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A 5-year-old girl was in serious condition Saturday after being raped and tortured by a man who held her in a locked room in India's capital for two days, officials said.

The girl went missing Monday and was found Wednesday by neighbors who heard her crying in a room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her parents, said Delhi police official Deepak Mishra. The girl was found alone locked in a room and left for dead, he said.

A 24-year-old man who lived in the room where the girl was found was arrested Saturday in Muzaffarpur town in Bihar state, about 620 miles east of New Delhi, Mishra said. The man was flown to New Delhi, where a magistrate ordered that he be held in police custody.

The girl suffered severe internal injuries, as well as cuts and bite marks on her face and torso, said D.K. Sharma, the medical superintendent of the government-run hospital in New Delhi where she was being treated. Sharma described the girl's condition as "serious" and said doctors were trying to stabilize her condition.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people in New Delhi protested Saturday near the home minister's residence and outside police headquarters demanding government action against the police for allegedly failing to immediately investigate after the girl was reported missing.

Rights activists and officials said the girl's parents went to police Monday to report their daughter was missing, but that police refused to register a case. The parents are poor construction workers who had migrated to the city some years ago in search of work.

"The police did nothing. They did not register a complaint, the first step before they can begin investigations," said Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights activist and social scientist. "This heinous crime could have been prevented if police had begun investigations promptly."

Police had no immediate comment on the accusations, but Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said Saturday that an inquiry had been ordered into the handling of the case.

The growing outrage against alleged police high-handedness in India led even the country's normally reticent leader to react.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the police behavior "completely unacceptable." He conveyed to Delhi authorities "the need for the strictest possible action to be taken against the erring officials," the prime minister's office said in a statement late Friday.

The incident came four months after the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus sparked outrage across India and spurred the government to pass tough laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim's death.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Bill Clinton Plays Not My Job

This segment was originally broadcast on Feb. 08, 2013.

This week, Wait Wait comes to you from the AT&T Performing Arts Center in the Dallas Arts District. Turns out, singer Erykah Badu was a student at the high school for the performing arts directly across the street. We're guessing she used to gaze across the street and say to herself: "Someday I'm going to be in a theater that's not yet built, performing on a public radio news quiz." And today, that dream comes true.

We've invited Badu to play a game called "Tall, courtly newscaster with deep, resonant voice and comforting manner seeks same." Valentine's Day is coming up, and if you don't have a date — don't worry. There's help for everybody out there. Everybody. Buzzfeed has posted a list of 50 dating sites for very specific types of people. Badu will answer three questions about the wide world of super-specialized dating.

So far, official reaction to the story in Russia has been muted.

State-run news media show clips of President Vladimir Putin condemning the bombing and offering condolences to the people of Boston. State media also focus on the follow-up telephone call between Putin and President Obama

That's a significant point, given that relations between Russia and the United States have been at a low point recently as the two nations exchange accusations of human rights abuses.

There's been relatively little attention so far to the story that in 2011, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers accused in the bombing.

That investigation came at the request of an unidentified foreign government. It could well have been Russia, which has reason to fear terrorist attacks after a long history of turmoil in the North Caucasus.

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'The Hunt Is Over:' Police Apprehend Marathon Bombing Suspect

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved changes to the design of the Boeing 787's battery system — the first step toward returning the grounded aircraft to service.

The approximately 50 787 "Dreamliners" delivered to airlines worldwide were grounded in January after incidents involving overheating problems in lithium-ion batteries.

"A team of FAA certification specialists observed rigorous tests we required Boeing to perform and devoted weeks to reviewing detailed analysis of the design changes to reach this decision," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement released Friday.

According to The New York Times, the aircraft maker's fix for the battery problem "includes more insulation between each of the eight cells in the batteries. The batteries will also be encased in a new steel box designed to contain any fire and vent possible smoke or hazardous gases out of the planes."

As NPR science correspondent Christopher Joyce reported in January, lithium-ion batteries produce twice the voltage that traditional batteries produce, and when they go bad, that power turns to heat. In a small battery, it's not much of a concern, but in larger batteries it's harder to dissipate the heat.

In China, countless television soap operas have been based on the adventures of Emperor Kangxi, a Qing ruler in the 17th century who, according to legend, would slip off his yellow dragon-embroidered silk robes to travel incognito among his people.

For several hours Thursday, a story went viral on the Chinese Internet that the new Communist equivalent of the emperor, President Xi Jinping, had pulled the same trick.

At first it seemed that Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong daily, had a big scoop, with its tale of how taxi driver Guo Lixin had picked up Xi and ferried him to the Diaoyutai hotel, part of the state guesthouse.

The story claimed that Guo realized this was no ordinary fare when, in response to the taxi driver's complaints about the pollution, the mystery passenger launched into a spirited defense of government policy.

According to the newspaper, the driver asked, "Has anyone ever said that you look like General Secretary Xi?" Guo's passenger then chuckled, saying, "You are the first one to ever recognize me."

The story went viral, though sharp-eyed netizens commented on how the handwriting on the message ("Safe Sailing") left for the driver by "President Xi" didn't seem to match known samples of presidential scrawl.

At first, Beijing's traffic department confirmed the news. Then it was denied by the state news agency, Xinhua, which labeled it "fake news." Ta Kung Pao issued a groveling apology: "Such a major case of false news should absolutely never have happened."

And so the newest urban legend of the Chinese President Who Took a Taxi was officially shut down.

Not wasting any time, the censorship police have already ensured that "take a taxi" and "safe sailing" are banned searches on China's equivalent of Twitter.

But perhaps even more interesting is just how many people wanted this story to be true.

Apart from the historical parallels, such behavior would have been in line with the man-of-the-people moves that Xi has taken since taking over as Communist Party chief last November.

He has declared war on official extravagance, calling for an end to big entourages and motorcades. The official banqueting policy of frugality has been dubbed "four dishes and a soup."

And on China's version of Twitter, the story of Xi's taxi ride won him plaudits from many, with comments such as, "The king now cares more and more about the subjects' lives."

But had President Xi really taken a taxi, it might not have been such a bad thing. Since 1949, China's top leaders have lived in Zhongnanhai, a leafy compound once part of the imperial Forbidden City.

It is normally closed to outsiders, but after a decade of reporting in China, I had my first glimpse into this Communist Forbidden City on Saturday, when I accompanied the delegation of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was meeting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

The heart of Zhongnanhai is completely tranquil; an expanse of lake serves to silence the bustle of city life. For a scant half-hour, I experienced the dislocation of being physically isolated — partitioned off by walls and lakes — from the world outside. That is both an enormous privilege and an enormous problem for China's rulers.

