a point of view that is at odds with most American parents. Leftist educators are advocates of everything from socialism to sexual anarchy. It's very base; it's raping the innocence of our children."

The scenario, scripted by Zombieland's Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, overlaps oddly with that of last week's equally silly Olympus Has Fallen. Both involve North Korea, potential nuclear Armageddon and a president held hostage in a bunker beneath his home. But Retaliation traps the prez in his own White House-like manse somewhere in Virginia, as if to admit that simulating the real presidential abode is beyond the filmmakers' abilities.

And so the movie proceeds, nestling a phony-looking Tibetan monastery amid actual mountains, and staging an absurd nuclear-disarmament conference at what looks like the genuine Fort Sumter. (The symbolism of that location remains inscrutable, but must mean something to someone involved in the production.)

First-time G.I. Joe director Jon M. Chu, who supervised a pair of those Step Up teen-dance movies, rarely trusts his actors to sustain an action sequence. Hand-to-hand combat is supplemented by various high-tech devices that recall the Transformers movies — another toy-derived franchise. Ninja-like warriors swoop impossibly through the Himalayas, battling in midair, while bombs, swords and even about-to-be-dead bodies fly at the audience.

The latter may not be the most tasteless thing in a movie that features a waterboarding joke. But the abundance of projectiles could make innocent bystanders wish that Block would live up to his name and obstruct some of the crud flying off the screen.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index broke new ground today, closing at 1,569, an all-time high that erased the record set on Oct. 9, 2007.

The S&P joins the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which broke its 2007 record earlier this month.

Both indices have now recovered all the losses they suffered during the Great Recession.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"The S&P 500 had flirted with its closing record for two weeks before finally vaulting over that level Thursday. It had come within five points of the closing high in seven of the past 10 sessions.

"'The market has been trying and trying, and we finally crossed the line,' said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial, PRU -0.20% which manages roughly $1 trillion in assets. 'Having the Dow reaching new highs was good, but the S&P 500 is broader, it's bigger... it's an important message for investors.'"

Banks in Cyprus reopened Thursday morning — after two weeks in which they had to keep their doors closed as European leaders worked out a bailout deal for the island's struggling financial sector in a bid to keep its problems from triggering similar crises in other ailing EU nations.

As Joanna Kakissis tells our Newscast Desk, "To prevent bank runs, the government has severely restricted cash withdrawals. These controls could last months." Daily withdrawals, for example, are limited to 300 euros (about $384), and no one can take more than 1,000 euros ($1,284) out of the country. Depositors who have more than 100,000 euros ($128,400) in their accounts face heavy taxes.

After 12 years, a federal court in Germany has settled an epic Easter battle: It ruled Lindt & Spruengli, the Swiss chocolatier, could not trademark its gold-foil wrapped easter bunny chocolates.

Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports:

"The case in Germany's highest administrative court was the fourth and final one Lindt lost in its attempt to win copyright protection of its Easter bunny model. The court had to answer whether it was legally possible to register a product, which was in general use for decades, as a trademark, said Daniel Terheggen, Riegelein's lawyer from Lindner & Blaumeier Attorneys.

"'The ruling has set a legal precedent in copyright law with which we are very satisfied,' he added.

"Confiserie Riegelein was the only defendant left to face up to Lindt in the courts, after a number of smaller chocolate-making firms succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Swiss giant."

I was so performatively distraught that I decided to make an appointment with the school counselor. I signed myself up on the door to her office and was called in later that afternoon to talk about my troubles.

I told the counselor about my depression.

Not any real, family things, but the grief I was feeling about Cobain. She looked genuinely concerned. After furrowing her brow she suggested that if I were to follow Kurt's example too closely, I might end up making some of his mistakes. I left the office considering this. Perhaps modeling my life after a deceased heroin addict wasn't the best takeaway from his suicide.

I picked the book back up and looked a little closer at the things that made Cobain feel alive. His style of punk, as told by Azerrad, was "do-it-yourself, be-yourself, low-tech ethos." Punk and zines.

I went back to the idol-worship drawing board. I started attending shows by local punk bands. I found zines by girls who were writing about their darkest secrets — liberating themselves by transforming these shames into art. I then started writing myself. And I found readers who understood, forging a place for myself in punk culture.

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Later this week, hundreds of philosophers will converge near San Francisco's Union Square for the 87th annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association.

Reporters from The San Francisco Chronicle will not be onsite to cover the invited symposia on the epistemology of modality or on the semantics and pragmatics of pejoratives. Local news stations will not record the sessions on Plato or on consciousness. The New York Times will not run a feature on the latest arguments concerning moral realism, reproduction and bioethics, war and global justice or the problem of animal pain.

Let's face it: philosophy rarely makes the news.

So it's all the more surprising that one small pocket of philosophy, known as "experimental philosophy," has, over the last few years, made it to the pages of Slate.com, The New York Times Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times' Opinionator and Room for Debate, Prospect Magazine, and yes, even NPR's Talk of the Nation.

What is experimental philosophy? And why this unprecedented public success?

Practitioners of experimental philosophy ("X-Philes") are a heterogeneous bunch, but most believe that there are important limitations to philosophy's dominant "armchair" methods of reflection and argumentation, prompting the adoption of a burning armchair as a logo (you can hear the accompanying anthem, sung by Alina Simone, on YouTube). To explore and remedy these limitations, they have turned to psychological research on people's judgments, feelings and behaviors. Some of them conduct this research themselves; others collaborate with social scientists or draw upon their work.

The U.S. military is making no secret about a training flight by a pair of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers from a base in the American Midwest to the Korean Peninsula — what's being described as an "extended deterrence mission."

The flight of the two radar-evading bombers "demonstrates the United States' ability to conduct long range, precision strikes quickly and at will," the United States Forces Korea said in a press release Thursday.

The strategic bombers belonging to the 509th Bomb Wing took off Thursday from a base at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., and flew "more than 6,500 miles to the Korean Peninsula, dropping inert munitions on the Jik Do Range [in South Korea], and returning to the continental U.S. in a single, continuous mission," USFK said.

