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Rebecca Solnit begins her new memoir, The Faraway Nearby, with a question: "What's your story?"

"It's all in the telling," she says. "Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of the world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice."

In her book, Solnit explores her tempestuous relationship with her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer's before her death. She weaves in being a writer in residence in Iceland and examines the stories of Scheherazade and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

"We think we tell stories," she says, "but often stories tell us."

Solnit tells weekends on All Things Considered host Jackie Lyden about receiving a "fairy-tale" gift from her mother: one hundred pounds of apricots.

"Every time I looked at it," Solnit says, "there were a few more going bad. And so it became a pile of anxiety. I was always looking to see what was going wrong rather than just feeling this super-abundance of apricots."

Russia's foreign minister on Saturday warned that any effort by the U.S. and its allies to impose a no-fly zone over Syria would violate international law.

Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a joint news conference in Moscow with his Italian counterpart, referred to "leaks from Western media" that U.S. F-16 fighters and Patriot missile in Jordon might be used in neighboring Syria to suppress government forces fighting insurgents there.

"You don't have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law," Lavrov said.

Moscow has long been a close ally of the Syrian regime and amid earlier talk of the possibility of a no-fly zone against President Bashar al-Assad's military, Russia pledged to deliver surface-to-air missiles and additional MiG-29 fighters to Damascus.

The White House this week said the U.S. would begin sending military support to the rebels after it was determined that the Syrian government used deadly sarin gas on its own people. The Wall Street Journal reported that a limited no-fly zone was among the options being actively considered.

Lavrov also said Saturday that the evidence of Syrian chemical weapons use cited by the U.S. is not reliable and doesn't meet requirements of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

He said the organization specifies that samples taken from blood, urine and clothing can be considered reliable evidence only if supervised by organization experts from the time they are taken up to delivery to a laboratory, The Associated Press reports.

Parents steer their kids to media for all kinds of things: as a distraction so they can make dinner, to teach letters and numbers, and for pure entertainment. There are also times when parents rely on books, TV, museums and other media when they aren't quite sure how to approach a difficult topic by themselves.

Linda Ellerbee is the queen of hard subjects. Domestic abuse, Sept. 11, alcoholism and living with HIV are among the many tough issues she's covered in the 22 years since she's hosted NickNews on Nickelodeon. The show is written for 9- to 13-year-olds, and Ellerbee says her one rule of thumb is don't dumb it down.

"Our viewers are smart people," she says. "They are merely younger, less experienced and shorter." They also possess a more limited vocabulary, but Ellerbee she still uses words they might not know, like "intervention" or "hijacking."

"If I'm going to use a word that I think a 10-year-old might not understand," she says, "I either explain what the word means or use it in such a way that it's absolutely clear what the word means. I don't change the word."

NickNews is also known for letting kids do the talking: Children who've experienced all kinds of difficulties go on air to explain what their lives are like and how they're coping. Ellerbee says it's an effective way to explain a hard subject to young people. But, she cautions, don't do it too soon.

"That's why we haven't gone to Newtown yet to do a show with those kids or, you know, about what happened," she says. "It's about timing. You need to sort of let some things settle."

For the producers of Glee, meanwhile, the right time was four months after Newtown. Last April, the Fox series did an episode in which the high school goes on lockdown when a student's gun goes off. Some Newtown, Conn., residents urged people in the community to boycott the show.

“ The way adolescent brain works is such that 'bad things happen to other people' ... So what I think ['Glee'] did was to strike empathy and understanding amongst that age group.

What is it about dolphins? They have very, very big brains, and that makes we humans, whose brains are nothing to sniff at, nervous. We don't know what to make of them.

The latest example: On May 17 in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests issued an order to all Indian states banning dolphin amusement parks. No leaping out of pools to catch balls, no jumping through hoops. Forcing dolphins to entertain humans, the ministry said, was morally unacceptable.

"Cetaceans [dolphins, whales and porpoises] in general are highly intelligent and sensitive," the Ministry said, "and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that [they have] unusually high intelligence ... compared to other animals."

This means, the Indian ministry went on: "that dolphins should be seen as 'non-human persons' and as such should have their own specific rights." "Non-human persons" — what a pregnant phrase! People-like, but not like people.

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Mortgage rates have seen a relatively sharp rise this month. The average 30-year fixed-rate loan hit 4 percent earlier in June — a big jump from the record lows of recent years. Some investors are now concerned that the housing recovery could be stifled if rates continue to rise quickly.

Miguelo Rada doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd have extra cash. He just spent 32 years in prison, he lives in a halfway house in West Harlem, and his current income comes only from public assistance.

He uses food stamps for food, wears hand-me-down clothes and buys almost nothing. He is also an unofficial bank.

"If somebody asks me, 'Can I borrow $20?' If I have it I'll say, 'Here!' " he says.

This kind of borrowing is one way people do what economists call "consumption smoothing" – basically making spending more regular, even when income is not.

Some people use credit cards or banks to smooth consumption. Others use each other, says Jonathan Morduch, an NYU professor, who studies how ordinary people make ends meet.

"Sometimes we do see people who say, 'I'm getting my money on the 17th, you're getting your money on the 2nd,' and they actually split their checks," he says.

Rada says the people he's lending to often have bad credit, so they can't borrow from banks. His version of a credit check is asking people "What's the problem? Is there a way out?" His ledger, he keeps in his head. And he says he doesn't charge interest.

Rada also accepts deposits for people like his brother, who have a hard time managing their own money. "I say, 'You want me to hold something for you?' So he gave me a hundred, and I held his hundred."

A while later, when his brother came back for the money, "I asked him, 'What's going on? What do you need this for?' " Rada says. "He told me, 'I gotta take care of this bill,' and I went with him."

There are downsides to informal lending. Borrowers don't build up a credit history that allows them to get credit cards and formal loans. And borrowing from friends and family can be a downer.

"When you put family in, then they have the right to critique," says Tamara Bullock, a funeral director in Harlem.

Bullock is part of a bank-like savings club called a sou-sou. In the last one Bullock was in, 13 people promised to pitch in $100 each every two weeks. And every two weeks, one member of the group got $1,300.

Bullock says she loves sou-sous because they force her to save. "There's no 'ifs' and 'buts' because other people are depending on you," she says.

Bullock has been working her way out of deep debt. When she got her most recent $1,300 from the sou-sou, she used it to pay off a debt to a collection agency.

But it isn't always about getting out of debt; a while back, Bullock and her colleague Patricia Hamilton used some of their sou-sou money to go sky diving. Hamilton wants to celebrate her 62nd birthday by taking Bullock sky diving again with her next sou-sou payout. Bullock is trying to get out of it.

For more on Jonathan Morduch's work on how people make ends meet, see the U.S. Financial Diaries Project.

Miguelo Rada doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd have extra cash. He just spent 32 years in prison, he lives in a halfway house in West Harlem, and his current income comes only from public assistance.

He uses food stamps for food, wears hand-me-down clothes and buys almost nothing. He is also an unofficial bank.

"If somebody asks me, 'Can I borrow $20?' If I have it I'll say, 'Here!' " he says.

This kind of borrowing is one way people do what economists call "consumption smoothing" – basically making spending more regular, even when income is not.

Some people use credit cards or banks to smooth consumption. Others use each other, says Jonathan Morduch, an NYU professor, who studies how ordinary people make ends meet.

"Sometimes we do see people who say, 'I'm getting my money on the 17th, you're getting your money on the 2nd,' and they actually split their checks," he says.

Rada says the people he's lending to often have bad credit, so they can't borrow from banks. His version of a credit check is asking people "What's the problem? Is there a way out?" His ledger, he keeps in his head. And he says he doesn't charge interest.

Rada also accepts deposits for people like his brother, who have a hard time managing their own money. "I say, 'You want me to hold something for you?' So he gave me a hundred, and I held his hundred."

A while later, when his brother came back for the money, "I asked him, 'What's going on? What do you need this for?' " Rada says. "He told me, 'I gotta take care of this bill,' and I went with him."

There are downsides to informal lending. Borrowers don't build up a credit history that allows them to get credit cards and formal loans. And borrowing from friends and family can be a downer.

"When you put family in, then they have the right to critique," says Tamara Bullock, a funeral director in Harlem.

Bullock is part of a bank-like savings club called a sou-sou. In the last one Bullock was in, 13 people promised to pitch in $100 each every two weeks. And every two weeks, one member of the group got $1,300.

Bullock says she loves sou-sous because they force her to save. "There's no 'ifs' and 'buts' because other people are depending on you," she says.

Bullock has been working her way out of deep debt. When she got her most recent $1,300 from the sou-sou, she used it to pay off a debt to a collection agency.

But it isn't always about getting out of debt; a while back, Bullock and her colleague Patricia Hamilton used some of their sou-sou money to go sky diving. Hamilton wants to celebrate her 62nd birthday by taking Bullock sky diving again with her next sou-sou payout. Bullock is trying to get out of it.

For more on Jonathan Morduch's work on how people make ends meet, see the U.S. Financial Diaries Project.

In recent years, programs that double the value of food stamp dollars spent at farmers markets have generated a lot of attention. The basic idea: Spend, say, $10 in food stamps and get an extra $10 credit for purchases at the market.

The model, which has spread to more than 25 states, has been hailed as one of the most effective ways to help low-income consumers get better access to fresh fruits and vegetables, while also supporting local farmers. But it has one major flaw: Most people don't shop at farmers markets.

That's why the Fair Food Network announced Friday that it's taking its food stamp incentive program to a new frontier: grocery stores.