In 1987, Jack Richmond was driving a forklift at work when the vehicle overturned onto him, crushing his leg below the knee. His daughter, Reagan, was just 2 months old at the time.

"Initially when they told me I would lose my leg, I was in denial and disbelief and kind of like, 'What, why? Can't you fix it?' " Jack tells Reagan in a visit to StoryCorps in Knoxville, Tenn. "But it just couldn't be saved."

"And you had a brand new daughter — me," says Reagan, now 25. "What were you thinking?"

"I thought about you a lot," Jack says. "Sometimes I worried about how you would feel growing up with a father who had an artificial leg."

"I always thought it was pretty cool," she says. "I didn't really know any different."

Having a young family motivated him to "get up and get going," says Jack, now 57. Two months after the accident, he went back to the hospital. "I said, well, you know, 'I want to talk to other amputees and tell them it'll be OK.' And they said, 'Well ... that's a nice idea and we appreciate it but, you know, you're really not trained as a counselor or anything like that and we can't just let you come in and just talk to patients,' " Jack recalls.

But as he was leaving the hospital, the chaplain, who remembered Jack, approached him to ask why he was visiting. When Jack told him his idea, the chaplain asked him to come back on Saturday.

"And I said, 'OK,' not knowing really what was gonna happen," Jack says. "He trained me as a volunteer chaplain and he gave me a badge and said, 'Now you can go talk to everyone in the hospital.' "

Jack remembers a young patient who, like Jack, had lost his leg below the knee. "I came in and just started talking to him and said, 'You're gonna get through this. You're gonna survive.' And he just started turning red in the face. He says, 'Look, I'm tired of you people coming in here and telling me that I'm gonna be OK.' "

That's when Jack realized he was wearing long pants. The young man had no idea he was an amputee. "So I put my leg over on the side of his bed, pulled my pants leg up and I said, 'About two years ago, I was in a room across the hall.'

"He didn't say anything else, but the tears just started rolling down his face. And he thanked me and I left."

Jack became a marathon runner after losing his leg. He ran the Boston Marathon in 2001. Now, he works for a company that designs and tests prosthetic limbs.

"My whole life growing up, I saw you always helping other people," Reagan says. "I know that you're not very boastful about it, but I guess it's really taught me a lot. So, thank you."

"You know, you are truly blessed when God gives you the opportunity to help someone else," Jack says. "That's our purpose in life."

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.

She's in Finland now, getting her Ph.D. at the University of Jyvaskyla, but before that, when she was in Adelaide, Australia, she studied elevator behavior. Rebekah Rousi hung around two tall office towers in town, riding elevators up and down day after day, looking for patterns. When a bunch of people get into an elevator, she wondered, do they segregate in any predictable way? Do tall ones stand in the back? Do men stand in different places than women? Who looks where? She says she wasn't expecting or even predicting a particular configuration, but she found one.

Over and over, she noticed that older "more senior men in particular seem to direct themselves towards the back of the elevator cabins."

Younger men took up the middle ground.

And in the front, facing the doors, backs to the guys, stood "women of all ages."

She's not sure why. It wasn't segregation by height. It wasn't age, since older and younger women co-mingled. Clearly, the people in the back had the advantage of seeing everybody in the cabin, while people in the front had no idea who was behind them. Could there be a curiosity difference? A predatory difference?

There was a second pattern, one that broke along gender lines. "Men," she wrote, "looked in the side mirrors and the door mirrors" to openly check out the other passengers, and/or themselves.

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Get recipes for Nettle Soup, Nettle Tart, Nettle Pesto and Nettle-Lemon Risotto.

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

Two major authors were included in Time magazine's annual list of the "100 Most Influential People" — Tenth of December writer George Saunders and Hilary Mantel, the novelist behind Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Poet Mary Karr, who wrote the entry on Saunders, said, "For more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short-story writer in English — not "one of," not "arguably," but the Best." Check out Mantel's incisive, brilliant (and deeply controversial) London Review of Books essay about Kate Middleton, and Saunders' gleeful New Yorker essay "I Was Ayn Rand's Lover."

European Union officials say Penguin has offered to end its ebook deals with Apple in order to settle an antitrust case against the publisher, The Wall Street Journal reported early Friday. Apple and four other major publishers — Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre, and Macmillan — settled with regulators in December.

"With a View of the Sea," a poem by the late Russian writer Joseph Brodsky, has been newly translated by Glyn Maxwell and Zakhar Ishov: "Meanwhile a bold sou'westerly / insinuates its fingers through / the fluttered clouds—now the agaves / thrash and every palm tree too / flames in alarm."

Penguin released the first page of Thomas Pynchon's feverishly anticipated fall novel Bleeding Edge.

The inventor of the word "fashionista" issues a long-overdue apology "to all users of language for my crime against nomenclature," in an Atlantic essay.

Dwight Garner profiles John le Carre for The New York Times Magazine: "His books are less about espionage than they are about human frailty and desire; they're about how we are, all of us, spies of a sort."

The fantasy structure, as interpreted by Sumell, doesn't exactly have a Crescent City vibe. From the outside, it suggests Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style. In one of the movie's most interesting sequences, several architects argue that the interior reveals another influence: prison.

Although Wallace was released from solitary — temporarily — while the movie was being made, he never made his way in front of Bhalla's camera. He's heard only on the phone, or through an elaborate system of screens at Angola.

Yet he emerges as a vivid and remarkably sanguine character. He's candid about the crime that put him behind bars, and understanding when his supporters on the outside don't always put his interests first. At one point, he insists that Sumell pay more attention to her ailing mother than to him.

The artist accepts that order, but she's headstrong to the point of obsessiveness. One biographical detail is telling: As an adolescent, Sumell was the first girl on Long Island to join an organized tackle-football team. And a single comment establishes her political outlook: She calls the 2000 presidential election "the coup."

The contrasting demeanors of its two main characters give Herman's House its spark, but the movie has some pungent moments without them. At Sumell's gallery opening, for example, upscale New Yorkers chat and sip cocktails in the scale model of Wallace's cell.

If the movie is finally a little frustrating, that's because events failed to cooperate. Commendably, Bhalla followed Wallace and Sumell for several years. But neither's story came to a resolution before the filmmaker stopped shooting.

Herman's House would benefit from more background material on Wallace, notably about the alleged weakness of the murder rap against him. In the end, though, neither Sumell nor the film is concerned with that. Their goal is to make palpable — and palpably horrific — the fact of living 23 hours a day in caged isolation. Even those opening-night cocktail drinkers must have noticed that a 6-by-8 cell is soul-crushingly small.