It said the United States is "steadfast in its alliance commitment that the defense of the Republic of Korea, to deterring aggression, and to ensuring peace and stability in the region."

The B-2 bomber is a vital element in that deterrence, according to the USFK release.

The Associated Press says it's "unclear whether America's stealth bombers were used in past annual drills with South Korea, but this is the first time the military has announced their use."

Drawing attention to the stealthy (and normally quiet) training mission is clearly meant as a signal to North Korea. It comes amid ongoing joint exercises between the U.S. and ally South Korea, and as Pyongyang has stepped up rhetoric — warning of a "simmering nuclear war" on the peninsula.

According to The New York Times, North Korea is particularly sensitive about U.S. bombers in the region:

"It keeps most of its key military installations underground and its war cries typically reach a frenetic pitch when American bombers fly over South Korea during military exercises. The resulting fear and anti-American sentiment is used by the regime to make its people rally behind Pyongyang's 'military-first' leadership.' "

The millions of Americans who lost factory jobs over the past decade may find this hard to believe, but U.S. manufacturing is coming back to life.

The chest compressions are applied by the pumping of cheap, domestic natural gas.

"We are entering a new era," says economist Jerry Jasinowski, a former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group. He and other optimists are cheered by the increase in industrial production, which has grown at a 5 percent annualized rate since the Great Recession ended. That's more than twice as fast as the economy as a whole.

Some economists are skeptical about just how big, or long-lasting, the impact of cheap gas will be. They say U.S. factories have been perking up primarily because of the usual pent-up demand that follows a deep recession, as well as the global competitive advantage provided by a weaker dollar.

Economic historians eventually will look back and decide which assessment proved true, but for now, the "manufacturing renaissance" theory has broad support, both from business leaders and most economists. They say manufacturing's future is getting brighter because of "fracking" — an increasingly popular drilling technique used to recover natural gas from shale formations. Fracking is helping guarantee factory owners access to cheap, reliable and abundant energy sources.

People landing fracking-related jobs have gotten lots of media attention in recent years. But many more workers are quietly finding paychecks in factories as manufacturers start to take advantage of lower natural gas prices.

Consider: the price for United Kingdom natural gas futures has been hovering around $10 per million British thermal units (a measure of natural gas) while the U.S. equivalent is priced below $4.

That difference "is a game changer," said Craig Alexander, chief economist from TD Bank Financial Group. "There's no question we are seeing a renaissance in manufacturing because ... the cost advantage has shifted to the United States."

In the chemical-manufacturing sector alone, companies are building plants worth an estimated $95 billion, according to IHSGlobal Insight, a forecasting firm.

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North Korea cut a hotline with South Korea on on Wednesday and told the United Nations that conditions were ripe for a "simmering nuclear war" on the peninsula.

"Upon authorization of the Foreign Ministry, the DPRK [North Korea] openly informs the U.N. Security Council that the Korean Peninsula now has the conditions for a simmering nuclear war," a statement read. "This is because of [provocative] moves by the U.S. and South Korean puppets."

The North unplugged the hotline with its arch rival after cutting another earlier this month. Wednesday's announcement means the North will sever the link used to operate Kaesong, an industrial complex run jointly between the two countries as part of a nascent effort to foster cooperation.

The harsh rhetoric is barely a half-octave above what has become daily fare emanating from Pyongyang in recent weeks. It comes at a time when both Pyongyang and Seoul have untested leaders.

Writing in Foreign Policy, David Kang, a professor of international relations and business at the University of Southern California, and Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies warn:

"North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents. A new one was just inaugurated in February, and since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace. Whether in the form of missile launches, submarine incursions or naval clashes, these North Korean provocations were met by each newly elected South Korean president with patience rather than pique."

The first day of spring typically signals the high season for open houses and home sales.

The season seems to have arrived early in some places where homebuying is already frenzied, and in many markets, the pendulum has swung from an excess of homes on the market a few years ago to a shortage.

In Baltimore, Patrick and Britney Bove are fighting on two fronts, so to speak. On one hand, they're hosting an open house in the city's Hamilton neighborhood, and on the other, they're trying to find a house to buy. This is proving difficult, much harder than it was last summer when they casually sampled the market.

"There seemed to be a lot more houses on the market," Patrick Bove says. "Everywhere we looked, every weekend, there was something cool. Now that we're finally looking, that's when the shortage has hit."

There's a kind of mad quality to their search, and it's made worse by alerts they get to their phones from realty website Redfin every time a new listing posts. They'll even check them in the middle of the night, to the point, Patrick Bove says, where he sometimes doesn't recognize himself.

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The House has begun debate on its budget resolution, with a vote expected later this week. And as supporters talk about this budget, there's one comparison you hear a lot.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio: "Every family in America has to balance their budget. Washington should, too."

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.: "You know, every family in America understands the necessity of a balanced budget."

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.: "This is how every family tries to live in good times and in bad. Your government should do the same."

But just how accurate is that analogy?

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Last year, a federal program called the Earned Income Tax Credit took about $60 billion from wealthier Americans and gave it to the working poor. And here's the surprising thing: This redistribution of wealth has been embraced by every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.

"This program worked," says Richard Burkhauser, an economist at Cornell University and the American Enterprise Institute. "And there's not a hell of a lot of these programs where you can see the tremendous change in the behavior of people in exactly the way that all of us hoped it would happen."

When he says it worked, he means it helped single mothers on welfare find work and get out of poverty.

In the 1930s, in the early days of welfare, many of the women who received it were widows. Americans didn't think single mothers should have to work, so the government paid them to stay home. But by the '90s, the idea of paying people not to work seemed backwards to many Americans. If moms want to get paid, many thought, they should get a job.

The Earned Income Tax Credit started as a small program in the 1970s and was expanded under President Reagan. But it was President Clinton who turned the program into what it is today — one that effectively gives low-wage working parents a big bonus. For some workers making around $15,000 a year, that bonus can now reach nearly $6,000. As the name suggests, the money is paid out like a tax refund, when workers file their income taxes.