The Fair Food Network already runs one such program, called Double Up Food Bucks, at 100 farmers markets in Michigan and Ohio. The program gives consumers a credit of up to $20 a day for using food stamps, or SNAP benefits, at the markets.

But Fair Food is well aware of the shortcomings of this approach. So the organization will soon pilot a new version of its program – the first of its kind – at three independent grocery stores in Detroit. This time, shoppers who use food stamps will get a $10 reward card for local produce with the purchase of $10 of groceries.

According to Oran Hesterman, president and CEO of the Fair Food Network, involving grocery stores in healthy food incentive programs is a critical step in reaching even more people who rely on federal food assistance.

"Ever since we started the program in 2009, we never conceived of it as just a farmers market program," Hestrman tells The Salt. "We knew that while farmers markets were a great place to demonstrate that people would use the program, if we were going to have an impact on a big scale, at some point we would have to move from farmers markets to grocery stores, where most people get their food most of the time."

So why Detroit? It's notorious for its food deserts, and fruits and vegetables are especially expensive for its poorest residents. But, Hesterman says, the city has a billion-dollar food economy, and half of that is spent by people on food assistance, "so it's the perfect place for us" to test the idea. (The Fair Food Network is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., just down the road.)

One in 7 Americans receives food stamps, known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, benefits. The average recipient receives about $133 a month. As one the biggest government assistance programs at $80 billion, SNAP has been highly successful at reducing food insecurity and poverty in the U.S. Still, there's long been a debate about which foods should be allowed in the program and how to encourage healthful choices.

That's one reason why Fair Food Network and Wholesome Wave, another organization offering SNAP incentive programs, decided to partner with farmers markets. (Check out our Q & A with Wholesome Wave CEO Michel Nischan for more on their work.)

But Osterman says the programs are not just about encouraging people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables – they're also about building a market that local farmers can depend on.

"The more we can capture those SNAP dollars in the community, the more wealth and jobs we can generate," says Hesterman. "We're trying to demonstrate that we can think about using SNAP not just as a hunger and food insecurity program for low-income families, but also as an economic development tool."

In the new grocery pilot program, he says SNAP recipients will have about 15 Michigan-grown fruits and vegetables to choose from at the three participating stores. This local produce will be in a special section of the stores, labeled as eligible for the program.

Each store will have a different selection, depending on the season, but Hesterman says he expects most will be offering tomatoes, eggplants, squash and a variety of fruit.

"This year we are going to have a fabulous fruit crop in Michigan," he says. "So these stores will likely have apples, peaches, cherries and blueberries galore."

The participating stores are Honey Bee Market, Metro Foodland and Mike's Fresh Market; the pilot will run between July 1 and Oct. 31, 2013.

Despite the success of the incentive program at farmers markets, there's some uncertainty about whether it will work in grocery stores. The program isn't yet integrated in the grocery stores' computer system, which is why the recipients will get their credit for produce purchases on a separate card.

"My biggest fear is that people won't know about it," says Hesterman. To get the word out, his group will be advertising the program on the radio and through billboards.

Millions of voters in Iran cast ballots Friday in elections to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a race that is being characterized as a potential challenge to the country's ruling Islamic clerics.

A slate of conservatives tacitly backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei face off against the lone moderate, Hasan Rowhan, a former nuclear negotiator.

Other candidates include Saeed Jalili, also a nuclear negotiator, Mayor of Tehran Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Khamenei's diplomatic adviser Ali Akbar Velayati.

Although the president in Iran has little say in the country's most substantive issues, long lines at polling stations in Tehran and elsewhere suggest enthusiasm for an election that was once viewed as a pre-engineered victory for Iran's ruling establishment, The Associated Press reports.

Khamenei, casting his ballot on Friday, took the opportunity to lash out at the United States after Secretary of State John Kerry last month questioned the credibility of the poll.

"Recently I have heard that a U.S. security official has said they do not accept this election," the cleric was quoted by state TV as saying. "OK, the hell with you."

The AP writes that:

"A victory by Rowhani would be seen as a small setback for Iran's Islamic establishment, but not the type of overwhelming challenge posed four years ago by the reformist Green Movement, which was brutally crushed after mass protests claiming Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election was the result of systematic fraud in the vote counting."

Captain Sunshine wears a yellow yarmulke, yellow T-shirt and a bright-yellow cape held around his shoulders with a silky red ribbon. At a recent rally of about 200 electric-car owners in Israel, he called out questions to the crowd.

"We're saying to the government and to the army," he shouted through a squawky mic, "20 percent of your fleets should be electric cars. Do you agree?"

The crowd cheered yes.

"We're saying to the finance ministry zero usage tax and zero purchase tax. Do you agree?" Again, yes. "And we're saying, of course, we would like to add renewable energy to power our cars. Do you agree?" Yes, yes, they wholeheartedly agreed.

Captain Sunshine is really Yosef Abramowitz, a successful American-Israeli solar entrepreneur. When Better Place, a much-touted, highly innovative Israeli electric car company went belly-up last month, Abramowitz saw an opportunity.

"We want to take the remaining assets of Better Place and turn it into a national project, recognized by the government as a national asset," he said. "We see it as a technology and service platform, for all electric vehicles, current and future, in the state of Israel."

Better Place broke new ground by building a network of 38 battery-swap stations around Israel. This meant that owners of Better Place cars could take long road trips without having to stop for hours to recharge. Battery-swapping represented a fundamental change in electric vehicle use, and the idea got a lot attention.

As the company was raising $850 million from investors, founder Shai Agassi did a TED talk. He appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was tapped as one of the WEF's Young Global Leaders. He was featured in the book Start-up Nation, which sings the praises of innovation in Israel. And customers like Chaim and Debbie Abramowitz (no relation to Yosef Abramowitz) loved the battery-swap system.

"We don't have to do anything," says Debbie, as we pull into a swap station near Jerusalem. Nobody does. We sit in the car while it's automatically raised a few inches. A mechanical system removes the spent battery from below and installs a fresh one. The process takes less than 6 1/2 minutes.

On a spontaneous day trip around scenic spots in Israel recently, the couple changed batteries three or four times.

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The Senate has defeated a Republican measure that would have blocked implementation of a "path to citizenship" for undocumented workers until after the U.S.-Mexico border has been deemed secure for a period of six months.

The amendment to the larger overhaul of U.S. immigration law was sponsored by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. It was defeated Thursday in a 57-43 vote.

Opponents argued the amendment would delay for years the path to citizenship that has become a centerpiece of the legislation, which Senate sponsors hope to approve by July 4.

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan predicted Wednesday that the GOP-controlled House would approve the path to citizenship — the key sticking point in the immigration overhaul — despite opposition from conservatives.

CNBC writes:

"... a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators say, the legislation will generate enough momentum to overcome resistance from opponents on the right who blast it as a veiled 'amnesty' for those who crossed the border illegally.

"Ryan, an influential conservative, lent support to those hopes. He told an audience in Washington assembled by the pro-reform National Association of Manufacturers that 'earned legalization is an issue I think the House can and will deal with.' "

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans say they feel more accepted in society than they did 10 years ago, and they're overwhelmingly optimistic that the trend will continue. But a sweeping new Pew Research Center survey also finds persistent levels of stigmatization and secrecy in the community.

"The Pew Research Center finds some 90 percent of LGBT people feel more accepted now than a decade ago, and believe that will continue," reports NPR's Jennifer Ludden. "They credit more personal interactions between gays and straights, high-profile advocates — like President Obama — and more same-sex parenting."

But many of the 1,197 adults who took part in the online survey — the first that Pew has conducted of the LGBT community — say they also see a strong stigma in American culture.

"For example, only slightly over half of folks in this community say they've told their mother about their sexual orientation," Pew's Paul Taylor tells Jennifer, "and just 4 in 10 have told their father."

Jennifer's full report will air on today's All Thing Considered. Here are more of the Pew study's findings:

The 40 percent of LGBT people who are bisexual are also the least likely to be "out" — most are married to someone of the opposite sex.

A third of LGBT adults say they've been rejected by a close family member or friend because of their sexual orientation.

Two in 10 LGBT people report being discriminated against by an employer.

Nearly a third say they've been rejected by their church or place of worship.

Almost 6 in 10 say they have been the target of jokes or slurs.

The median age when respondents said they felt they might not be heterosexual was 12.

The median age when they said they knew their sexual identity with certainty was 17.

Compared with the generation before them, today's gays and lesbians are coming out at an earlier age.

"Most who did tell a parent say that it was difficult," according to the study, "but relatively few say that it damaged their relationship."

The study also included a section asking respondents to name the public figures whom they see as being the most responsible for advancing LGBT rights.

Two names topped the list: President Obama (23 percent), who said in 2012 that he supports gay marriage; and Ellen DeGeneres (18 percent), the comedian and TV talk show host who came out in 1997. No other names were mentioned in more than 3 percent of responses.

"The lives of LGBT people are debated every day in this country, at ballot boxes, in legislatures, in the courts, in corporate boardrooms," Gary Gates, a demographer with the Williams Institute who consulted on the Pew report, tells Jennifer. "And it seems to me only fair that the public have some information about who they are and how they experience the world."

Gannett Co. plans to buy TV station owner Belo for $1.5 billion in cash and $715 million in debt in a deal that will make it one of the nation's largest owners of network television affiliates.

The total $2.2 billion deal would hand over Belo's 20 local TV stations, nine of them in top markets, Gannett-owned USA Today reports. The Associated Press reports that it will nearly double the number of Gannett-owned stations to 43 from 23.