Could it also be the story of a childless middle-aged man trying to plug the holes in his life by vicariously writing the great novel he couldn't pull off himself? Definitely. Is there a thread about the infinite human capacity for self-deception and betrayal covering for the desperate need to find a safe berth in life? Sure.

In the House is often mordantly funny. Luchini is France's master of deadpan comedy: When he does farce, it carries an undertow of sorrow, and vice versa. Scott Thomas, too often unimaginatively cast as sour or depressed viragos, holds her own beautifully as the vinegary, ambitious Jeanne. Through her, Ozon has some fun with contemporary art; he also pokes entertainingly at the puffed-up rhetoric of France's current educational-reform conversation. Germain may roll his eyes at his principal's rapturous endorsement of school uniforms as the way forward, but he remains passionate about literature; any teacher would understand his pouncing on promise, though they might balk at the lengths he will go to to promote it.

So everyone in this movie is plausible. But are they real, or figments of a budding writer's hungry imagination, fed by an enabler with his own unacknowledged desires? A blizzard of multiple perspectives and tonal shifts is set off by Philippe Rombi's lovely score, by turns exuberant, ferocious and wistful.

Ozon keeps sliding between genres ("Now we are in bad farce," scolds the teacher) to explore what really interests him — the creative process itself. He's forever knocking us off the naturalist's perch, and it's not just the plot that keeps getting re-engineered. The movie keeps asking us to reconsider who's the audience for this endlessly revised tableau. Is it us, or the writing partners, or the spouses — or all of the above?

Most important, at least for Ozon: Who's the author? In the House posits the artist as a kind of predator, at once monstrously detached and hopelessly overinvolved, preying on his material and ruining his subjects' lives for the sake of a good yarn. I can't decide whether that's wise or merely clever.

At the end, Germain and Claude sit side by side, competitively lathering up tales about the people they see through the windows of an apartment building across the park. There's a sense in which both bedraggled men have lost everything, and an even more powerful sense that telling stories — making art, if you want to get fancy — doesn't just mean the world to them. It is their world. (Recommended)

Maurice Kie, 26, is a mentor with Life Pieces. He started with the program as an "apprentice" when he was 9-years-old. "It's the whole thought that you went through something in your life and I support you," says Kie. "Or you went through something and I also embrace the same idea, canvas and paint brush."

Take a series the boys did called "Walk A Mile In My Shoes." Each painting is different, but they all have a pair of tennis shoes as the centerpiece. One painting is black with brightly colored flecks, like stars. The tennis shoes sort of emerge from the center. According to Kie, the shoes could represent anything from the death of a community member to a marker of drug territory or prostitution. But in the series, the shoes have a deeper meaning:

"For us it was more like, 'Could you walk a mile in my shoes?' " says Kie. "Could you experience some of the things that I experience? Could you embrace me as I experience these things?"

Kie often talks about the "brotherhood" that forms between boys who learn to talk about these experiences with each other at Life Pieces. The art, he says, is the means but not the end. They also write songs and poems together:

All these odds
If I do well in school, can I jump over jail?
If I pray every night, can I jump over this hell?
If I run past time, will time really tell?
Or will these shoes turn to boots
As I write this next poem from a cell?

Other documentaries profile figures like Gore Vidal, Moms Mabley and Elaine Stritch, or consider topics as varied as fracking (Gasland Part II), the negative effects of sports celebrity for high school athletes (Lenny Cooke) and reindeer herding in Finland's Arctic Circle (Aatsinki).

An array of actors straddling the line between Hollywood and the independent world pop up in narrative titles likely to be seen in limited release in the near future. There are promising dramas featuring Sam Rockwell, Melissa Leo and Zac Efron; comedies starring the likes of Julianne Moore, Stanley Tucci and Paul Rudd (he's in a couple, actually) also pique interest.

The festival runs until April 28. Check back for updates on these and whatever small percentage of a dizzying number of films this critic can see.

I can't really explain why I think wax museum pictures are so funny, but clearly, I do. And I do again.

And now, it's the members of One Direction, immortalized (sort of) at Madame Tussauds, where, at an official photocall, some girls obligingly posed with these wax figures.

Interestingly, if you've ever seen wax figures in a museum, you know that they're much more impressive from a few feet away. From as close as these girls are — let alone when touching them with your hands — they come off as, at best, monstrous and clammy.

He's not alone in his opinion. At the end of a recent Saturday afternoon that was sunny but not particularly warm, there was a steady line of people eager to order at Smitten, which is located in a repurposed shipping container.

Smitten charges a buck an ounce, but a small amount of the stuff is rich enough to satisfy.

"Knowing there are only a few ingredients makes me feel like I can indulge," says Claire Kensington, the founder of a food, fashion and sex website, who'd returned two days after her last serving for some more mint chip.

Of course, there's nothing new about making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. In fact, cooking with the gas has become so trendy lately that Wired felt inspired to put together this how-to guide. (As we reported last year, sometimes these culinary experiments can go dangerously wrong.)

At New York's Eleven Madison Park, guests brought back to the kitchen after dinner are treated to an apple-and-brandy cocktail topped with a frozen dome of foam fashioned with liquid nitrogen.

"It gives us the opportunity to do a little performance before the guests that's really easy and quick, and at the same time entertaining," says Angela Pinkerton, the restaurant's head pastry chef. "Liquid nitrogen is fun to watch, and everyone's curious about it. It looks cool."

It does look (and feel) cool when clouds of gas come pouring out of the metal containers where the ice cream's stirring at Smitten. Fisher started serving ice cream out of a kid's red wagon back in 2009. She spent years developing a patented machine that keeps her ingredients churning in a safe, controlled environment. (She goes into the techie details in this video.)

The stirring, along with the minus 321 F temperature of the gas, keeps ice crystals from forming and is responsible for Smitten's smooth texture, which my son likens to a cross between standard-issue ice cream and whipped cream.

"Because it is a different texture than any other ice cream," says Kensington, "it feels like a new experience, like a new treat."

Hugh Heffner's empire has run afoul of conservative politicians in India, who have decided to halt plans for the country's first Playboy Club.

PB Lifestyle, the Indian firm with rights to the Playboy brand, had hoped that the club in the southwestern state of Goa would be the first of eight to be constructed over the next three years. They were hoping for as many as 120 such clubs in the coming decade.