Mirian Ochoa was on food stamps, in debt from a divorce and caring for a son in special ed. On her long commute to work, she remembers going past McDonald's every day and smelling the french fries but telling herself, "You have to say no, because I have to pay my rent."

The first year she got the credit, Ochoa received $3,000. Over the years, she says, the credit allowed her to pay off debts, get an associate's degree in accounting, get off of food stamps, and move to a better school district for her son. "I found an apartment there, and I changed my son's life," she says.

This gets to one feature of the credit that economists love — something that goes back to Milton Friedman, one of the most influential conservative economists of the 20th century. He argued that, rather than creating lots of targeted programs for poor people, the government should simply give them money and let them decide how to spend it — even if, like Mirian Ochoa, they sometimes spend $1,000 to take their son to Disney World and Universal Studios.

Her son's favorite part was the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. "He's small, little fat boy, and running and saying, 'Mother, come with me, do the ride,' " she says. I say 'No, it's too much, I cannot do it. But go! Go!' "

To Ochoa, this was money well-spent. Her ex-husband had promised the trip to her son but never came through. And she says taking him was a key moment in his life. Now he's in college, studying graphic design in Orlando, Fla.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is not perfect. It doesn't help people who can't get work. Some people game the system. Others are eligible but never collect. But while most programs to help the poor are constantly under the magnifying glass, this one has expanded every decade since the 1970s. Encouraging poor people to work and giving them a boost for keeping at it remains relatively uncontroversial. For now.

Cyprus has about as many residents as the Bronx. All Cypriot banks combined are smaller than the 30th-largest U.S. bank. So why is the country's financial system front-page news today?

The answer, in large part, comes down to two words: Deposit insurance. Deposit insurance is one of those boring-sounding finance terms that's central to the way the world works today. Everybody is freaking out over Cyprus because the country just called into question the sanctity of deposit insurance.

Deposit insurance was invented because of a frightening fact. Even the most boring, safe, neighborhood bank is in a crazy, risky business. A bank takes money people put in checking and savings accounts — money those people are allowed to withdraw at any time — and lends it out to other people, who don't have to pay it back for 30 years.

Yet most people assume their money is safe in the bank. They assume that somehow, even if a bank takes all the money in its checking accounts and lends it out to people who don't pay it back, the people with checking accounts will still be able to get their money.

Astonishingly, for the past several decades, this assumption has proved true in the U.S. and throughout much of the developed world. That's thanks to deposit insurance. Banks pay for deposit insurance, but at its core it's basically the government promising that if the bank runs out of money, the government will step in, take over the bank, and make sure ordinary people with checking and savings accounts get their money back.

There's a limit to how much deposit insurance covers. In the U.S., it's $250,000 per account. Anything over that, and you're on your own. Anything less than that, and you're good — at least, you're good as long as the whole deposit-insurance system holds up.

In Cyprus, deposit insurance covers accounts up to 100,000 euros. At least, it was supposed to. But this weekend, the country broke the fundamental promise of deposit insurance.

As part of a bailout agreement with the EU, the government of Cyprus announced a plan to take 6.7 percent from every insured bank account, and 9.9 percent from accounts with more than 100,000 euros. (The plan has to be approved by the Cypriot parliament, and there are reports today that it's still in flux.)

In other words, ordinary people who put their money in the bank are not going to get all of their money back. It would be like waking up, logging into your bank account, and seeing that a chunk of it had vanished.

Under the deal, ordinary people in Cyprus are getting hosed. Ordinary people in other troubled EU countries may see what's happening in Cyprus and think, my money's not be safe in the bank. If this prompts Spaniards and Italians and Portuguese people to start pulling money out of their savings accounts, it could disrupt the whole European financial system (again).

Now, the banks in Cyprus are fundamentally different from the banks in most other European countries. Over the past several years, Cyprus became a sort of offshore banking haven, largely for Russians. Money laundering may have been involved. Tons of money flowed into Cypriot banks. Then the banks turned around and loaned a lot of that money to the Greek government and Greek businesses. So Cyprus wound up with a broken banking system that threatened to take the whole country down with it.

There's a good chance that people in other European countries will see Cyprus as a one-off that doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the eurozone, and there won't be a run on Spanish or Italian or Portuguese banks. There's also a good chance that the deal will be modified to reduce or eliminate the hit to insured deposits.

Still, the past few days have provided an unsettling, potentially dangerous reminder: When you put your money in the bank, there's no guarantee that you'll get it back.

Brad Guzan swatted away shot after shot and the U.S. team hung on for a 0-0 draw with Mexico Tuesday night, earning only its second point in a World Cup qualifier at Azteca Stadium.

The tie moved the U.S. into third place in World Cup qualifying for the North and Central American and Caribbean region after three of 10 matches, one point behind Panama and behind Costa Rica on goal difference. The Americans and Costa Ricans both have four points, but the Ticos, who earlier Tuesday lost their appeal over Friday's loss to the United States in a Colorado snow storm, are ahead on goal difference.

Mexico coach Manuel de la Torre is sure to come under fire after a third straight draw, which dropped El Tri to second-to-last place in the standings. Mexico had plenty of chances, but El Tri was plagued by poor finishing and dismal execution on set pieces. Mexico had 15 corner kicks, including three in the last two minutes of stoppage time, and Guzan body-blocked a dangerous shot by Angel Reyna.

Azteca is one of the world's most imposing venues, and the Americans have a miserable track record there. They are 0-13-2 in World Cup qualifiers in Mexico, with their only other point — also from a 0-0 draw — coming in 1997.

But the Americans got a boost of confidence from their win in an exhibition last summer, and not even a patchwork — and inexperienced — lineup could shake them. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann gambled by starting Matt Besler at center back, only the second appearance for the Americans by the young defender. But he and Omar Gonzalez — the last two Major League Soccer defenders of the year — looked like grizzled veterans as they repeatedly snuffed out shots by Javier Hernandez, Javier Aquino and Jesus Zavala.