Gannett's President and Chief Executive Officer Gracia Martore said in a statement that the deal brings together "two highly respected media companies with rich histories of award-winning journalism, operational excellence and strong brand leadership."

Belo's President and CEO, Dunia Shive, commented, "This is an outstanding and financially compelling transaction for our shareholders. It is also a testament to the tremendous value our employees have created over Belo's long history and to the strength of our brand in the media industry.'"

The AP reports:

"Gannett expects the deal to boost its adjusted earnings by 50 cents per share within the first 12 months.

"The deal is expected to close by the end of 2013.

"In premarket trading, Belo Corp.'s shares jumped 26 percent. Gannett Co.'s stock rose 12 percent."

Captain Sunshine wears a yellow yarmulke, yellow T-shirt and a bright-yellow cape held around his shoulders with a silky red ribbon. At a recent rally of about 200 electric-car owners in Israel, he called out questions to the crowd.

"We're saying to the government and to the army," he shouted through a squawky mic, "20 percent of your fleets should be electric cars. Do you agree?"

The crowd cheered yes.

"We're saying to the finance ministry zero usage tax and zero purchase tax. Do you agree?" Again, yes. "And we're saying, of course, we would like to add renewable energy to power our cars. Do you agree?" Yes, yes, they wholeheartedly agreed.

Captain Sunshine is really Yosef Abramowitz, a successful American-Israeli solar entrepreneur. When Better Place, a much-touted, highly innovative Israeli electric car company went belly-up last month, Abramowitz saw an opportunity.

"We want to take the remaining assets of Better Place and turn it into a national project, recognized by the government as a national asset," he said. "We see it as a technology and service platform, for all electric vehicles, current and future, in the state of Israel."

Better Place broke new ground by building a network of 38 battery-swap stations around Israel. This meant that owners of Better Place cars could take long road trips without having to stop for hours to recharge. Battery-swapping represented a fundamental change in electric vehicle use, and the idea got a lot attention.

As the company was raising $850 million from investors, founder Shai Agassi did a TED talk. He appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was tapped as one of the WEF's Young Global Leaders. He was featured in the book Start-up Nation, which sings the praises of innovation in Israel. And customers like Chaim and Debbie Abramowitz (no relation to Yosef Abramowitz) loved the battery-swap system.

"We don't have to do anything," says Debbie, as we pull into a swap station near Jerusalem. Nobody does. We sit in the car while it's automatically raised a few inches. A mechanical system removes the spent battery from below and installs a fresh one. The process takes less than 6 1/2 minutes.

On a spontaneous day trip around scenic spots in Israel recently, the couple changed batteries three or four times.

Enlarge image i

Now that the Obama administration has declared that Syrian President Bashar Assad has crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons against his own people, another rare bipartisan moment has arrived in the nation's capital.

Republicans welcomed the White House announcement Thursday that it was prepared to offer military assistance to the rebels, but their reaction contained implied criticisms of President Obama's approach to Syria up to now.

For example, there was this from Brendan Buck, Speaker John Boehner's spokesman: "It is long past time to bring the Assad regime's bloodshed in Syria to an end. As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action."

(Shorter Buck: "What took so long? Also, this better not be like the end-run around Congress like on the Libya no-fly zone.")

Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, issued two separate statements. An excerpt from the first:

"I am pleased that President Obama's Administration has joined the growing international chorus declaring that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing the red line drawn by the President last August..."

(Shorter Rogers, part one: "It's about time!")

And an excerpt from the second:

" ...Now that we have confirmed their use, the question is what is our plan for transition to a post-Assad Syria? I have laid out several steps, short of boots on the ground. The world is waiting for American leadership."

(Shorter Rogers, part 2: "Mr. President, read my USA Today opinion piece.")

Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina issued a joint statement in which they called for the president to order up the use of cruise missiles against Syrian military targets. An excerpt:

"The President's red line has been crossed. U.S. credibility is on the line. Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive actions."

(Shorter McCain and Graham: "Add some shock-and-awe to your No-Drama-Obama.")

Jeremy Jackson's grandma Mildred was famous for her strawberry cake. Legend has it that one of the families in her small Missouri town loved the dessert so much, they "commissioned" her to make it for them once a week.

Forget, for a moment, about the bipartisan Gang of Eight, whose members crafted the original version of the immigration bill being taken up by the Senate this week.

There's another, very partisan gang to watch on the issue. Let's call them the Gang of Four, a high-profile group of relatively new Republican senators whose trajectories are set for the national stage. The group includes Marco Rubio of Florida, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas — some of the newest stars in the GOP firmament.

Immigration votes are among the hardest lawmakers ever take and no vote is tougher than one that could foreclose what once seemed like a promising political future.

That reason alone makes it worth knowing what these four have said so far on the immigration overhaul and what they're likely to do. Their views range from being present at the creation of the Senate bill to vehemently opposing the bill under consideration.

Rubio — The Florida senator is also a member of the Gang of Eight. As such, Rubio is the one whose political future will most arguably rise or fall based on what happens with the immigration bill.

As a Cuban-American and a relatively new face on the national political scene, Rubio is often touted as the cure for what ails the Republican Party demographically: its difficulty in attracting Latino voters. Rubio's position on immigration has evolved in recent years, going from opposing a path to citizenship to supporting it.

Indeed, Rubio over the weekend told Univision in a Spanish-language interview, "First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border." That's not a popular position with many in the GOP base, to put it mildly.

But Rubio may be counting on some of the same dynamics that allowed Mitt Romney to win the GOP nomination despite having provided the Massachusetts model for Obamacare. Meanwhile, his position would make him much more competitive with a Democratic nominee for Hispanic votes.

Companies like Google and Facebook are very much caught in the middle of the current debate about national security and privacy. Press reports have said the companies are required to turn over huge amounts of customer data to government agencies like the National Security Agency, but the companies are often barred from saying anything publicly about the requests they receive.

That's left customers to wonder whether someone is looking over their shoulder when they use Facebook and similar sites.

"Google, Facebook and Microsoft and the rest of the companies are at risk of losing customer trust," says Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "And I think they're frustrated by their [in]ability to talk directly about these matters with their customers."

Global Users And The Bottom Line

This is an especially big issue in large, growing overseas markets. One of the surveillance programs at issue, known as PRISM, analyzes data collected by U.S. tech companies from foreign users. The European Parliament has expressed serious concerns about the programs.

"We are interested in what is going on," says Manfred Weber, a member of the European Parliament. "Is there really checking of all the emails? Is there really checking of all the Internet traffic? We want to know how it works."

And this could well affect the bottom line at companies like Google. Weber says U.S. surveillance programs appear to give Americans broader privacy protections than non-Americans. European regulators, he says, are especially bothered by this — and it could well affect Google's ability to do business in these markets.

"And when they have the feeling that the American companies are not guaranteeing these standards — couldn't guarantee [them] — then this will be for the long term an influence for the business question," Weber says.

That means companies like Google have a lot at stake in the current debate over surveillance programs. On Tuesday, Google sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for permission to reveal how often the company turns over customer information to the government. Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook quickly echoed the request. The companies say that releasing this information will dispel the notion that government investigators are given unlimited access to customer data.

All Tech Considered

A Day In The Life Of The Relentlessly Tracked

The Greek government has abruptly shut down the country's public broadcasting network and fired all of its staff.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras wants to show the country's creditors, including the European Union and International Monetary Fund, that he's downsizing the public sector, which has been criticized for corruption and bloat. But many Greeks see the rushed closure as a dictatorial move that will compromise the country's troubled media.

Just hours after the government announced the closure Tuesday, supporters of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, called ERT, gathered outside the network's headquarters in a leafy Athens suburb. Some sang protest songs from the '60s, when Greece was run by military dictators. The nearby church of Aghia Paraskevi rang its bells in support of the network just as Yiannis Gemenoglou, a retired state employee, walked to join the sit-in in support of the network he's listened to for decades.

"It is the modern identity of this country," he says.

ERT opened in 1938 as a radio network, and expanded to television in 1966.

Like other Greeks, Gemenoglou paid an annual licensing fee of 50 euros — about $66 — to keep ERT on air. He doesn't buy the government's claim that firing ERT's 2,600 employees will change the Greek bureaucracy's "culture of waste."

"It's not the workers who caused the problems here," he says. "It's the leaders who run this place. They spent years stealing money — and they're still doing it."

Lacking Independence?

Gemenoglou is talking about the network's board of directors. For decades, they were appointed by political parties. Those appointees often secured jobs for family or friends, says Ilias Mossialos, a former government minister who now teaches at the London School of Economics.

"Since the organization is not independent ... party politics intervenes in hiring processes of personnel," he says.

ERT soon had too many employees — and no independence, he says. So two years ago, Mossialos introduced a plan to appoint an independent board and hire staff on merit. Unions and other political parties also opposed it, he says. But the New Democracy party that's now the main partner in the coalition government — the party that just shut down the network — also shut down his proposal.

"It was unprecedented within the Greek political climate to argue in favor in favor of independence," he said. "It did not go over well."

Mossialos says Greece is in desperate need of independent media. Most private stations and newspapers are owned by rich businessmen who strongly influence coverage. Some journalists even work for the same banks and ministries they cover.

'Still In Shock'

Back at ERT headquarters, classical music plays from speakers in the first-floor hallway. Members of the orchestra, who also lost their jobs, are preparing for an afternoon concert in support of the network.