But that now looks to be on hold. Goa's Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who leads a government dominated by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, gave the plan a thumbs down on Tuesday for what he called "technical" reasons.

"The Playboy club's application for setting up the facility in beach shack would be rejected as shack licences are usually given to individuals and not to the companies," Parrikar told the state assembly.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Goa "open-air club" was to have been located on Candolim beach in the former Portuguese colony, a favorite seaside destination for many foreign travelers.

On the Playboy India website on Tuesday, an announcement still reads: "It's official. The legendary Playboy Clubs are coming to India, and so are the Playboy Bunnies." There's also a link on the page to Playboy founder Hugh Heffner, who says he is "thrilled to be opening Playboy clubs in India."

The WSJ reports that Michael Lobo, a BJP member of the state assembly for Goa, threatened to go on a hunger strike if the club were built:

"Playboy is nothing but a glorified dance bar or a glorified prostitution joint," he told India Real Time last week, adding that he was worried the clubs would turn Goa — already popular with partygoers from around the world — into a "sex tourism destination."

The announcement comes just months after Bollywood film star Sherlyn Chopra became the first Indian model to pose nude for Playboy magazine.

Processed food packed with salt, fat and sugar has been making incursions into the traditional diets of countries around the world. Even Italy isn't immune to the reach of junk food. But hard economic times are spurring Italians to rediscover home cooking, and especially bread making.

Coldiretti, an association of Italian farmers, says consumer spending on basic ingredients like flour, eggs and butter has risen by record amounts over the last year — the highest increase since World War II. A third of Italians are now making pizza at home, and 19 percent are baking their own bread, according to Coldiretti.

The surge in bread making is a stark contrast to 2007, when Coldiretti reported that Italian bread consumption was at a historic low. But at $5 to 6.50 (4 or 5 euros), a loaf of artisan bread today in Rome doesn't come cheap.

Jeannie Marshall, a Canadian expat and author living in Rome, says that many people out of work unable to afford a lunchtime sandwich are refreshing their baking skills.

"Home cooking and baking disappeared for a while, but it was less than a generation, so it's easier to bring it back," says Marshall. "Part of it is wanting to nest a little bit, but there's also a great desire to appreciate the Italian culture."

Pierluigi Roscioli comes from a family of Roman bakers, and owns Forno Roscioli in the Campo de Fiori neighborhood.

"The [average] quality of bread is very low in Italy, so a lot of people who appreciate good bread and like to eat healthy have started to make bread at home," he says. For the unemployed who have less money and more time, bread making is a no brainer, says Roscioli. "You save money and feel you're doing something good for your family."

But it has had a serious impact on local bakeries. Ten percent of small bakeries in and around Rome have shut in the last two years, according to CNA, the Italian Association for Small and Medium Artisan Businesses.

Bernardino Bartocci, president of the CNA in Rome, and owner of Forno Campo di Fiori, says local bakeries can't compete with the buying power of supermarkets. So they're adapting by encroaching on the turf typically reserved for pasticcerias, or pastry shops.

"They have to sell more than bread," says Bartocci. "Now, bakeries are producing typical traditional Italian cookies and cakes to increase their offering."

Roscioli hasn't seen a drop in retail business, but he says he has suffered a loss of 10 to 15 percent in the last two years in his wholesale business which supplies bread to supermarkets in the middle class suburbs of Rome.

He and others are changing everyday eating culture in Rome by offering prepared food — namely, sandwiches. Once limited to small corner stores, workers now buy their panini from bakeries as well. It's a trend that's only developed in the last five years, says Roscioli.

For Roscioli, turning a 50 cent roll into a $5 (4 euro) sandwich is an obvious solution. One loaf of bread can make several sandwiches, and means fewer leftovers.

"We make two to three times our cost on a sandwich," he says.

Even if their culture is shifting, the Italians haven't lost their passion for food, or its importance inside or outside of their homes.

The International Monetary Fund has lowered its projections for global economic growth, including in the United States, citing sharp cuts in government spending and the struggling eurozone.

The Washington-based international lender's World Economic Outlook shaved its 2013 forecast to 3.3 percent from 3.5 percent. It also trimmed its projection for 2014 to 4 percent from 4.1 percent.

The IMF on Tuesday also pared back its forecast for growth in the U.S. economy this year, to 1.9 percent from 2.1 percent.

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Smashing through walls and yelling "Oh, Yeah!" apparently aren't cool enough for Kool-Aid Man anymore.

Kraft Foods Group has decided that the pitcher pitchman needs an new look that plays up his "undeniably fun personality."

So he's now "technologically advanced, CGI-generated and more interactive and colorful than ever." And, of course, he has a Facebook page.

It seems that formerly rather terse Kool-Aid Man (a guy in a costume) will now be a bit of a chatterbox in his ad spots. In one, for example, he'll be seen thinking about which mix he should "wear" and saying that, "I put my pants on one leg at a time. Except my pants are 22 different flavors. I've got grape pants, I've got watermelon pants."

The good news for fans of the old guy: According to The Associated Press, "Kraft isn't abandoning trademarks of its past campaigns in the new ads, which were developed by the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. At the end of the commercial, the Kool-Aid Man heads out to work by calming busting through the front door. When he emerges, he waves cheerily to two awestruck kids riding their bikes past his front lawn."

Still to come: How Family Guy will react to this news. As KpopStarz notes, on Family Guy "every time a character says 'Oh Yeah,' " a reasonable facsimile of Kool-Aid Man "will come bursting through whatever wall may be near by."

The Senate was due on Tuesday to take up legislation embodying the bipartisan compromise reached by two senators, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.

The effort to extend background checks to weapons purchases at gun shows and online received a boost over the weekend when an important gun-rights group, the Citizens Committee on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, announced its support for the measure.

Robert Spitzer, one of the nation's top experts on the politics of gun control and a political science professor at SUNY Cortland, called it a "significant" endorsement.

"The [group] has been around since the 1970s, and I do not recall them ever endorsing any real gun control measure," said Spitzer, author of "The Politics of Gun Control," in an email response to questions.

The Citizens Committee claims to be the nation's second largest gun-rights group.

Spitzer also noted support for the expanded background checks from the lobbying group, Independent Firearm Owners Association. "Add to this the dogged personal lobbying of family of Sandy Hook victims, and the weight of the Bloomberg and Gabby Giffords group, and that suggests some real momentum that may even carry this thing through the [Republican-controlled] House."

Spitzer said the Citizens Committee "has credibility with the gun rights community, which makes its endorsement more significant beyond its membership numbers. It compiles a lot of research and writing, and [is] a go-to site for the gun rights people."