Mexico dominated possession, and Aquino, Hernandez and Zavala repeatedly tested the inexperienced American defense, picking on DaMarcus Beasley in particular after he picked up a yellow card in the eighth minute. But Gonzalez came up with one big play after another, and Besler looked quite comfortable in the Azteca pressure-cooker.

But they got some help from El Tri, which blew numerous chances, including what should have been a couple of gimmes for Hernandez.

The Manchester United striker misplayed a bouncing corner kick in the 87th, getting only the back of his right foot on it. He pitched forward and into the net, but the ball popped skyward and over the goal. In the 28th minute, Jorge Torres Nilo sent a perfect cross in to Chicharito, who was right in front of the goal, just a few feet from Guzan. But Hernandez skied that one, too.

Guzan, who made his first start since 2010 in Friday night's qualifier, was superb. When Carlos Salcido lobbed a gorgeous chip shot to Zavala in the 43rd, Guzan ended the threat by coming out and slamming into Zavala. Not only did Guzan clear the ball, Zavala was called for a foul.

The Americans also got a bit lucky. Mexico could have been awarded a penalty kick for a first-half foul by Michael Bradley on Chicharito. And El Tri probably should have been awarded one in the 76th when Maurice Edu took down Aquino from behind with a sliding tackle. The Mexico players were livid when no penalty was called, surrounding Guatemalan referee Walter Lopez. Lopez didn't back down, though replays showed Edu had clipped Aquino's foot.

The United States never really challenged Mexican goalkeeper Guilermo Ochoa. But their defense was offense enough, and the Americans were thrilled to leave Azteca with a rare point.

Get recipes for Pistachio, Mint And Spice Crusted Lamb Chops, Pakistani Lamb Biryani, Pastitsio and Roasted Leg Of Lamb.

Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon whose body was found at his U.K. home over the weekend, died from hanging in an apparent suicide, British authorities now say.

"The results of the postmortem examination, carried out by a Home Office pathologist, have found the cause of death is consistent with hanging," the Thames Valley Police said in a statement Tuesday, adding that there were no signs of a violent struggle.

That conclusion may put to rest intense speculation that Berezovsky, 67, was the victim of a Kremlin-inspired assassination plot. Pathologists still have toxicology and histology tests to perform before making a final report.

The onetime billionaire and erstwhile power broker in Moscow was found dead on the floor of a bathroom at his home in Ascot on Saturday. Family and friends who found him said there was no sign of blood and that a scarf was lying next to his body, according to The Guardian.

He was instrumental in promoting Vladimir Putin to the Russian leadership, but after Putin became president, Berezovsky soured on him and sought to expose alleged misdeeds. The oligarch eventually left Russia and was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.

His death prompted immediate comparisons to the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who was friends with Berezovsky. Litvinenko, also a British emigre and vocal opponent of Putin, was poisoned with radioactive polonium.

But there were strong hints that Berezovsky may have been driven to take his own life after losing a multi-billion dollar legal dispute last year against fellow Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. A news report last week, just days before his death, said Berezovsky was trying to sell his art collection to pay his creditors.

In an interview with Forbes' Russian edition less than 24 hours before his body was found, Berezovsky sounded a note of resignation, saying that "there is no point in my life. ... I'm 67 years old, and I don't know what I should do from now on."

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. And among those asking the justices to strike it down is a broad cross section of corporate America.

Nearly 300 companies have filed a brief arguing that the law — called DOMA for short — hits them where it counts: their bottom lines.

Boston lawyer Sabin Willett smiles, remembering when he sent the brief to be printed at a shop in New York.

"The printer, he said: 'All these pages and pages of corporations,' he says, 'you know what that's going to cost? My God,' he says, 'You have to list them all?!' I said, 'That's the whole point!' " Willet recalls.

On the list are Johnson & Johnson, Starbucks and Citigroup. There's Apple, Nike and Morgan Stanley, too. And it even includes municipal employers — Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles, and some counties and chambers of commerce. So many signed up — 278 in all — that the appendix listing them is longer than the written argument itself.

Jack Christin, associate general attorney at eBay, says the case against DOMA is pretty simple. "It's bad for business," he says. "It's bad for our company and our employees. And it simply needs to go."

The Defense of Marriage Act prevents same-sex couples from getting medical coverage and other tax and retirement benefits that other employees receive for their spouses. And that complicates things for any business that employs people in any of the nine states and Washington, D.C., where same-sex couples are lawfully married.

"We're basically treating people differently," says Mark Roellig, general counsel at MassMutual Financial. He says DOMA forces his company to keep track of a dual system, and that costs time and money.

"You have to keep separate sets of books. You've got to continually be adjusting. And then also picking up the potential legal risk if you make a mistake," he says. "So it's ongoing administrative costs that are pretty significant."

His company does not want to discriminate, Roelling says. So MassMutual uses a workaround to give employees benefits for their same-sex spouses. But then DOMA forces those employees to pay more in taxes and MassMutual pays more, too.

Profit cuts are not the only reason businesses are complaining about the law — it's also about the work environment. Hannah Grove, executive vice president at State Street, a financial firm, says DOMA is hurting company's ability to create an inclusive atmosphere.

"In order to compete in today's global competitive environment, our employees are one of our greatest assets," Grove says.

“ Cultural change takes time, and I think this is the time."

As The Voice returns to NBC this week for its fourth season, viewers are seeing two new, if quite familiar, faces as Shakira and Usher occupy the coaches' seats vacated by Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green. Its talent-show rival over on Fox, The X Factor, will also see two new judges when (if? no, "when," surely) it comes back in the fall.

So why does The Voice seem so healthy and The X Factor so wobbly?

For one thing, The Voice is coming from a place of cautious confidence, riding high enough that replacing (temporarily or otherwise) half of its onscreen personalities doesn't run the substantial risk of killing its momentum. But The X Factor's game of musical chairs (Did you catch what I did just there?) reeks of desperation because the show has no momentum at all. It's not being tweaked; it's being retooled.