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A crowd of wildlife rangers gathered on a woody hillside in Nepal last year to try something they'd never done before. A man held what looked like an overgrown toy airplane in his right hand, arm cocked as if to throw it into the sky. As his fellow rangers cheered, he did just that. A propeller took over, sending it skyward.

The craft was an unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a drone, though not the military kind. Its wingspan was about 7 feet, and it carried only a video camera that filmed the forest below.

The flight was a test run sponsored and videotaped by the World Wildlife Fund. "It's a cat-and-mouse game when it comes to getting ahead of poachers," explains Matt Lewis, a WWF wildlife biologist who helped set up the test. Lewis says poachers are getting more sophisticated. "When poachers are starting to use night vision technology, and when poachers are starting to use tranquilizer drugs to silently dart an animal and cut off its horns at night and get out at night ... it's incumbent upon us to find a better solution to address that."

Black-market prices for elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn have reached record highs, and that's pushed wildlife poaching to a fever pitch. In turn, conservationists and governments that profit from wildlife tourism are reaching for a high-tech tool to stop the killing: the drone.

Lewis says drones could tip the odds back in favor of the rangers. So the World Wildlife Fund is testing simple, inexpensive versions of these aerial vehicles in Nepal and Namibia using a $5 million grant from Google.

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, Lewis says, drone manufacturers are "coming out of the woodwork," looking for new customers for downsized and cheaper versions of their unmanned military aircraft. Governments are sensitive about the connotations. "Drone has a very negative context around the world," Lewis says, "primarily due to the military use."

Still, the situation is desperate, he says, and governments that depend on wildlife tourism need help. Elephant poaching for ivory has doubled since 2008, and the situation for rhinos is even worse. In Vietnam, a single rhino horn is now worth a fortune, sold as a medicine and touted as a cure for everything from cancer to hangovers, even though there's no medical evidence that rhino horn does anything at all. (It's mostly made of keratin — the same stuff as human fingernails.)

South Africa is the bank when it comes to rhinoceros horn. Most of the world's rhinos are there. "Rhino poaching right now is the worst it's ever been," says Kirsty Brebner, a rhinoceros specialist with the Endangered Wildlife Trust in Johannesburg. More than 600 rhinos were killed illegally last year, out of a total population of 20,000 in South Africa. "Our rhinos are being absolutely slaughtered," Brebner says.

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The Baltic city of Tallinn hardly looks modern with its blend of medieval towers and Soviet-era architecture. Smoke-spewing buses and noisy streetcars look as if they have been plucked from the past.

Even so, the Estonian capital is one of the world's most technologically advanced cities. The birthplace of Skype has repeatedly been cited for its digital accomplishments. Last week, Tallinn once again made the short list of the world's most intelligent cities as selected by the Intelligent Community Forum.

Talinn residents depend on the Internet for just about everything, and automation is the rule. Riding the bus is free, but requires a "smart card" that you wave over an onboard sensor pad that allows central transit authorities to track your movements.

Mailing a package requires senders to use their cell phone to request a code from the electronic post office downtown. The code opens a locker to start the package on its journey.

City parking is another digital adventure. Journalist Gustaf Antell says it starts with a text message to an electronic parking authority.

"I think everybody in the city knows the number to the parking service – One nine zero two," he explains. "Then I put my car's number, and then I also write the code" for the parking lot.

The fee appears on his monthly cell phone bill, which he pays electronically.

Estonians are also required to carry chip-embedded identification cards. Without the card, residents don't officially exist in Estonia. The cards are used for voting, prescriptions and most other transactions, all done online.

Working Toward Better Government

Many Estonians appear to embrace their digital dependence. It's a trend that began after Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union two decades ago.

Officials say they had to create an "e-government."

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The day we arrived in Iran's capital Tehran, billboards along the drive from the airport to the city center were already telling us something about what's happening in the country as it prepared for Friday's presidential elections.

We see typical highway signs for Sony Ericsson, but also billboards featuring the face of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. We also see and drive under giant signs that are from Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging people to vote.

Iran's supreme leader has predicted his country will produce an "epic" turnout, a big endorsement of the Islamic Republic.

A crowd of wildlife rangers gathered on a woody hillside in Nepal last year to try something they'd never done before. A man held what looked like an overgrown toy airplane in his right hand, arm cocked as if to throw it into the sky. As his fellow rangers cheered, he did just that. A propeller took over, sending it skyward.

The craft was an unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a drone, though not the military kind. Its wingspan was about 7 feet, and it carried only a video camera that filmed the forest below.

The flight was a test run sponsored and videotaped by the World Wildlife Fund. "It's a cat-and-mouse game when it comes to getting ahead of poachers," explains Matt Lewis, a WWF wildlife biologist who helped set up the test. Lewis says poachers are getting more sophisticated. "When poachers are starting to use night vision technology, and when poachers are starting to use tranquilizer drugs to silently dart an animal and cut off its horns at night and get out at night ... it's incumbent upon us to find a better solution to address that."

Black-market prices for elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn have reached record highs, and that's pushed wildlife poaching to a fever pitch. In turn, conservationists and governments that profit from wildlife tourism are reaching for a high-tech tool to stop the killing: the drone.

Lewis says drones could tip the odds back in favor of the rangers. So the World Wildlife Fund is testing simple, inexpensive versions of these aerial vehicles in Nepal and Namibia using a $5 million grant from Google.

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, Lewis says, drone manufacturers are "coming out of the woodwork," looking for new customers for downsized and cheaper versions of their unmanned military aircraft. Governments are sensitive about the connotations. "Drone has a very negative context around the world," Lewis says, "primarily due to the military use."

Still, the situation is desperate, he says, and governments that depend on wildlife tourism need help. Elephant poaching for ivory has doubled since 2008, and the situation for rhinos is even worse. In Vietnam, a single rhino horn is now worth a fortune, sold as a medicine and touted as a cure for everything from cancer to hangovers, even though there's no medical evidence that rhino horn does anything at all. (It's mostly made of keratin — the same stuff as human fingernails.)

South Africa is the bank when it comes to rhinoceros horn. Most of the world's rhinos are there. "Rhino poaching right now is the worst it's ever been," says Kirsty Brebner, a rhinoceros specialist with the Endangered Wildlife Trust in Johannesburg. More than 600 rhinos were killed illegally last year, out of a total population of 20,000 in South Africa. "Our rhinos are being absolutely slaughtered," Brebner says.

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If you've experienced sticker shock shopping for ground beef or steak recently, be prepared for an entire summer of high beef prices.

Multi-year droughts in states that produce most of the country's beef cattle have driven up costs to historic highs. Last year, ranchers culled deep into their herds – some even liquidated all their cattle – which pushed the U.S. cattle herd to its lowest point since the 1950s.

And dry conditions this summer could cause the herd to dwindle even further. That means beef prices may continue on a steady climb, just in time for grilling season.

At Edwards Meats in Wheat Ridge, Colo., near Denver, workers divvy up the bright red ground beef into trays, sliding one into a glass display case. A laminated price tag is the final touch. Recently, the number on that slip of paper has been getting higher.

"In the last three weeks, it has really jumped," says owner Darin Edwards. "Most of our prices have gone up at least a dollar a pound or more."

Price increases are commonplace when people start firing up their backyard grills, but Edwards says this year is different. Prices for certain cuts of beef have jumped to all-time highs.

"Sometimes you throw a couple big, thick T-Bone steaks up on the scale and it's 30, 40 bucks and [customers are] like, 'Yeah, I can't afford those,'" Edwards sayx.

And it's not just T-Bones. The same story goes for New York strips, tenderloins and ribeyes.

Even with the higher prices. Edwards is absorbing some of the cost. That's not something he can keep up for long.

"If it doesn't come back down in the next couple of weeks, we'll have to adjust our prices accordingly," he says. "We just kind of bite the bullet for a little bit."

So why are prices going up? Simply put, here just isn't enough feed. Because of the drought that has been battering much of Midwest cattle country for more than a year, there's a smaller supply of hay and dense grasses. Ranchers are having a tough time finding feed and when they do, it's more expensive.

During the winter, Gerald Schreiber, whose ranch is Last Chance, Colo., paid more than double what he usually does for hay. He usually maintains a herd of 250 cattle, but last year he prematurely sold more than 30 of his animals, unable to justify the high feed prices. With hindsight, he said he should've culled even deeper. A combination of drought, wildfire and wind transformed Schreiber's pastures into a blanket of invasive, noxious weeds. The fields haven't recovered.

"This is pretty unpredictable country," Schreiber says. "We deal with drought a lot. You got to get the rose-colored glasses off."

Recent research shows more than half of the country's beef cattle are in states where the pasture can't support large herds.

"A rancher has to make a decision," says Elaine Johnson, a market analyst with Cattlehedging.com. "Do I buy expensive hay and try to hang on for another year? Or do I just liquidate my cows? Tighter and tighter supplies means higher and higher prices."

Those higher prices mean more people could choose to forgo burgers and steaks this summer. Sales of beef have been down so far this year, while less-expensive options, like pork, are up. Johnson says consumers can expect to pay more for beef as long as dry conditions persist across the high plains.

"When you have a drought like this and have liquidated numbers significantly, it typically means that supplies are going to be reduced for two, three, four years, and it's one of the reasons why we've seen such a big increase in beef prices," Johnson says.

Most economists agree and expect prices to stay high the rest of the year. Until ranchers can build up their herds, the family barbecue will put a bigger dent in the pocketbook.