The National Rifle Association, the nation's largest gun-rights group, opposes the measure.

In the House on Monday, Republican Peter King of New York and Democrat Mike Thompson of California introduced a companion bill to the Senate measure.

Despite a sense of momentum, the fate of the legislation is far from certain, even in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, acknowledged that Monday: "I hope there aren't going to be a few unreasonable extremists who are going to try to prevent an up or down vote on the legislation," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Is small-batch hard apple cider the next microbrew? It seems everybody and their brother is experimenting with ways to make the potent stuff profitable. Sales of domestically produced hard cider have more than tripled since 2007, according to beverage industry analysts — and that's not counting Europe, where it has held a steady popularity for centuries.

But there's a bit of a hitch that may stunt cider's future growth. Apple blight? Climate change? Finicky millennial tastes? Well, maybe, but Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is focusing on the antiquated way the products are taxed.

Schumer, the man who never misses the chance to promote his state's agriculture (have you seen the video of him "cooking" for the presidential inaugural ceremonies?), is proposing legislation he says will supercharge the cider boom for both the Empire State and the whole country.

"New York is the second-largest apple producer in the country, and there's no doubt it should be at the core of the hard-cider industry, which is rapidly growing in popularity," says Schumer. "However, current federal tax rules make it extremely costly for Capital Region producers and consumers alike to produce, market and sell this product, which could prevent New York's hundreds of apple growers and hard cider producers from fully benefiting from the stable income that comes with this new product."

Here's the problem, as Schumer sees it: Under federal law, hard apple and pear ciders cannot exceed 7 percent alcohol by volume – or they become subject to the higher taxes of products with higher alcohol levels, like wine.

But hitting the right level and no higher is tricky when working with a product like apples, which naturally vary in sweetness levels. Since the amount of sugar varies, that means the amount of alcohol produced will ultimately vary, too. Sometimes, those variations can put a particular cider batch's alcohol content above that 7 percent mark.

And there are other factors that can alter how boozy a cider batch is.

"We don't know for sure how efficiently the available sugars will or will not be converted to ethanol," says Chris Gerling of the Cornell Extension Enology Lab. (It's about 51 percent, but not always.)

Gerling has worked with wine and hard-cider producers in New York state for years on ways to boost production, teaching classes and offering advice. But recently, he's become the student, learning a bit of excise tax law, courtesy of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, as this issue has come up.

"The problem is that cider has to kind of drift between beer and wine in the regulations, and can cross major TTB definition [and/or] tax boundaries with relatively small changes [and/or] fermentation outcomes," Gerling says.

And it gets even more complicated.

Add too much carbonation to the hard cider, and it falls into the even higher tax realm of champagne.

"It's much more of a burden for cider producers than for somebody who's selling sparkling wine for $50 a bottle," he says.

One reason regulations may be outdated is that hard apple cider, formerly the drink of choice for Colonial Americans, fell out of favor once beer got big. People just stopped making it here. It's only in recent years, as more U.S. producers have taken up making cider, that the tax issue has become a growing problem.

The tax issue as it stands now creates all kind of messy labeling issues and potentially confusing price changes for cider makers, Schumer says, and can be an impediment to getting the stuff to market. That's especially true, he says, for the increasing number of small craft brewers and orchards with bushels of imperfect apples looking to turn more fruit into reliable profits, and those looking to plant new cider-specific varieties.

The CIDER Act (yes, members of Congress love acronyms) would change the law to give cider makers up to 8.5 percent alcohol by volume to work with — a range similar to what winemakers enjoy — and bring U.S law in line with the European Union, where hard cider never lost its appeal.

So what would it mean to the U.S. consumer? A few more sweet hard-cider choices.

Rivals Ford and General Motors said Monday they will work together to develop new transmissions aimed at helping them meet upcoming fuel efficiency standards.

The new 9-speed transmissions for front-wheel-drive vehicles and 10 speeds for rear-drive and SUVs and trucks are expected to reach the market by 2016.

"Engineering teams from GM and Ford have already started initial design work on these new transmissions," said Jim Lanzon, GM vice president of global transmission engineering. "We expect these new transmissions to raise the standard of technology, performance and quality for our customers while helping drive fuel economy improvements into both companies' future product portfolios."

The New York Times says, "GM is understood to have contributed the basic design of the new 9-speed for front-drive vehicles, while the 10-speed's design comes from Ford."

The more gears in the transmission, the less hard the engine is required to work, which saves fuel. It also makes it possible to achieve both lively acceleration and quieter highway cruising without sacrificing either."

"By cooperating on design, engineering, and testing, the automakers are expected to save hundreds of millions of dollars and considerable development time, said Skip Nydam, an industry analyst with ND-Automotive and a former transmission engineer. It also saves the cost of licensing the design and production rights from a specialist transmission supplier like ZF of Germany or Aisin of Japan, which can cost up to $100 per unit, according to engineers at Ford and G.M."

More than 23,600 people were victims of human trafficking in Europe during a recent three-year period, according to a new European Union report that says the problem is growing worse. Its authors say the official figures do not come close to describing the crime, which has "hundreds of thousands of victims."

The study (pdf), which gathered statistical data from more than 25 European nations, found that human trafficking increased by 18 percent between 2008 and 2010. In the same time span, the number of convictions for the crime fell by 13 percent.

"It is difficult to imagine that in our free and democratic EU countries tens of thousands of human beings can be deprived of their liberty and exploited, traded as commodities for profit," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrm said as she released the report Monday. "But this is the sad truth and trafficking in human beings is all around us, closer than we think."

Often lured by a promise of a good-paying job, victims are drawn in by word of mouth, says the report, which also cites the Internet as both a recruitment tool and a means for advertising services. Once the victims are in the grasp of traffickers, they are controlled by force, deception, and debt bondage.

The statistical report, the first of its kind in Europe, provides new detail about trafficking's victims:

68 percent were women, 17 percent men, 12 percent girls and 3 percent boys

62 percent of the victims were trafficked for sexual exploitation; in 2010, 96 percent of them were female

25 percent were forced to work in industries from agriculture and construction to textiles and health care

61 percent were from EU member states; most were from Romania or Bulgaria

Among victims from outside Europe, most were from either China or Nigeria

Reporting from Brussels for NPR's Newscast desk, Teri Schultz says that European officials say the status quo is unacceptable. "EU governments had two years to implement tougher standardized anti-trafficking legislation," she says. "That time is up, yet only 6 of the 27 members have done so."