The biggest difference, of course, is that The Voice is successful, and messing around with a successful show looks nothing like messing around with a struggling one. The changes come after three seasons that were not only well-watched but also well-liked. The arrival of Shakira and Usher doesn't have the whiff of a desperate attempt to find something that will work. If anything, the next few weeks will actually be watched with a bit of nail-chewing (the "cautious" part, above) out of fear that what's been working suddenly won't.

In that respect, The Voice is following the path of American Idol, whose shifting cast of judges didn't set in until its eighth season, well after that show was a firmly established hit, with a firmly established audience and a firmly established cast and a firmly established format. Successful or not, the changes that started seeping in after Kara DioGuardi joined the panel were intended to keep the format fresh, not get the show on firm ground for the first time.

The X Factor, on the other hand, hasn't ever figured itself out, a problem for a show presumably prepping its third season. The last bit of news to surface was last month's announcement that cohost Khloe Kardashian Odom (yes, there are so many of them; she's "the Odom one") wasn't being asked to return. Of the six onscreen personalities actively employed on the show's second season, at least three of them won't return for the third. (Judges Britney Spears and L.A. Reid have also vamoosed; official confirmation has yet to arrive concerning the fates of cohost Mario Lopez and mentor/judge Demi Lovato.) Of the ten hosts and judges that The X Factor has seen, Simon Cowell remains the only one to make it from the season one to season three.

To be clear: in and of itself, Odom's firing (simple non-renewal of a contract or not, let's call it what it is) can hardly hurt the show. She was stiff and awkward, constantly outthought by her Teleprompter, inexplicably (if maternally) handsy with contestants of all ages and genders, prone to picking fights between the judges and the singers that she had no stake in whatsoever and limited in her interviewing skills to asking little more than variations of "How did that feel?"

But even if the show eventually trades up, The X Factor's continuing revolving door calls attention to the fact that it's a show that's not working. It wasn't working right from the start, as British pop star Cheryl Cole was replaced as judge before the series ever made it to air (though not before several audition episodes featuring her were filmed).

Even that kind of immediate rearranging isn't a sign of an unsalvageable product, of course. 30 Rock famously replaced Rachel Dratch with Jane Krakowski for the final version of the pilot, and NewsRadio went through multiple Joes (a.k.a. Ricks) and Catherines in the first few episodes before settling on Joe Rogan and Khandi Alexander, who locked right in to that cast's finely-tuned chemistry.

But The X Factor never found a sweet spot and has been scrabbling for a personality and a purpose since day one. Efforts to recapture old dynamics – like the love/exasperation friction Cowell and fellow first-season judge Paula Abdul shared on American Idol – never materialized. Grand, tabloid-bait-y coups like snaring Spears to judge (and Odom to cohost) fell flat. Attempts to make former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger happen only converted a failed pop star into a failed reality star. And so it seems to go with the upcoming third season for a show that, constant casting changes notwithstanding, has yet to distinguish itself amidst the glut of singing competitions, save for it being the loudest and most garish entry. That's hardly an identity on which to build a brand.

In fact, it's not The Voice with which The X Factor has the most in common but a more unlikely kindred spirit: the Will Arnett/Christina Applegate/Maya Rudolph vehicle Up All Night. Since its debut a mere year and a half ago, the NBC new-parents sitcom struggled to decide on a focus. Was it about the baby? The talk show that Rudolph headlines and Applegate produces? The contracting business that Arnett is starting? Who were the key secondary characters? Was it harried assistant Missy? Overly cheerful fellow parents Gene and Terry? Applegate's schlumpy, underdefined brother Scott, whose name I had to look up? Rudolph's bitter-manic frenemy Walter?

These unanswered questions resulted in a show that was substantially retooled twice, reversing its original concept — a stay-at-home dad and a working mother — at the start of the second season and going on hiatus this winter to transform from a laugh track-free, one-camera show to a multi-camera comedy filmed in front of an audience.

And now that last incarnation in fact looks like it won't happen, as star Christina Applegate and show creator Emily Spivey both left the show in ways directly connected to Up All Night's ever-changing direction. (An excellent, quietly scathing chronicle of the show's collapse, complete with a description of the utterly bazoo baby-portal/multiple-levels-of-reality pitch that was not pursued, can be read here.) And while it still hasn't been officially axed, everyone else seems to see the writing on the wall and is prepared to admit defeat.

Plenty of shows have been kept on the air well past their natural sell-by dates. Television is a money-making business, after all. But before that, it's also a money-spending business, and there comes a point when a show has to cut its losses and walk away. Up All Night reached that point months ago, and The X Factor may be there now, as it lurches forward, hoping beyond hope to find something, anything that sticks, despite the fact that nothing has yet. Half-new panel or no half-new panel, The Voice has quite a way to go before it ever reaches that point.

North Korea says it has moved its artillery and ballistic missiles into "combat posture" for possible use against targets in South Korea, Guam, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.

"From this moment, the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army will be putting in combat duty posture No. 1 all field artillery units including long-range artillery units [and] strategic rocket units that will target all enemy object in U.S. invasionary bases," the official KCNA news agency said.

KCNA said Pyongyang's forces had been "assigned to strike bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops in the U.S. mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity."

The statement, which cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-U.S. drills, came on the third anniversary of a North Korean torpedo attack on a South Korean ship that killed 46 sailors.

The Associated Press quotes Seoul's Defense Ministry as saying it hasn't seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials were analyzing the North's warning.

Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that end April 30, though there's some worry about a provocation after the training wraps up.

NPR is covering the historic oral arguments before the Supreme Court in a number of ways, including on Twitter.

You can follow our Twitter coverage at @nprpolitics.

We've also compiled a collection of NPR same-sex marriage stories, including news, features, a timeline, a primer of the cases, analysis and links to NPR radio stories.

Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon whose body was found at his U.K. home over the weekend, died from hanging in an apparent suicide, British authorities now say.

"The results of the postmortem examination, carried out by a Home Office pathologist, have found the cause of death is consistent with hanging," the Thames Valley Police said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that there were no signs of a violent struggle.

The conclusion, which points to suicide, may put to rest intense speculation that Berezovsky, 67, was the victim of a Kremlin-inspired assassination plot. Pathologists still have toxicology and histology tests to perform before making a final report.