Luke Runyon reports from Colorado for KUNC and Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production issues. A version of this post appeared earlier on the Harvest Public Media website.

When Patrick and Sharon O'Toole began their ranching business on the Wyoming-Colorado border, they tended the sheep themselves. But eventually, the O'Tooles wanted to settle down and have kids, so they hired foreign ranch hands with H-2A, or guest worker, visas to work on the ranch for $750 a month.

Peruvian shepherds on guest worker visas tend thousands of sheep in Wyoming, but they only make about half of what agricultural workers elsewhere are paid.

Under the U.S. Senate's newest immigration proposal, these guest workers would receive a special exemption from minimum wage rules. The proposal has stirred disagreements between ranch owners and workers' rights advocates.

These exemptions from minimum wage and other standards help keep the lamb and wool industry in the U.S. alive, says Peter Orwick, executive director of the American Sheep Industry Association.

"Lamb is one of the very few meats that are free traded in America," Orwick says. "A lot of agriculture either has price supports or protections from imports. The U.S. sheep industry is successful without either of those."

But labor rights advocates insist that paying workers less than minimum wage is a form of government price support that comes at the expense of the workers.

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Basketball offers its fans the ultimate contradiction. On the one hand, it's the sport that most depends on its stars. On the other, it's the most intimate — even organic — of all the team games, with its players more fundamentally involved with one another. Both of these opposing realities are rooted in the same base.

After all, basketball has the fewest players — five — and usually only a couple more substitutes play substantial amounts of time. Short or tall or whatever position, basketball players all must handle the ball, play both offense and defense, work together. Switch is the revealing basketball word. At least for a while, you must become me, and me you.

By contrast, football teams are a sum of many completely alien specialties; baseball hitters and pitchers are different creatures. Hockey and soccer both have goalies altogether separate from their teammates, and they're likewise divided by field geography or wholesale substitutions.

Ah, but a basketball team is a nest.

Yet precisely because there are so few players, and they're close to the spectators, skimpily attired, unmasked, uncapped, basketball players are so visible. It's easier to connect with them. More hoop heroes are known just by their first names, like the regulars in the tabloids.

This is as true now with Kobe and Melo, as it was with Wilt and Elg way back then. Fans pay to go see the stars and are disappointed when they don't perform spectacularly.

But then, inevitably, the same hoop cognoscenti rhapsodize about how it is really the intricately integrated team play that we true basketball fans come to see. It is a harmless deceit, but a universal hoop hypocrisy.

Never, perhaps, has this conflict been so evident than now, in the NBA finals, where the sainted brotherhood of basketball purity, otherwise known as the San Antonio Spurs, are playing the LeBron Heat.

The Spurs, of course, also possess a wonderful player, but he is the rare spotlight-aversive star, who is simply known as Tim Duncan — which is, in fact, his square name.

With Tim Duncan, little out-of-the-way San Antonio has won four championships, so everybody effusively praises the Spurs' legendary teamwork while simultaneously criticizing shallow fans — not me, of course — but all those other philistines, who are blinded by individual showoffs.

Whoever shall win the championship this year, the paradox in the sport will never subside. It is a game of wonderfully fluid interaction among a handful of players — no sport has ever been celebrated better than by its signature phrase: give and go — but in basketball, as in life, we may dutifully celebrate the aggregate, but we're always spellbound by the exceptional. We swear by the Spurs; we are mesmerized by LeBron.

If you're a member of Congress and you didn't know about the National Security Agency's phone records program before it was disclosed last week, President Obama has this to say to you: Where have you been?

"When it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program," Obama said to reporters last Friday.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, chimed in later: "We provided detailed briefings and papers on this to explain the law, to explain the process it was governing," he said on NBC News last Saturday.

And then Monday on Fox News, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who's on the House Intelligence Committee, told his colleagues to stop whining: "You know, these members of Congress who said they didn't know about it — they could have gotten a briefing whenever they wanted to."

OK, so then when exactly was Congress "briefed" on these surveillance programs?

Ask the White House, and it'll shoot back an email with two tidy lists. One list shows 22 briefings by date over the past 14 months on the law governing the email monitoring program. The other list shows 13 separate briefings since 2009 on the law governing the collection of phone records. Most of these classified briefings were to members of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, but some were general sessions for the House and Senate.

Still, lawmakers say getting "briefed" doesn't mean knowing what's actually going on.

"It's playing with words. What does 'brief' mean?" asks Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Rockefeller, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he never feels adequately briefed. He remembers his days on the committee during the previous administration.

"I would go up there to the White House and get briefed, and come back knowing nothing," he says.

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The runways at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., are busy. This is where the Army tests its military drones, where it trains its drone pilots and where four Customs and Border Protection drones take off and land.

From here, the CBP drones survey the Arizona-Mexico border — mainly looking for immigrants and drug smugglers.

In a hangar next to the runway, Customs and Border Protection officer David Gasho swivels a globe hanging from a drone's underbelly. The globe contains a $2 million surveillance package — a night camera, a day camera, a low-light camera and laser target illumination. The drone's biggest selling point is that it can stay in the air for 20 hours.

Given budget problems, Gasho says, there isn't enough money to keep them up that long.

"We are barely hanging on five days a week, 16 hours a day here," he says. "It is very tight to do what we're doing right now."

Yet the immigration bill now under consideration by the U.S. Senate calls for drones to fly 24/7. Supporters say that means more drones are needed. But critics argue there's no evidence the drones already flying are cost-effective.

'Going To Come At A Cost'

Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, wants more drones on the border. But Cuellar, co-chairman of the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus — yes, drones have their own caucus — acknowledges it's an expensive proposition.

"For all those folks that've been emphasizing border security, keep in mind that it's going to come at a cost," he says. "And we've just finished cutting $3 billion from Homeland Security under sequester."

Each Predator drone now costs about $18 million to buy fully equipped and about $3,000 an hour to fly. CBP is now testing a sophisticated radar system called VADER (Vehicle And Dismount Exploitation Radar) that costs about $5 million a year to operate. It has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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If you woke up this morning thinking, "I really need to hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer say the words 'noisily unwrapping her Twizzlers,'" have I got good news for you.

Margot Adler had a story on today's Morning Edition about Broadway audiences and whether they're getting ruder, given recent incidents involving the aforementioned Twizzlers, rude texting, talking and other interruptions. She went to the TKTS line (where you wait for discount Broadway tickets) and asked some of the folks what they thought.

Some offered the usual explanations — say, that we're all used to sitting in our living rooms watching alone, and we don't remember what it's like to use our polite-company manners anymore. One speculated that as theater has gotten more casual (less dressy, drinks allowed), people's behavior has lost its polite formality.

Jan Simpson, the writer of one blog about Broadway, actually calls herself "old-fashioned" for wanting people to sit quietly while watching a show, which I can tell you caused the writer of one blog about popular culture to clutch her metaphorical pearls in horror at the thought that there's something modern about being a disruptive buffoon. Adler acknowledges that in fact, "in Shakespeare's time, they threw food on the stage." Of course, in Shakespeare's time, they died of various things we've cured, so let's not embrace that too eagerly.

What emerges is partly a generational issue setting younger audiences who want to tweet about the show while it's happening (mon dieu!) against older, perhaps more experienced audiences who take a less consumer-oriented and more art-patron-oriented approach to attendance. But surely, a person of any age is capable of doing without Twitter for a couple of hours. I can do without Twitter for a couple of hours, for example, and I've been known to tweet about people clipping their nails on the Metro.

It's a good thing, indeed, to avoid taking theater and making it a cloistered place for elites only (not that ticket prices don't get you a good part of the way there). But it's also a good thing to avoid giving free passes out of Rudeness Jail for everyone who simply prefers not to iron anything except cargo shorts.

OK, OK, I don't really care if you wear cargo shorts. But the pockets should not be stuffed with things that beep, smoke, smell like garlic or tempt you to whisper.

Deal?

For one thing, deadpan realism is a clever shield against criticism: If the novel is bad or boring, well, life is bad and boring. At one point Paul thinks, "I was like a bored robot," which, aside from bouts of excruciating social anxiety and shame, is an apt description of Paul's general mental landscape: He's drug-dulled, antisocial and emotionally barren.

That is not to say that there's nothing lovely in Taipei. Moments of real beauty appear, sudden, stark and unexpected as a skyscraper in the jungle, before the narrative retreats back into drugs and ennui and the bright, blank draw of the Internet, Paul's constant companion.

With a funny and sad description of his shy childhood, Lin perfectly captures Paul's horrified and humiliated sense of his own existence:

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he'd sprinted twenty yards. As the beating gradually normalized he'd think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb — and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior — its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.

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It looks like things may be getting even uglier than usual over in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The panel now headed by Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has long been a place to watch partisan tempers fly.

But the assertion by the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, that the investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups should be closed appears to have only escalated the bad feelings that already existed.

Cummings called for an end to the probe after disclosing on CNN Sunday that a self-described conservative Republican manager at the Internal Revenue Service in Cincinnati — where the targeting occurred — told committee investigators that he played a key role in the decision to give conservative groups greater scrutiny. The manager also said he was unaware of and rather doubted any direction came from the White House.

The Cincinnati manager's information would appear to put a serious dent in GOP allegations that the targeting was an attempt by White House and other administration officials to hurt President Obama's political enemies.

But one thing it definitely hasn't seriously disrupted is the level of animus the parties display to each other. Both Issa and Cummings accuse each other of having less-than-honorable motives.

Here are choice bits from both Cummings and Issa.