The report also describes Europe's strategy for fighting the problem, including improving the EU's ability to identify and protect victims of trafficking.

Satellite TV distributor Dish Network has offered to buy telecom giant Sprint Nextel Corp. in a $25.5 billion deal, a move that could derail a similar offer by the Japanese phone company SoftBank.

Dish says that it has offered $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock for Sprint. After the news was announced on Monday, Sprint's stock jumped 15 percent in pre-market trading, according to The Associated Press.

Dish, of Englewood, Colo., says its offer is a 13 percent premium on the October SoftBank offer to buy 70 percent of Sprint for $20 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Dish also says its proposal would result in an estimated cost savings of $11 billion, the AP says.

"Sprint is in play," Dish Chairman Charles Ergen said in an interview with the WSJ in New York. "We think we've made an offer that's much more compelling than the Softbank transaction."

According to the WSJ:

"The unsolicited offer is Mr. Ergen's most audacious attempt yet to move from the slow-growing pay-television business into the fast-evolving wireless industry. The satellite TV pioneer eased into the industry by amassing spectrum and winning approval from regulators last year to use it to offer land-based mobile-phone service. But he lacks much of the rest of the operation, including a cell phone network, which would be costly and time-consuming to build.

Combining his company with Sprint would allow Dish to offer video, high-speed Internet and voice service across the country in one package whether people are at home or out and about, Mr. Ergen said. People who don't have access to broadband from a cable company would be able to sign up for Internet service delivered wirelessly from Sprint cellphone towers to an antenna installed on their roof, Mr. Ergen said."

Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush, gave birth over the weekend to a girl.

Margaret Laura "Mila" Hager is named for her grandmothers, the former president announced in a statement. According to The Associated Press, the little girl's nickname is pronounced MEE-luh.

Jenna Hager, now 31, is a Today Show correspondent. According to the show, husband Henry Hager says "both my girls are healthy and well." Mila weighed in at 6 pounds, 15 ounces.

CBS New York adds that earlier this month Jenna Hager "told People Magazine that her father, who has taken up art in his post-White House life, already has prepared three paintings for the baby — a portrait of the Hagers' cat, Bernadette, to place above the crib; landscape featuring a 'baby tree' from his Texas ranch; and a still life of the ranch's stone cross where the Hagers were married in 2008."

She also told People that father has "become an artiste. There's a whole new side of him and he's so excited about the baby."

Update at 9:05 a.m ET. Bush Says Painting Is "A Way To Create":

"People are surprised," he's taken up painting, the former president tells The Dallas Morning News. "Of course, some people are surprised I can even read," he adds.

Bush tells the newspaper that painting is "a way to create. I enjoy creating. ... You can express yourself in a way that's unique."

The baseball season is still young, but the New York Yankees have already faced harsh public criticism. No, we're not referring to their lackluster record. Instead, the Yanks were accused of trying to hoodwink beer drinkers with a new "Craft Beer Destination" concession stand at their Bronx stadium.

The problem arose when writer Amanda Rykoff spotted the stand's sign, with an arty chalkboard effect imparting the sense of a brewpub. A fan might expect it to sell beers from New York's famed Brooklyn Brewery, or perhaps Brewery Ommegang, located in the baseball mecca of Cooperstown.

Instead, all of the offerings — Blue Moon; Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy; Crispin; Batch 19 — exist under the MillerCoors corporate umbrella. None of them have a special tie to New York. As many critics noted, Crispin is a cider, not a beer. And its roots are in Minneapolis, home of the Yankee-hating Twins.

Many news outlets including Deadspin took up the story, noting that as part of a conglomerate, the MillerCoors products don't meet the traditional definition of "craft" as established by the Brewers Association, which requires small production and independent ownership.

We should note that in spotting the "crafty" ruse at Yankee Stadium, Rykoff didn't besmirch the beers.

"I confess that on a hot summer day, I will enjoy a Summer Shandy on occasion, and Blue Moon is certainly a popular beer," she wrote. "But to call them 'craft beers' is nonsense and insulting. Real beer drinkers know better but countless numbers of fans will gladly shell out $12 for an overrated beer being marketed as a specialty brew."

Rykoff concluded, "Once again, the Yankees have figured out yet another way to charge a superior price for an inferior product."

The team has now changed its approach, keeping the stand but renaming it the "Beer Mixology Destination."

Other than seeming to be a brazen attempt to glom onto yet another trend — and risking the wrath of cocktail enthusiasts — the new name hints at the concoctions that result from combining Crispin cider with its three stand-mates.

The Yankees are not alone in trying to tap into the growing craft beer market. Craft beer has made inroads at many Major League Baseball stadiums, as fans seek a brew with more flavor — and perhaps a bit more kick, to cut down on trips to the concession stand (and other facilities).

In Detroit, at least seven Michigan craft brewers, including Bell's, Founders, and New Holland, have their beers on tap at Comerica Park, as Darren Rovell writes at ESPN.

And in Baltimore, Orioles fans can easily find beers from Maryland and Delaware, Heavy Seas, Dogfish Head, and Evolution among them, as well as Flying Dog, which is tapping special cask-conditioned brews on Fridays. The Camden Yards property also has a brewpub that's open all year.

And while San Diego fans have suffered through a 2-9 start this season, they can console themselves with a selection of craft beers that's among the best in the majors, befitting the city's bustling beer scene.

The Petco Park Insider says the "star lineup" of brewers includes Stone, Green Flash, and Karl Strauss. The park also sells beer from Sierra Nevada, Ballast Point, and others.

We should note that San Diego also has Bud Black at its stadium. But that's not an Anheuser-Busch product; it's the name of the Padres' manager.

SB Nation is owned by Vox Media, which also created The Verge, a site covering digital culture, and Polygon, a gamer review and news site.

"We looked around the Web and we realized there was a race to the bottom, if you will, with a lot of content," says Jim Bankoff, the Vox CEO who hired Stout.

Bankoff was an executive with AOL in the 1990s and helped advise Arianna Huffington as she was launching The Huffington Post. He says many online aggregators focus on lists and photo galleries to the exclusion of reported pieces.

"Part of why Web content became shorter and less substantive was that publishers believed in order to have a successful digital business model, they had to produce things as quickly and as cheaply as possible," Bankoff says.

Bankoff decided to dart in the opposite direction at SB Nation.

"What we've found at Vox is that long-form stories are incredibly attractive to advertisers," Bankoff says. "People are spending a lot of time with them. I think on average it's about 17 minutes in our case, and sometimes much longer than that.