The one-time billionaire and erstwhile powerbroker in Moscow was found dead lying on the floor of a bathroom at his home in Ascot on Saturday. Family and friends who found him said there was no sign of blood and that a scarf was lying next to his body.

He was instrumental in promoting Vladimir Putin to the Russian leadership, but after Putin became president, Berezovsky soured on him and sought to expose his alleged misdeeds. The oligarch eventually left Russia and was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.

His death prompted immediate comparisons to the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who was friends with Berezovsky. Litvinenko, also a British migr and vocal opponent of Putin, was poisoned with radioactive polonium.

But there were also strong hints that Berezovsky may have been driven to take his own life after losing $5.6 billion in a legal dispute with fellow Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich last year. A news report last week, just days before his death, said Berezovsky was trying to sell his art collection to pay his creditors.

And in an interview with Forbes magazine less than 24 hours before his death, Berezovsky sounded a note of resignation, saying "there is no point in my life. ... I'm 67 years old, and I don't know what I should do from now on."

Since the Supreme Court made the Medicaid expansion under the federal health law optional last year, states' decisions have largely split along party lines. States run by Democrats have been opting in; states run by Republicans have mostly been saying no or holding back.

But now Arkansas – at the suggestion of the federal government – has suggested a third option: Enroll those newly eligible for Medicaid in the same private insurance plans available to individuals and small businesses.

And some think that could shake things up. A lot.

The Arkansas proposal was crafted as much out of political necessity as from substantive desire, says Andy Allison, the state's Medicaid director.

"I think this is likely to be the only way that expansion or coverage for this population could occur," he says.

There are two reasons for that. One is that the state has a Democratic governor (Mike Beebe, now serving his second term), but a heavily Republican state legislature, which has not looked favorably on expanding Medicaid.

A second reason is that few adults currently qualify for Medicaid in Arkansas. And those who do have to be really poor, says Allison: "We cover just at 17 percent of the poverty level for those who are parents and we don't cover childless adults unless they have a disability."

For the record, 17 percent of poverty is less than $2,000 a year. Expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to 133 percent of poverty — about $15,000 — could potentially add as many as 250,000 Arkansans to the rolls.

But what was a political nonstarter gained new life when someone suggested the idea of enrolling those new people in the same private plans individuals and small businesses will be purchasing — the new marketplaces, called exchanges.

So far the state has gotten a tentative go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That's caught the attention of several other Republican-run states that had been holding out on the Medicaid expansion, including Ohio, Florida, and even Texas.

But experts insist the proposal is hardly as new as some have suggested.

"The authority to use Medicaid funds to buy insurance has been in the law since it was first enacted," said Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor and Medicaid expert at the George Washington University.

Still, when the Arkansas arrangement first went public about a month ago, there was some immediate hand-wringing about its potential cost.

"We have to ... recognize that it will cost more," said Austin Frakt, a Boston University health economist. "You don't get something for nothing."

But Frakt concedes that paying somewhat more — how much more remains a subject of contention — might not be all bad.

"One of the basic critiques of the Medicaid program is they pay providers too little and that's why too few of them participate," he said.

So putting people in private plans with higher provider payments could help address those access problems.

Meanwhile, Medicaid watchers say proposals like the one in Arkansas could solve other problems — for the new Medicaid recipients and for the others who will be buying coverage in the new exchanges.

One potential problem the private plans could address is called churning. It happens when a person's income is near the threshold between qualifying for Medicaid and qualifying for federal help to buy private coverage.

Imagine, says Rosenbaum, someone working 30 hours a week in the summer, whose hours are cut back so they qualify for Medicaid part of the year, then expanded, pushing them back out of the program.

"And you get a letter saying, 'Now you're earning more money, so now you have to leave your plan. You and your kids have to leave your doctors; you have to pick a new plan.' And then in winter, if your hours drop back down, you get another letter saying, 'Oh, sorry, you have to leave your plan, [and] your doctors,' " she says. "Those people could be forced to change plans multiple times a year."

Rosenbaum says enrolling Medicaid beneficiaries in plans in the exchange instead could protect as many as 28 million people a year from churning if their income does get too high.

"Your plan will stay your plan, your doctors will stay your doctors," she said. Basically the "bank of Medicaid" and the "bank of the exchange" will have a conversation with each other about who pays the bills. And your premium may be a little bit different and your co-pays may be a little bit different, but your healthcare won't be interrupted."

And it's not just those on Medicaid who could benefit.

Many of the new Medicaid enrollees will be relatively healthy, relatively young people with relatively low insurance costs. They could help bring premiums down for those in the exchanges who are older and sicker.

"It's the woman who's 32 working at Wal-Mart with a couple of kids who we really need in the exchange," Rosenbaum says. "And so if we buy her in and keep her in, it's going to be that much better off for the 55-year-old woman who is sick and unable to work and needs coverage through the exchange because of a lot of health conditions. "

Still, one of the fundamental appeals of putting new Medicaid enrollees in private plans remains political.

"I think in states where the resistance to the Medicaid expansion was based primarily on 'This is a big government program that we can't make any bigger,' finding a way to do the expansion through private coverage will open a door to a conversation that was otherwise not taking place," said Alan Weil of the National Academy for State Health Policy.

What remains a key issue for many states, however, is that the federal government hasn't yet said exactly how much states can spend on the private plans — only that what they spend to enroll Medicaid beneficiaries in the plans should be "comparable" to what they would have spent otherwise.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says officials will spell out more details on that issue "in the very near future."

China has reportedly signed a deal to buy new submarines and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, the first such arms deal in nearly a decade.

The agreement, long in the works, was inked during last week's visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow, according to China Central Television CCTV. But, somewhat oddly, Russia's ITAR-TASS has denied the reports.

According to Chinese media, the agreement was for four Amur-1650 class diesel-electric submarines and 24 Su-35s, one of Russia's most advanced fighters.

The submarines would supplement China's existing fleet of about 65 subsurface vessels, including indigenously built nuclear and ballistic missile submarines.

China has also produced several of its own variants of Russia's Sukhoi Su-27, Su-30 and Su-33 warplanes and is in the process of developing its own stealth fighters. The BBC quotes China's People's Daily as saying the advanced Su-35s from Russia would "effectively reduce pressure on China's air defense" as China moved ahead with its stealth planes.

Last year, IHS Jane's, quoting the Moscow daily Kommersant, reported that Moscow was leery of a deal with China because it was afraid Beijing would illegally copy the weapons.

Kommersant said:

"[Moscow] is requiring that Beijing provide a legally binding guarantee that it will refrain from making reverse-engineered copies of the Russian fighter — largely so that this does not create a potential competitor in the market to sell the aircraft to other countries. China is [in] no hurry to provide this guarantee."

" 'Digiphrenia' is really the experience of trying to exist in more than one incarnation of yourself at the same time. There's your Twitter profile, there's your Facebook profile, there's your email inbox. And all of these sort of multiple instances of you are operating simultaneously and in parallel. And that's not a really comfortable position for most human beings."

On how the digital age has abstracted our conception of time

"It's interesting — I was at Disney World and I saw this little girl who was looking at one of those signs that said, like, 'Forty minutes until you get on this ride,' and she looked up to her dad, and she said, 'What's a minute?' And I thought that, you know, in the industrial age, and in analog clocks, a minute is some portion of an hour, which is some portion of a day. In the digital age, a minute is just a number. It's just 3:23. It's almost this absolute duration that doesn't have a connection to where the sun is or where our day is. It's this very abstracted way of experiencing time. And what I'm arguing in Present Shock is that that timelessness is very characteristic of living in the digital age, in the age that we're in. And it's very hard for us to orient ourselves, to look forward to things, to join movements with goals, to invest in the future, to think about our long-term careers. We're just kind of in this moment of pause."

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James Gleick On The History Of Information June 17, 2011

Update at 3:52 p.m. ET.: Kerry Reacts

Speaking in Baghdad, Secretary of State John Kerry responded to news of Khatib's resignation, saying it "is not a surprise."

"It's almost inevitable, in the transition of a group such as the opposition, for these kinds of changes to take place as it evolves," he said.

Here's more from his comments:

"We view this as a continuum. It's not about one person. It's about President Assad. It's about a regime that is killing its own people. It's about an opposition that is bigger than one person. And that opposition will continue, and I am confident personally that ultimately, President Assad is going to either negotiate his way out of office through the Geneva process, or, if he leaves people no choice, the opposition will forcibly change this regime. But I think that is going to continue, and the United States will continue to support the opposition."

Later this week, hundreds of philosophers will converge near San Francisco's Union Square for the 87th annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association.

Reporters from The San Francisco Chronicle will not be onsite to cover the invited symposia on the epistemology of modality or on the semantics and pragmatics of pejoratives. Local news stations will not record the sessions on Plato or on consciousness. The New York Times will not run a feature on the latest arguments concerning moral realism, reproduction and bioethics, war and global justice or the problem of animal pain.

Let's face it: philosophy rarely makes the news.

So it's all the more surprising that one small pocket of philosophy, known as "experimental philosophy," has, over the last few years, made it to the pages of Slate.com, The New York Times Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times' Opinionator and Room for Debate, Prospect Magazine, and yes, even NPR's Talk of the Nation.

What is experimental philosophy? And why this unprecedented public success?

Practitioners of experimental philosophy ("X-Philes") are a heterogeneous bunch, but most believe that there are important limitations to philosophy's dominant "armchair" methods of reflection and argumentation, prompting the adoption of a burning armchair as a logo (you can hear the accompanying anthem, sung by Alina Simone, on YouTube). To explore and remedy these limitations, they have turned to psychological research on people's judgments, feelings and behaviors. Some of them conduct this research themselves; others collaborate with social scientists or draw upon their work.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in a case worth billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies and American consumers. The issue is whether brand name drug manufacturers may pay generic drug manufacturers to keep generics off the market. These payments — a form of settlement in patent litigation — began to blossom about a decade ago when the courts, for the first time, appeared to bless them.

Consumer advocates, health care organizations and retail outlets call these payments "pay to delay." The drug makers hate that term and have a different name. They call the payments "reverse settlements."

But the bottom line is that in these cases, the people who usually sue each other — the patent-holding drug makers and the alleged patent violators (the generic drug makers) — are on the same side, supporting the payments.

Challenging the payments is the Federal Trade Commission, which sees these monetary arrangements as collusion, a way to stop competition in the marketplace and a violation of the nation's antitrust laws.

The drug makers, in contrast, see the settlements as a routine way of settling a legal dispute, with each side getting something it wants.

The Patent Dispute

The case before the Supreme Court is fairly typical. It involves a patent on AndroGel, a prescription testosterone gel — a new version of an old drug. In short, the brand name drug maker Solvay had a new patent with a slightly different formula.

Generic competitors challenged Solvay's patent, contending that the patent on the synthesized testosterone used in AndroGel had expired decades ago and that whatever innovative changes were made in the formula were not enough to justify a new patent that would bar generics from making similar products.

The litigation pressed on for two years with both sides gathering evidence. But as the lawsuit progressed into its third year, one generic won FDA approval for its competitive product, and was preparing to market it at prices that were six times cheaper than the brand named AndroGel. That would have put AndroGel's $400 million annual sales into the tank

At that point, Solvay and the generics reached a settlement under which the generics would not market their competitive drugs for another nine years. And in exchange, Solvay would pay the generics a total of up to $42 million annually.

Defenders of settlements like this contend that each side is getting something it wants. The generic gets the payment plus the certainty of going to market prior to the patent expiration, but not as soon as it initially wanted.

Settling 'Somewhere In The Middle'

As lawyer Kannon Shanmugam puts it, "Settlement is one of the rights that is virtually enshrined in our Constitution. And when you have one party who says that the patent is invalid and another party that says that the patent has another 15 years of patent life, it seems reasonable that the parties should have a variety of tools to settle somewhere in the middle."