From a letter Cummings wrote Issa that's dated Sunday:

"Over the past three years as Chairman, you have made a series of unsubstantiated allegations against the President, the White House, and senior Administration officials with little or no evidence to support your claims. Despite repeated urgings to focus on gathering facts in a bipartisan manner, you have made more and more extreme accusations with less and less evidence ...

"... Your actions over the past three years do not reflect a responsible, bipartisan approach to investigations and the Committee's credibility has been damaged as a result..."

Amazon already delivers everything from toothpaste to televisions to your doorstep. Now, it wants to bring your berries and beer, too.

The online retailing behemoth is planning a major expansion of AmazonFresh, the home delivery service of meat, dairy and other fresh and frozen foods that it has been field-testing in Seattle since 2007. The service could launch in Los Angeles as early as this week, and delivery in San Francisco is on the horizon for later this year, according to Reuters. By 2014, the company could expand grocery delivery to as many as 40 major urban areas.

So why would a heavyweight like Amazon bother diving into the grocery business, with its notoriously razor-thin profit margins? After all, the online grocery business has become a sort of Bermuda Triangle for many companies, including Webvan, one of the most spectacular failures of the dot-com era at the turn of the 21st century.

But home grocery delivery could prove to be a Trojan horse for Amazon to get inside your home more frequently, says Justin Bomberowitz, a senior analyst with RetailNet Group, which released a research note on AmazonFresh in April. (The firm shared the note, which requires registration to access, with The Salt.)

"What this does is give Amazon the opportunity to connect with customers on a more frequent basis," he tells The Salt.

Right now, Bomberowitz says, most Amazon customers tend to make small purchases, one or two items at a time. But if Amazon can bundle your bananas with your books and batteries, it can make that stop at your door all the more profitable.

As for the grocery biz itself, it doesn't need to be a cash cow for Amazon right away. So can Amazon afford to lose money on grocery delivery?

"Absolutely," Bomberowitz says.

For now, analysts say the goal is really to break even with grocery delivery while also using the service to grow Amazon's same-day-delivery service.

In the past, distribution logistics have been one of the major stumbling blocks for online grocers, says industry analyst Bill Bishop of the consulting group Brick Meets Click. "Grocery products are heavy, large and bulky and expensive to distribute, but there isn't much money in the cost to cover that distribution," he told NPR's Audie Cornish.

But Amazon, Bishop notes, has been busy building smaller distribution centers in more populated areas to stock items for same-day delivery. Amazon hopes that grocery delivery will get its trucks in these denser neighborhoods on a daily basis, RetailNet Group's report notes.

Same-day service, says RetailNet Group's Bomberowitz, "has proven popular enough in Seattle that Amazon is expanding it."

Indeed, part of the reason Amazon spent so many years testing the AmazonFresh concept in Seattle is that it wanted to get the model right, analysts say.

The service, says Bomberowitz, is designed to deliver "ultimate convenience" and includes features like no minimum order, pre-dawn delivery (the most popular option) and the ability to choose the time when your food shows up. You can also opt to have your groceries dropped off in a chilled tote bag. (And as we've previously reported, there's also the benefit that such services can be more environmentally friendly than schlepping to the store yourself.)

In Seattle, at least, the service also includes delivery of goods from a select group of "favorite" local vendors, from artisan breads and doughnuts to craft beers from the famous Pike Place Market, plus deliveries from local restaurants. RetailNet Group analyst Logan Gallogly says she expects AmazonFresh to offer a similar local component as it expands into LA and San Francisco.

So who are the likely shoppers for this service? This is not for the people who find joy in squeezing avocados to find the best one in the bin. But it is for busy, moneyed professionals who will happily delegate that task to someone else, Bishop says.

President Obama surrounded himself with college students at the White House on Friday and warned that the cost of student loans is about to go up.

Interest rates on government-backed college loans are set to double July 1 — unless Congress agrees on a fix before then. Obama has threatened to veto a House-passed bill that would let the cost of student loans go up and down with the market.

If the alarm bells over rising student loan rates sound familiar, that's because the same thing happened last year. Back then, the president went on a barnstorming tour of college campuses, warning that a doubling of interest rates would cost the average student borrower $1,000 for each year of college over the life of his loan.

"I'll do a quick poll. This may be unscientific," he said. "How many people can afford to pay an extra $1,000 right now?"

Eventually, Congress agreed to keep rates where they were — at 3.4 percent for one more year. That year is almost up, and students again face the prospect of rates doubling to 6.8 percent July 1. Obama is urging Congress on Friday to block that increase.

Tobin Van Ostern, who's with the campus arm of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, says students will make the case themselves when they descend on Washington, D.C., next week.

"All day, we'll have people going in and out of Congress buildings, meeting with senators and bringing their personal stories and experiences directly to those who have the ability to keep interest rates low," he says.

Van Ostern says lawmakers do seem to have learned a lesson from last year's showdown. No one is eager to see rates double overnight.

"Everyone seems to be in agreement that we need to do something about student loan interest rates to keep them low and affordable for borrowers," he says.

The president and congressional Republicans have offered different plans to do that, though they both start the same way: tying rates on student loans to the interest on a 10-year Treasury note. That rate is expected to be about 2.5 percent next year, climbing to just over 5 percent in 2018.

Under the GOP plan, a student who borrows money next year could see his interest rate rise every year after that, like an adjustable mortgage. In contrast, the president's plan would let students lock in rates for the life of their loan.

Beth Akers of the Brookings Institution says she thinks students might like that predictability.

"It simplifies the math they need to do when they're considering going to college," she says.

On the other hand, Akers gives the Republicans credit for setting an upper limit on interest rates of 8.5 percent. There's no such cap in the president's plan.

"I do think that a cap makes sense, because in a period of economic expansion, where we do have interest rates rising rapidly, we wouldn't want to see less college-going among students who are on the margin of being able to afford to go to college," she says.

Lower-income students would continue to get a break under the president's plan, with interest rates 2 percentage points lower than what others are paying. Under the GOP plan, Van Ostern of the Center for American Progress notes, all students would pay the same rate.

"In reality, that ends up meaning that lower-income folks pay a little bit more, and then it will save people who are middle- or upper-income folks some money," he says.

Compared to some other fights in Washington, these differences don't seem insurmountable. But unless lawmakers and the White House can agree on the details quickly, Van Ostern says, another temporary stopgap measure may be necessary.

"If we can't come up with a long-term plan by then [July 1], and time is ticking, then we certainly need to at least pass a short-term extension of current interest rates to give folks in Congress more time to figure out how to deal with it long term," he says.

The whole idea behind the switch to market rates is to take some of the politics out of the student loan business. For now, though, it's clear that politics is still standing in the way.

Longtime readers know that one of my favorite pop-culture blogs ever invented is Smart Bitches Trashy Books, which offers a home for romance readers (who are legion) to both love their books and laugh at their books. It's a community of enthusiasts, which is why its chief, Sarah Wendell, was the natural ally of a graduate student named Rudi, who made an art project that Sarah immediately gave a simple, evocative title when displaying it on her site: "The Most Awesome Shoes In The Universe."

They are heels, decoupaged with tiny copies of real romance novels, with pink trim at the sole. And they're not for display — they're for wearing.

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Saying that "now is the right time to bring in a CEO who will drive the next phase of Lululemon's development and growth," the yoga and athletic clothing company's chief has announced she's stepping down.

Christine Day will stay on in her job until a successor is found, Lululemon says.

Her decision comes as the company is restocking its stores with newly redesigned black yoga pants that have "more fabric across the bum." Lululemon had a big public relations problem earlier this year when women started complaining that some pants let way too much be seen — or, as the company put it, the pants suffered from "increased sheerness."

Lululemon's product chief left the company soon after the pants problem came to light. Day's impending departure is not being tied to the see-through saga. According to The Wall Street Journal:

"She told the [company's] board she had become exhausted working 18 to 20 hours a day and didn't want to commit to the three to four years of heavy business travel needed to implement international expansion plans, according to a person familiar with the matter."

The Senate voted Monday to approve its version of the farm bill, a massive spending measure that covers everything from food stamps to crop insurance and sets the nation's farm policy for the next five years.

The centerpiece of that policy is an expanded crop insurance program, designed to protect farmers from losses, that some say amounts to a highly subsidized gift to agribusiness. That debate is set to continue as the House plans to take up its version of the bill this month.

For farmer Scott Neufeld, crop insurance is an integral part of his family's business. When the wind whips through his farm in northwestern Oklahoma, the wheat sways and looks like a roiling ocean — those famous amber waves of grain.

"It's normal," says Neufeld, looking toward a tree blowing in the wind. "They're predicting storms today, so that wind you hear is pumping up the moisture for the storms."

The farm bill is expected to pass in the Senate on Monday night. And to the dismay of some, it likely won't include an amendment that would have eliminated a controversial program to keep a closer eye on a food product you probably weren't even worried about: catfish.

In an op-ed published Friday in Politico, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made the case for why $15 million a year to fund an "absurd" U.S. Department of Agriculture catfish office is a waste of taxpayer money. He and Jean Shaheen, D-N.H., sponsored the amendment in the Senate to kill the program. According to McCain and Shaheen, additional inspectors for domestic and imported catfish are nothing more than a gift to Southern catfish farmers seeking to burden their Asian competitors with extra compliance costs.

Here's the backstory: U.S. catfish farmers have been struggling for a while. Total acreage of catfish ponds has dropped from a high of 196,760 acres in 2002 to 83,020 acres in January 2013. As Kristofer Husted reported for us in January, lack of water, high temperatures and feed prices are part of the problem.