"And such a glut — and such a sea of stuff on the Web that is often not substantive, often is quick 'listicles' or even worse, we find that advertisers are flocking to quality and trying to get it where they can."

Vox is by no means the only new-media publisher betting long. The viral website BuzzFeed, which posts adorable animal and baby pictures by the cartload, also published many lengthy pieces toward the end of last year's elections. One was a reflective article by the political reporter McKay Coppins about his experience as a Mormon covering the nation's first Mormon major-party presidential nominee.

Older news organizations are finding new ways to tell stories, too. The New York Times received widespread accolades for the sophisticated marriage of narrative writing, video, photographs, maps and graphics it deployed to tell the story of an avalanche in Washington state in February.

The Wall Street Journal has posted not just hours of daily video but lengthy video treatments — effectively documentaries — on complex issues such as corruption among elite Communist Party leaders in China.

Reuters and Bloomberg News have beefed up their enterprise reporting and hired many experienced newspaper reporters. Some not-for-profit news sites have surfaced as well.

None of this activity replaces the watchdog reporting that was lost at state capitals and city halls throughout the country because of the hollowing out of major metropolitan newspapers, though some not-for-profit news sites have surfaced to try to fill the gaps.

Last month, the Pew Research Center issued a report that, if it were a Dickens novel, would have carried the title Bleak House for its depiction of depleted newsrooms filled with exhausted, demoralized reporters and editors.

The report perceived few positive trends on either the journalistic or the revenue side of the equation, though it noted new income from metered pay walls that require repeat readers to pay for access to online content. But Slate's Matt Yglesias took issue with the underlying and largely despairing conclusions of a time of constricted ambitions.

The American news media, he wrote, have "never been in better shape. ... Almost everything you'd want to know about any subject is available at your fingertips. ...

"Best of all, today's media ecology lets you add depth and context to the news," Yglesias said. He wrote that the report mistook the desires of journalists for the appetite of online readers.

Yglesias' essay triggered a sharp response. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf said Yglesias had missed the central component of American journalism: accountability.

"How well does it provide citizens the information they need to govern themselves?" Friedersdorf wrote. "How effectively does it fulfill its role as a watchdog? Judged accordingly, the verdict is a lot murkier."

Banaszynski sees some hope, however, for the textured reporting and deep dives to which she has dedicated her career.

"When I go online, there's all of these little pockets of passion that have sprung up that are creating homes for it that never used to exist or at least were harder to find," Banaszynski says.

SB Nation's Stout says he doesn't care whether his bosses' motivation is commercial or journalistic. All he cares about, Stout says, is their willingness to let him publish the kind of writing he thinks is worth reading.

Inmates fought guards at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after military authorities decided to end communal housing in one of the prison's camps, and instead put prisoners in individual cells. At least one detainee was reportedly injured by a rubber bullet in the clash Saturday.

The violence began after the facility's commander ordered the move Saturday morning. According to the U.S. Southern Command, the decision was made after detainees covered windows and surveillance cameras, limiting guards' ability to monitor them at all times.

The forced transfer was also used as an opportunity to evaluate the health of the prisoners — dozens of them are on a hunger strike.

"Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons," according to the official statement, "and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired. There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees."

The prisoners' weapons included batons, broomsticks, and plastic water bottles, according to multiple reports.

The incident occurred in an area of Guantanamo Bay that had evolved into a "medium-security" section since the first inmates were brought there more than 10 years ago.

According to The Miami Herald, a recent visit to the camp showed that the guards "had lost a measure of control" over the inmates.

"The captives could be seen systematically disobeying communal camp rules. They covered surveillance cameras in individual cells with cereal boxes," writes Carol Rosenberg. "They refused to admit food carts to the cellblocks. Commanders said they were concerned that, out of view of the guard force, there were stealth hunger strikers who could suddenly die."

Reports of the number of prisoners who are currently on a hunger strike fluctuate, with some news outlets citing the Pentagon's estimate of 43 prisoners out of a total of 166, and others saying the number is more than 60, citing sources in the military and the inmates' defense attorneys.

Last week, the Pentagon named 11 inmates who were being force-fed so they would not starve themselves to death.

As CNN reports, the hunger strike was prompted by inmates' anger over guards' searching their Qurans and other practices that began after a change in command at the base last summer.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, a Starbucks coffee shop looks as it would in the United States. It has the same jazzy music; the same items on the menu.

There is one thing that is different, though: the prices.

"Everyone told me it's expensive, but when you see it yourself it's shocking," says one customer, Thierry, who is from Geneva and is in town for a wedding.

The largest-size chai latte costs nearly $6. Over the weekend, a Brazilian magazine posed the question of whether Sao Paulo has the most expensive pizza in the world. The answer? Yes — an average pie will run $30 to $40. A pair of name-brand running shoes costs $150 to $300.

Thierry warns those coming from outside the country that they better start saving now.

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This week marked a new step in Michelle Obama's evolution as first lady. In her hometown of Chicago, she delivered one of the most emotional speeches of her career — about kids dying from gun violence.

"I'm not talking about something that's happening in a war zone halfway around the world," she said. "I am talking about what's happening in the city that we call home."

Michelle Obama almost never ventures into the top political controversy of the day. Instead, she has spent her time in the White House focusing mostly on child nutrition and military families. But the first lady's role may be changing in President Obama's second term.

Two months ago, she went to Chicago for the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton. Pendleton was an innocent 15-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet a week after she performed at inaugural festivities. At the funeral, the first lady turned to her friend and adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

"She leaned over and she said, 'I have to come back to Chicago. We have to do more. I don't want to just attend a funeral. I want to make a difference,' " Jarrett says.

That shows a level of confidence and assertiveness Obama hasn't always had as first lady. People who know her best say she's more comfortable in the role than ever before. She now understands the levers of power.

"Appreciating what a first lady can do to make a big impact is something that evolves over time," Jarrett says.

There's no job description for first lady. No statutory authority. And Jarrett says that during the first term, Obama's top concern was her daughters' transition to a new life.

"The girls are four years older. They're much more independent now, they have schedules of their own, they're thriving, and so she has a little bit more flexibility with her time," Jarrett says.

Aides to the first lady say Obama doesn't plan on launching big new initiatives in the second term. Instead, she'll expand her two signature projects: Joining Forces, which is about veterans and military families; and Let's Move, which focuses on childhood obesity.

"Mississippi saw a 13 percent decrease in childhood obesity over the last few years, which is extraordinary," says Sam Kass, Let's Move's executive director. "Places in New York and Philadelphia and in L.A., we're starting to see real declines — which is really substantial."