Opponents of such settlements, including retailers, hospitals, and health insurance groups, contend that these "pay to delay" settlements should be presumptively illegal.

"These deals are unheard of in any other area of the law for a really simple reason," says lawyer Tom Goldstein. "Nobody believes that if you're the only company in the market and a competitor comes along, you can say to them, I'll pay you 10, 20, 50, or 100 million dollars to just stay out of the market. That's the opposite of competition." These payments extend monopolies and "it hurts customers who would benefit from lower drug prices."

The Federal Trade Commission is leading the charge against the payments in Monday's Supreme Court case. It appealed to the high court after a federal appeals court upheld the Solvay payments. The agency is telling the justices that once a generic enters the market and competes with the brand name drug, prices drop 85 percent.

The payments are not settlements, but "old-fashioned, naked" agreements not to compete, said U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli at Georgetown Law School earlier this month.

The FTC says that when generics actually take their patent challenges to trial, they win 73 percent of the time, but that generics settle because they often make more money by settling with the brand name drug makers than they would otherwise.

In response, lawyers for the drug makers note that a patent is — in essence — a license given by the federal government to have a monopoly for a limited period of time. And they argue that if Congress wants to bar these reverse settlement payments, it can do just that through legislation.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ended more than four years in self-exile Sunday with a flight to his homeland, seeking a possible political comeback in defiance of judicial probes and death threats from Taliban militants.

Security forces whisked Musharraf away in a convoy of about a dozen vehicles shortly after he touched down in the southern port city of Karachi and did not allow him to greet hundreds of supporters waiting at the airport, ready to shower him with rose petals. The move angered other supporters traveling with the former president.

It's unclear if the security forces had detained Musharraf, who faces legal charges, or acted out of concern for his safety. Many paramilitary Rangers and police had been stationed at the airport with their rifles at the ready awaiting his arrival.

The journey from exile in Dubai is intended as the first step in his goal of rebuilding his image after years on the political margins. Since the former general was forced from power, Pakistan's civilian leadership has struggled with a sinking economy, resilient Islamic extremist factions and tensions with Washington over drone strikes and the secret raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Musharraf represents a polarizing force that could further complicate Pakistan's attempt to hold parliamentary elections in May and stage its first transition from one civilian government to another.

He is viewed as an enemy by many Islamic militants and others for his decision to side with America in the response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban vowed to mobilize death squads to send Musharraf "to hell" if he returns.

Also Saturday, militants launched a suicide car bomb attack against a military check post in the country's northwest tribal region, killing 17 soldiers, the army said.

Musharraf's supporters, including elements of the military and members of Pakistan's influential expatriate communities, consider him a strong leader whose voice — even just in parliament — could help stabilize the country.

Musharraf also faces legal charges, including some originating from the probe of the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who also spent time in self-imposed exile in Dubai before returning.

The flight from Dubai came after several failed promises to return in recent years. Musharraf announced in early March that he would lead his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, in May elections.

Musharraf met briefly with reporters in Dubai before heading to the airport wearing a white shalwar kameez — the traditional loose-fitting outfit in Pakistan — and sandals from the country's Peshawar region near the Afghan border. He mingled with supporters aboard the plane on the way to Karachi, as some of them chanted slogans for his party.

Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup and was forced to step down in 2008 amid growing discontent over his rule. He has since lived in Dubai and London.

His decision to return was given a boost last week when a Pakistan court granted him pre-emptive bail — essentially preventing his immediate arrest — in three cases in which he's implicated, including Bhutto's death. He now has 10 days to appear in court. He has dismissed the various charges as baseless.

His return comes as Pakistan seeks for the first time to hand power from one elected government to another.

On Sunday, the country's election commission appointed a former high court chief justice nominated by the country's outgoing ruling party to serve as caretaker prime minister in the run-up to the election. The commission chose Mir Hazar Khan Khoso out of four nominees, two submitted by the recently ruling Pakistan People's Party and two by the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N.

Khoso served as the chief justice to the high court in southwest Baluchistan province and also briefly served as the acting governor of the province.

The election comes as the country is struggling with rolling blackouts, rising inflation and widespread security problems.

On Saturday, the Pakistan Taliban released a video threatening to unleash suicide bombers and snipers against Musharraf if he comes back. One of the two people speaking in the video was Adnan Rashid, a former Pakistani air force officer convicted in an attack against Musharraf. The Taliban broke Rashid out of prison last year, along with nearly 400 other detainees.

"The mujahedeen of Islam have prepared a death squad to send Pervez Musharraf to hell," said Rashid, who spoke in the video in front of a group of about 20 militants holding rifles. "We warn you to surrender yourself to us. Otherwise we will hit you from where you will never reckon."

Musharraf had been expected to address supporters at a gathering Sunday in Karachi near the mausoleum of Pakistan's founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah. But police decided to cancel his permit because of a "very serious threat," said Tahir Naveed, the deputy inspector general of Karachi police. He said Musharraf would be provided with an armored vehicle to protect him due to the threats. Banners and billboards welcoming Musharraf back to Pakistan lined the street from the airport where he is expected to land.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Musharraf came under intense pressure from the U.S. to back the Americans in the coming war in Afghanistan and cut off ties with the Taliban, which he did. For that, militants as well as many other Pakistanis saw him as carrying out the American agenda in Pakistan.

He's also vilified by militants for ordering the 2007 raid against a mosque in downtown Islamabad that had become a sanctuary for militants opposed to Pakistan's support of the war in Afghanistan. At least 102 people were killed in the weeklong operation, most of them supporters of the mosque.

Militants tried to kill Musharraf twice in December 2003 in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani military is headquartered. First they placed a bomb intended to go off when his convoy passed by. When that didn't work, suicide attackers tried to ram his motorcade with explosives-laden vehicles. The president was unhurt but 16 others died.

In addition to the Bhutto case, Musharraf also faces charges resulting from investigations into the killing of Akbar Bugti, a Baluch nationalist leader who died in August 2006 after a standoff with the Pakistani military. In another case, he's accused of illegally removing a number of judges including the chief justice of the supreme court.