But more threatening, as far as the people still in business are concerned, are the foreign companies who now dominate 78 percent of the U.S. market for frozen catfish and similar species. How did these companies, mostly from Vietnam and China, manage that? They've found ways to raise catfish more cheaply and efficiently.

Meanwhile, congressmen from Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, the top three catfish-producing states, have been looking for ways to bolster the domestic industry by limiting imports. And eventually, critics say, they figured more inspectors might do the trick.

Seafood inspection is the job of the Food and Drug Administration, and that's one reason both McCain and the Government Accountability Office are against having another agency duplicate the FDA's efforts.

"Unless catfish have suddenly sprouted legs, USDA should stick to meat, poultry and egg inspections," McCain wrote.

Nearly $20 million has already been spent on the USDA's Office of Catfish Inspection since its creation in 2008. Its supporters say the FDA is woefully underfunded and ill-equipped to monitor imported seafood — especially when it comes to testing for residues of drugs used by foreign producers — and needs USDA's help.

Those supporters include, unsurprisingly, the Catfish Farmers of America, a trade group that has argued that foreign catfish are riskier for consumers than what we grow here. A report the group commissioned in 2010 found that salmonella, the pathogen most often associated with catfish, was found more frequently on imported catfish than on domestic catfish.

The FDA isn't exempt from criticism in this fight, either — the agency is regularly lambasted for not being able to keep up with testing of all imported seafood, not just catfish. The U.S. imports 90 percent of its seafood, but according to the Government Accountability Office, in 2009, the FDA performed drug residue testing on only 0.1 percent of the seafood entering the country. (In these tests, the FDA is looking for residue showing both use of unapproved drugs and misuse of approved drugs.)

Consumers Union is also in favor of USDA getting involved with catfish inspection. In comments prepared for Congress back in 2011, CU senior scientist Michael Hansen wrote, "We believe that [USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service] is better suited than the FDA to ensure the safety of domestic and imported catfish, as FSIS does a more comprehensive review of food safety systems." In particular, Hansen wrote, his group was worried about foreign catfish producers' use of drugs unapproved for use in aquaculture in the U.S., which could affect consumers' health or contribute to antibiotic resistance.

And yet the GAO has agreed with Shaheen and McCain that the USDA catfish program won't add much to what the FDA is already doing. The GAO recommends that Congress instead help FDA do a better job inspecting seafood.

But The Hill reports that the amendment to kill the catfish office may not get a vote at all. Why? Agriculture Committee leaders are unlikely to allow it or other "non-controversial" amendments to be brought up before a vote on final passage of the farm bill. Over in the House, the Agriculture Committee has voted to repeal the inspection program, according to Food Safety News.

The Senate voted Monday to approve its version of the farm bill, a massive spending measure that covers everything from food stamps to crop insurance and sets the nation's farm policy for the next five years.

The centerpiece of that policy is an expanded crop insurance program, designed to protect farmers from losses, that some say amounts to a highly subsidized gift to agribusiness. That debate is set to continue as the House plans to take up its version of the bill this month.

For farmer Scott Neufeld, crop insurance is an integral part of his family's business. When the wind whips through his farm in northwestern Oklahoma, the wheat sways and looks like a roiling ocean — those famous amber waves of grain.

"It's normal," says Neufeld, looking toward a tree blowing in the wind. "They're predicting storms today, so that wind you hear is pumping up the moisture for the storms."

If you opt for the upgrade, changes are coming to your iPhone experience this fall. And if you want to shell out some cash right away, the latest line of MacBook Air computers boasts a lot more power and battery life, and the machines are available to ship today.

Apple chiefs announced their latest products and improvements Monday as part of the keynote at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

We kept an eye on the two-hour presentation so you didn't have to. The highlights:

iOS 7 Changes Include Improvements To Siri

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls the new iOS 7 the "biggest change" to Apple's mobile operating system since the introduction of the iPhone six years ago. The new operating system offers 10 new features, including multitasking for all apps and background updates, and it strips away the old look in favor of flatter design. The Verge reports:

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Longtime readers know that one of my favorite pop-culture blogs ever invented is Smart Bitches Trashy Books, which offers a home for romance readers (who are legion) to both love their books and laugh at their books. It's a community of enthusiasts, which is why its chief, Sarah Wendell, was the natural ally of a graduate student named Rudi, who made an art project that Sarah immediately gave a simple, evocative title when displaying it on her site: "The Most Awesome Shoes In The Universe."

They are heels, decoupaged with tiny copies of real romance novels, with pink trim at the sole. And they're not for display — they're for wearing.

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Edward Snowden, the former CIA and Booz Allen computer security technician who says he leaked information about National Security Agency surveillance programs, has told The Guardian that he wants "to seek asylum in a country with shared values."

"The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland," he added, during an interview in Hong Kong, to which he has fled. "They stood up for people over Internet freedom."

Snowden's comment about "Internet freedom" is almost surely a reference to the help Iceland has given to WikiLeaks — the destination of choice for leakers such as U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. That's an organization that knows firsthand about seeking asylum. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a year as he seeks to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he's wanted for questioning in a case involving alleged sexual assaults.

Iceland's most recent move that lent support to WikiLeaks was an April Supreme Court decision that "ordered Valitor hf, the Icelandic partner of MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc., to process card payments for [the] anti-secrecy website ... within 15 days or face daily penalties," Bloomberg News says. So, as other nations have tried to put roadblocks in WikiLeaks' way by cutting off its access to funds, Iceland has gone the opposite direction.

In February, Digital Journal reported, Iceland's interior minister ordered the deportation of FBI agents who had come to the nation — without notice — to question a WikiLeaks associate. And Digital Journal added that:

China's central government might intervene to say he can't be sent elsewhere, but barring such action a request from the U.S. could mean he'd be sent back to face prosecution.

Authorities in Hong Kong also may not allow Snowden to get to a place where he could apply for asylum in Iceland. Kristn rnadttir, the Icelandic ambassador in Beijing, has reportedly said in an email to the South China Morning Post that Snowden would need to be in Iceland to make such an request.

But, Iceland has intervened before to convince a third country to let it give safe haven to someone wanted in the U.S. — without first requiring that the asylum-seeker get to its territory.

In 2004 and 2005, former chess champion Bobby Fischer spent nine months in a Japanese prison. He was held there for trying to leave the country without a valid passport. Meanwhile, the U.S. wanted to take Fischer into custody because he had once played in a chess match in Yugoslavia — allegedly violating U.N. sanctions then in place against that country.

Iceland gave Fischer citizenship. Japan decided that was where he should go. Fischer died in Iceland in 2008.

Watch for more about Snowden, extradition law and the rules of asylum on the Parallels blog.

My summer reading preferences are so particular they have, at times, stopped me from reading at all. I need a romance for a train trip — for obvious reasons. When it's hot, I prefer something with no climate congruence at all — I've never enjoyed Anna Karenina so much as I did on the beach (that romance is a train exception — er ... for obvious reasons). When I'm on a plane trip, I like a passel of good young adult novels; filled with cliffhangers, reversals and quick emotion. It's a mood makeover in flight. At home in D.C., with its climate that goes beyond mere heat, and closer to Inferno (sure! you can read that too!), I've discovered that the only way to take me out of one sense, is to focus on another — so here in the nation's capital, there's a lot of food in my summer reading; cookbooks! food memoirs! Little House on the Prairie re-reads! Michael Pollan! And in the dog days, when there's no vacation in sight, I need a great piece of historical fiction — just for perspective. (You think you got it bad 'cause the air conditioning's broken? At least the Luftwaffe isn't coming to get you.)

Here's a preview of a few upcoming books — it's wide enough to satisfy almost any nitpicky summer requirement I might have; there's a YA novel set in World War II, a rousing historical ode to abolitionist John Brown with a great twist, two wonderful food memoirs — one about an infamous piece of cheese (not kidding!), and one small, devastating piece of fiction for nights when you can sleep with the windows open.

My summer reading preferences are so particular they have, at times, stopped me from reading at all. I need a romance for a train trip — for obvious reasons. When it's hot, I prefer something with no climate congruence at all — I've never enjoyed Anna Karenina so much as I did on the beach (that romance is a train exception — er ... for obvious reasons). When I'm on a plane trip, I like a passel of good young adult novels; filled with cliffhangers, reversals and quick emotion. It's a mood makeover in flight. At home in D.C., with its climate that goes beyond mere heat, and closer to Inferno (sure! you can read that too!), I've discovered that the only way to take me out of one sense, is to focus on another — so here in the nation's capital, there's a lot of food in my summer reading; cookbooks! food memoirs! Little House on the Prairie re-reads! Michael Pollan! And in the dog days, when there's no vacation in sight, I need a great piece of historical fiction — just for perspective. (You think you got it bad 'cause the air conditioning's broken? At least the Luftwaffe isn't coming to get you.)

Here's a preview of a few upcoming books — it's wide enough to satisfy almost any nitpicky summer requirement I might have; there's a YA novel set in World War II, a rousing historical ode to abolitionist John Brown with a great twist, two wonderful food memoirs — one about an infamous piece of cheese (not kidding!), and one small, devastating piece of fiction for nights when you can sleep with the windows open.