In the past four years, Let's Move cut deals with major supermarkets, restaurant chains and school lunch programs. In the next term, Kass says the program will work on information for parents and advertising for kids.

For example, Birds Eye Vegetables recently teamed up with Nickelodeon's iCarly. "And during that time that they did that partnership, they saw a 37 percent increase in sales of vegetables," Kass says.

At the same time, some big candy and soda companies have agreed to stop targeting certain products to young kids.

Myra Gutin of Rider University, who studies the history of first ladies, says Michelle Obama's activities look a lot like what she calls "activist" first ladies, in the mold of Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Hillary Clinton and others.

"The activist first ladies certainly are at more risk for making a mistake, and that could end up taking up some of their husband's political capital," Gutin says. "But at least in my research, I've never found that that worry has really stopped them very much."

Obama's stumbles have been few, says Anita McBride of American University. There was a lavish trip to Spain and party crashers at the first White House state dinner. But McBride, who was first lady Laura Bush's chief of staff, says the White House recovered quickly.

"I think she learned from it, and you haven't seen that happen again," McBride says. "But overall on the development of issues, you know, I think they have done a very good job."

As often as not, Obama lands in the spotlight for reasons of style rather than substance. A new haircut becomes a major national news story.

"It is not a normal life that a person leads," says Ebs Burnough, deputy social secretary during the Obamas' first term. "But when it comes, I think, particularly to style, etc., she is great about saying, 'It comes with the territory but, you know, I'm not focusing on it.' "

While any first lady gets constant scrutiny, Michelle Obama is special. At 49, she's younger than most people who have held the job, the first woman of color in the role and the only first lady in an age of Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube.

Lately, she seems to be having more fun with it all, whether showing up on the Oscars or doing a "mom dance" with Jimmy Fallon.

In that appearance, Fallon asked if she would consider running for office in 2016. Obama said she'd rather host The Tonight Show.

President Obama's nominee to lead the Labor Department has been one of the most aggressive advocates for civil rights in decades. Tom Perez prosecuted a record number of hate crimes cases and extracted huge settlements from banks that overcharged minorities for home loans.

But some Republican lawmakers say those same qualities give them pause about voting to confirm Perez as a Cabinet member.

'Making A Huge Difference'

As the son of Dominican immigrants, and a guy who helped put himself through Ivy League schools by working as a garbage collector, Perez knows something about climbing the ladder.

"Over my career, I've learned that true progress is possible if you keep an open mind, listen to all sides and focus on results," he said last month during the White House rollout of his nomination.

About those results: For more than three years, Perez has run the civil rights unit as an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, where he has sued Texas and South Carolina over voting rights and searched for abusive law enforcement patterns in more than a dozen police departments.

Perez has done something else, too, says Mark Perriello, president of the American Association of People With Disabilities.

"All the work that he has done to secure the rights of people with disabilities to live independently in the community, to have access to polling, to have access to simple things like technology and watching Netflix with your family at home at night has been nothing less than stellar," Perriello says. "He is making a huge difference."

Perriello and dozens of other disability rights advocates have just launched a campaign to support Perez as labor secretary.

It's support the nominee may need to counter vocal opposition from Republican lawmakers like Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley.

"This person's going to have trouble — both through the committee process and on the floor," Grassley says. "He's got a lot of questions to answer."

A Quid Pro Quo?

Grassley and two House Republicans, Darrell Issa of California and Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, released a report late Sunday that blasted Perez for his role in what they call a quid pro quo last year, when the Justice Department agreed not to support a big whistle-blower lawsuit against St. Paul, Minn., for mishandling federal money.

The report drafted by congressional Republicans says Perez's testimony about the episode conflicts with that of other accounts from people inside the Justice Department and lawyers in Minnesota who worked on the issue.

"Perez's inconsistent testimony on a range of subjects calls into question the reliability of his testimony and raises questions about his truthfulness during his transcribed interview," the report said.

The report also alleges Perez engineered a plan to back away from the whistle-blower case without notifying his superiors or ethics lawyers at Justice about all the facts, and that he meddled with the decision-making by career lawyers in the government, while asking them to avoid putting the details in writing, placing "ideology over objectivity and politics over the rule of law."

The situation "confused and frustrated the career Justice Department attorneys ... who described the situation as 'weirdness,' 'ridiculous' and 'cover your head ping pong,' " the report added.

Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson defended Perez's actions in an emailed statement. "The resolution reached in these cases was in the best interests of the United States and consistent with the Department's broad discretion to consider policy and other factors — including pending litigation — in resolving False Claims Act [whistle-blower] matters," Iverson said.

She pointed out that private plaintiffs still were allowed to move forward with their whistle-blower case.

"The Department's decision was appropriate, and followed an examination of the relevant facts, legal, and policy considerations at issue, and following Mr. Perez's consultation with career ethics officers," she added.

St. Paul leaders agreed to drop their Supreme Court challenge to a legal tool known as disparate impact theory that the Justice Department often uses in housing discrimination cases. (For an explanation of disparate impact theory, check out this interview on NPR's Tell Me More. There's more background on the Supreme Court case and the St. Paul whistle-blower lawsuit in The Two-Way blog.)

Grassley says that kind of arrangement is not against the law, "but it looks pretty bad right now when somebody at that high level of government makes a quid pro quo that costs the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars ... just for the purpose, for philosophical or ideological purposes, to get a case to the Supreme Court dropped."

Facing Questions

Asked if he would be prepared to block the Perez nomination, Grassley replied: "I'm at least prepared to resist any attempt to bring it up until we get all of our questions answered."

At his Senate confirmation hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, Perez could face even more questions about his management at the Justice Department's civil rights unit. The department's inspector general recently concluded the atmosphere there is filled with partisanship and bullying, though watchdogs say most of that trouble dates back a decade, before Perez arrived.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is planning its own hearing this week on those issues. In a statement to NPR, Goodlatte, the committee chairman, said he was "shocked the President is moving forward with this nomination. ... Mr. Perez should face tough questions about this backroom deal he helped coordinate, his role in interfering with a Supreme Court case, and his mismanagement of the Civil Rights Division."

Supporters of Perez say the White House knew all about those controversies when it nominated him to lead the Labor Department. Obama says he wants Perez to play a big role in such issues as long-term unemployment, immigration and the minimum wage.

"His story," the president said last month, "reminds us of this country's promise: That if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is, you can make it if you try."

Perez is in line to become one of the highest-profile Latino Cabinet members in recent memory, if he can get past Senate Republicans.