My summer reading preferences are so particular they have, at times, stopped me from reading at all. I need a romance for a train trip — for obvious reasons. When it's hot, I prefer something with no climate congruence at all — I've never enjoyed Anna Karenina so much as I did on the beach (that romance is a train exception — er ... for obvious reasons). When I'm on a plane trip, I like a passel of good young adult novels; filled with cliffhangers, reversals and quick emotion. It's a mood makeover in flight. At home in D.C., with its climate that goes beyond mere heat, and closer to Inferno (sure! you can read that too!), I've discovered that the only way to take me out of one sense, is to focus on another — so here in the nation's capital, there's a lot of food in my summer reading; cookbooks! food memoirs! Little House on the Prairie re-reads! Michael Pollan! And in the dog days, when there's no vacation in sight, I need a great piece of historical fiction — just for perspective. (You think you got it bad 'cause the air conditioning's broken? At least the Luftwaffe isn't coming to get you.)

Here's a preview of a few upcoming books — it's wide enough to satisfy almost any nitpicky summer requirement I might have; there's a YA novel set in World War II, a rousing historical ode to abolitionist John Brown with a great twist, two wonderful food memoirs — one about an infamous piece of cheese (not kidding!), and one small, devastating piece of fiction for nights when you can sleep with the windows open.

Marching bands, beauty queens and Chita Rivera are set to make their way down New York City's Fifth Avenue on Sunday for the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade.

With 80,000 marchers and 2 million onlookers, the event is one of the country's biggest ethnic celebrations.

In the run-up to the parade, rows of street vendors have lined up north of the parade route, in New York's East Harlem neighborhood — also known as Spanish Harlem for the wave of Puerto Ricans that settled here after World War II.

These days, this neighborhood is where Gerardo Cruz can help you gear up before the parade.

"I got straw hats, souvenirs, necklaces, headbands — you name it!" says Cruz, as he shows off his tables of merchandise, all emblazoned with the words "Puerto Rico" or the colors of the island's flag — red, white and blue.

His biggest moneymakers, though, are T-shirts and actual Puerto Rican flags.

"I could sell maybe 20 big flags [a day]," says Cruz, who has found a sweet spot of heavy foot traffic and plenty of potential customers at the corner of 116th Street and Third Avenue.

His competitors and their tables of parade gear, though, are set up just down the street, behind the throngs of shoppers, couples and baby strollers.

Cruz, 62, was born on the Caribbean island but has spent most of his life on the island of Manhattan. After retiring a few years ago, he moved to Florida, joining one of the country's fastest growing Puerto Rican communities.

But in terms of Puerto Rican Day parades, New York City's event still takes the cake with its millions of parade watchers. The city is also still home to the largest Puerto Rican community in the United States, at more than 700,000.

Since 1990, there has been a steady drop in the number of Puerto Ricans living in New York City overall, while the numbers of Dominicans, Mexicans and other Latin Americans are on the rise.

Puerto Ricans still make up the city's largest Latino group, and their pride in their heritage has not wavered.

Whenever the parade is in town, just look for the flags.

Eloisa Barrios and her family have paid a heavy price for living in the world's most violent region. The crime rates in Latin America have soared even as economies rise. Of 50 cities with the highest murder rates, 41 are in Latin America.

Eloisa doesn't visit their graves much. She's moved away from this village, called Guanajan. She doesn't feel safe here anymore. She doesn't rely on the police for protection, because she believes it was the police who sent most or all of her relations to these graves.

Across Latin America, some police are heroes while others are widely believed to be criminals. Venezuela's own government once estimated that police commit about 20 percent of crime. A 2006 investigation found that police killed an extraordinary number of people described as resisting arrest.

"Why do you think the police have come after your family so many times," I asked.

She answers, "My brother Benito was detained for a bar fight in the 1990s." After that, she says, he was marked as a bad man: police harassed him, beat him, and finally arrested him. He died in custody. Police were charged for the killing but never convicted.

She says other members of the family were targeted over the years.

Her brother Narciso owned a liquor store police officers frequented until he was killed after a disagreement. Again, police were charged, and two wereconvicted, but the killings continued. Nearly all the crimes are officially unsolved.

Eloisa Barrios admits she can't be sure all her relatives were killed by police. But she's convinced most, if not all, were.

The Barrios family did seek justice in Venezuelan courts. Frustrated by the results, they turned to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. It's part of the Organization of American States, and that court ordered the government to protect the Barrios family.

Some were moved to new homes. Yet even in their new city, more relatives were killed.

In its formal defense before the human rights court, Venezuela said there is no evidence the state is deliberately "persecuting" the Barrios family, with "a view to exterminating" them.

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A Tale Of Two Beauties

Volk's father thought his wife was the most beautiful woman in the world. Every year on her birthday, he gave Audrey the same present: a bottle of perfume called "Shocking" and made by Elsa Schiaparelli.

"And he would make the gift wrap himself out of as many $100 bills as it took to get the job done," Volk remembers.

The perfume was one connection between Audrey, her daughter and Schiaparelli. According to Dilys Blum, who curated a Schiaparelli show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2003, there's at least one other connection.

"[Schiaparelli] knew what she wanted and she knew how to manipulate people," Blum says. Audrey was like that too: She wanted perfection and she knew how to achieve it.

Volk says her mother "had a vanity table in her bedroom that was entirely constructed of mirrors, even the drawers and the legs and the stool that she sat on. And on the top, there was a triptych of mirrors and she could look straight ahead and just see herself head-on, or she could glance side to side and see her profile."

At that vanity table, little Patty Volk watched her beloved mother pin back her hair, dip three fingers into a jar of cold cream and smear the cream on her cheeks.

Then, Volk writes:

She plucks four Kleenexes:

FRRRIIIP!
FRRRIIIP!
FRRRIIIP!
FRRRIIIP!

and tissues off the Pond's. Here she sometimes pauses, meets my eyes in the mirror and says, "Never let a man see you with cold cream on your face."

"They represent two very different takes on the prompt, but each is marvelously dramatic and packs an unbelievable amount of characterization and suspense into the three-minute word allotment," Russell says.

In the end, there is only one winner: Ben Jahn for his submission, Reborn.

"Ben Jahn's use of language, the specificity of his details, just blew me away. It was indelible and unforgettable and really chilling," Russell says.

Jahn's story is set at the "Reborn Convention," where adults shop in the "high fluorescence of toyland" for baby dolls. A "sky blue onesie" catches the eye of the male narrator. Jahn had been researching doll shopping for a novel he's writing. "There's something inherently creepy about dolls, to me anyway," says Jahn, who grew up with four sisters.

Jahn, of Richmond, Calif., is an English teacher. He says his earliest inspiration came from his father, who was not a writer but tried to win a chainsaw by writing a radio jingle.

"I loved watching him toil over language. I didn't know people wrote and tried to achieve something in writing," he says. "I liked the effect it had on me, and decided I wanted to try to do that for others."

About Round 11

Round 11 Official Rules

In 1993, a freighter ran aground off Queens, N.Y. The Golden Venture had nearly 300 people on it who were being smuggled into the U.S. from China.

Passengers cited China's forced-sterilization program and governmental persecution from political expression as reasons to climb aboard the Golden Venture. Some paid the smugglers $30,000 to board the ship. An organized crime syndicate would front the money, and the passengers would have to work off the debt, often in restaurants like indentured servants.

Some people jumped from the ship, trying to swim ashore. Ten people drowned, while about 200 people were treated for exhaustion and exposure. Shengqiao Chen was among 110 people smuggled in the ship who were detained in U.S. prisons while they waited for political asylum.

'This Is United States'

"After three months, we finally see the land," 38-year-old Chen told Zehao Zhou during a recent visit to StoryCorps in Philadelphia. "They told us, 'This is United States.' "

The two men met while Chen was in prison. Zhou, an academic librarian at York College in Pennsylvania, was his translator. At StoryCorps, Zhou asked Chen how long he swam that day.

"You can't really swim. The waves move you back, and I passed out," Chen said. "And then a couple of my friends carried me out of the water.

"When I woke up, I was in the hospital," Chen said. "I had my hand handcuffed on the bed."

Shrines And Letters

Chen was sent to a detention center in Pennsylvania.

"I think the most difficult time is after six months, and you don't know what your future is going to be," he said.

Chen's mother thought he was dead and had set up a family shrine for him.

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In the past several days, there's been a steady flow of leaks about the National Security Agency and its secret surveillance activities, including the gathering of meta-data on domestic and foreign telephone calls and the existence of PRISM, described in media reports as a top-secret data-mining program.

New developments are occurring on a daily basis. Here are a few we're watching right now:

— A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence has requested that a criminal probe be opened into leaks of classified material about secret surveillance programs, according to Reuters. A spokesman for DNI, Shawn Turner, tells the news agency that a "crimes report has been filed" by the National Security Agency with the Department of Justice.

— Shortly after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement Saturday denouncing the news media for 'reckless' and inaccurate reporting on the secret intelligence gathering activities and defending their legality, Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague made similar remarks in an interview with the BBC.

Hague, referring to reports that the British government was working hand-in-hand with the U.S. and its alleged data-mining activities, said the two countries indeed shared intelligence. However:

"The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a U.K. law with another agency in another country is fanciful," he said, referring to Britain's equivalent of the NSA. "It is nonsense".

— Some in Australia and New Zealand are wondering to what extent their governments might be cooperating with Washington's surveillance activities. Reuters reports that Canberra and Wellington are facing "awkward questions" from lawmakers.

— On Saturday, The Guardian, in the latest of its reports on the surveillance activities, claims to have revealed the existence of a secret data-cataloging tool called Boundless Informant, which the newspaper says can produce a sort country-by-country "heat map" detailing the "voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks."