What's new

Israel says Saturday that it's prepared to release a number of Palestinian prisoners after a breakthrough in talks brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Yuval Steiniz, Israel's intelligence and strategic affairs minister, said the release would involve "heavyweight prisoners in jail for decades". He said the prisoners would be freed soon. (Note: the translation used by The Associated Press has it as "hardcore" instead of "heavyweight").

The remarks follow an announcement Friday night by Kerry that Israeli and Palestinian officials would meet soon in Washington to work out the resumption of peace negotiations that broke down in 2008.

As NPR's Emily Harris reports from Jerusalem releasing long-term inmates from Israeli custody has been a key issue for Palestinian officials before restarting talks. She says that although the exact terms for resuming negotiations have yet to be formalized, Steiniz "says his government did not agree to stop Israeli settlements, or define future borders before negotiations start."

Kerry, speaking in Amman, said the two sides had agreed in principle to restarting talks, but he declined to provide details, telling reporters that the "best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private".

Talks could resume in the next week or so "if everything goes as expected," Kerry said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Kerry on Friday, said in a statement that "some details still need to be worked out."

On the release of Palestinian prisoners, the BBC reports:

"While the number of detainees to be freed is unclear, one Palestinian official said discussions had earlier focused on the release of 350 prisoners over a period of months, including around 100 men held since before 1993, when Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo peace accords.

According to Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, 4,817 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails."

Unlike New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who often takes the subway to work, some prominent politicians in Brazil have a far more impressive way of getting around: private helicopters and government planes.

Perhaps the most over-the-top example of the trend is that of Rio de Janeiro state Gov. Sergio Cabral. A recent magazine expose showed that his commute to work is only about 6 miles.

Yet every morning he gets up, takes a chauffeured car to his helipad about halfway to work, and then takes the rest of the trip — about three minutes — by chopper. The cost to the taxpayer of that daily flight, according to the magazine, is $1.7 million a year.

Cabral also used his helicopter to ferry his nanny, his dog and his family on shopping trips and vacations to his country home. When confronted by reporters with the findings, he was unapologetic.

"I'm not the first to do it; others in Brazil do it, too," he said. "And it's OK because of the job I have. I'm not doing anything new. I am transported with my family, I get out of work and go to my country home."

Enlarge image i

Of the 50 state governors in the U.S., 30 are Republicans, 20 are Democrats for a ratio of 3 to 2.

So when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit watchdog group issued a report this week listing 18 governors it alleged are the "worst in America," it immediately raised eyebrows and partisan ire for the notable party tilt of its examples — only two were Democrats.

How could that be? Wouldn't you expect at least a few more Democrats on the list, at least based on that 3:2 ratio?

I put that question to Melanie Sloane, CREW's executive director.

"The thing is, we looked at all 50. And you just can't put people on the list just in order to have an even balance. You can't say, 'Here's the percentage of governors that are Republican and the percentage that are Democrat' — and there are significantly more that are Republicans right now — and say, 'We'll have the exact same balance.' I would instead suggest somebody ought to ask, 'Who did we leave off? because we looked at all 50 and we didn't find any Democrats, any others who we felt belonged on the list based on our criteria. I think that's the main question. While people are critical, they haven't said who's missing.

"And then if we were just so anxious to protect Democrats, I don't think naming one of the lead presidential candidates for 2016 would be such a smart move on our part."

Girl Most Likely

Director: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

Genre: Comedy

Running Time: 103 minutes

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language

With: Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon

The cannon sounds – it's loud! "Allahu Akbar" wafts in from the kitchen. This is also the call to evening prayer, and outside in the Old City streets worshippers are headed toward the Holy Sanctuary to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque or the Haram al-Sharif. But in Jehad's home, it's time to eat.

"I think God wanted us to eat first, then pray," she says, smiling.

This summer was supposed to be a time to reintroduce the public to the Affordable Care Act and teach people how to sign up for benefits this fall.

But that's not what's happening.

Instead, earlier this month, the Obama administration decided to delay some key pieces of the law, most notably the requirement for larger employers to provide coverage or risk fines, because they couldn't have reporting regulations ready in time for next year's rollout.

Then this week, the Republican-led House voted to delay the so-called individual mandate for a year to match. It was the 39th such vote against the law.

And now some are starting to worry that the White House is getting dangerously off-message.

The administration tried to regroup Thursday: It put President Obama front and center in the White House East Room, surrounded by smiling beneficiaries of the parts of the Affordable Care Act already in effect.

Among those singled out: those who have been on the receiving end of a somewhat obscure provision requiring insurance companies to pay rebates to policyholders if the companies spend too much on administrative costs rather than medical expenses.

"Dan Hart, who's here, from Chicago, had read these rebates were happening," said Obama. "But he didn't think anything of it until he got a check in the mail for 136 bucks."

This year an estimated 8.5 million Americans will get rebates thanks to the law's "medical loss ratio" rules. That's actually down from the 13 million who got them last year. And Obama admitted that even those who are getting the checks don't necessarily associate them with the health law.

"I bet if you took a poll, most folks wouldn't know when that check comes in that this was because of Obamacare that they got this extra money in their pockets," he said.

Which is a big part of the administration's messaging problem. According to public opinion polls, many of the law's provisions are extremely popular. But the law itself isn't. Still.

And while the president is talking about a few million people getting refunds of $100 or $200, Republicans have been talking in much more expansive terms.

"A government-run health care system is at its very basis a beginning of socialism in medicine and we oppose that," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, during the House floor debate Wednesday.

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney derided Republicans' continuing efforts to roll back the law.

Carney said the president is willing to make changes to the law as necessary. "But that is wholly different from this constant and now almost comical effort to spend most of the time in the House of Representatives hoping to repeal in some form or manner a bill that has been passed into law by both houses, signed into law by the president, and upheld as the law by the Supreme Court of the United States."

Still, there's a major difference in the way Republicans talk about the law and the way the president does, says George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and an expert on political messaging.

Lakoff says Republicans talk about the law as a moral issue. "Basically ... they say that democracy is about liberty, the liberty to pursue your own self-interest without you having to take care of anybody else's interests or anybody else having to take care of yours."

But when Obama talks about the health law — at least this week, says Lakoff — "his message was all about money."

And Lakoff says that's pretty much been the president's problem: He's mostly shied away from talking about health care on the same moral terms as have the Republicans.

But he could talk about it from the moral perspective of Democrats if he wanted to, Lakoff says.

"Health care is about life itself, about living a decent life, about living free from fear, and also free from economic fear. Fear of losing your home because you have to pay out of pocket for operations that really ought to be paid for by having healthcare insurance," he said.

The administration, however, has seemed to be all over the place when it comes to its messaging about the health law.

Of course it's been a lot easier for the Republicans. Their message is pretty much one word: No.

This summer was supposed to be a time to reintroduce the public to the Affordable Care Act and teach people how to sign up for benefits this fall.

But that's not what's happening.

Instead, earlier this month, the Obama administration decided to delay some key pieces of the law, most notably the requirement for larger employers to provide coverage or risk fines, because they couldn't have reporting regulations ready in time for next year's rollout.

Then this week, the Republican-led House voted to delay the so-called individual mandate for a year to match. It was the 39th such vote against the law.

And now some are starting to worry that the White House is getting dangerously off-message.

The administration tried to regroup Thursday: It put President Obama front and center in the White House East Room, surrounded by smiling beneficiaries of the parts of the Affordable Care Act already in effect.

Among those singled out: those who have been on the receiving end of a somewhat obscure provision requiring insurance companies to pay rebates to policyholders if the companies spend too much on administrative costs rather than medical expenses.

"Dan Hart, who's here, from Chicago, had read these rebates were happening," said Obama. "But he didn't think anything of it until he got a check in the mail for 136 bucks."

This year an estimated 8.5 million Americans will get rebates thanks to the law's "medical loss ratio" rules. That's actually down from the 13 million who got them last year. And Obama admitted that even those who are getting the checks don't necessarily associate them with the health law.

"I bet if you took a poll, most folks wouldn't know when that check comes in that this was because of Obamacare that they got this extra money in their pockets," he said.

Which is a big part of the administration's messaging problem. According to public opinion polls, many of the law's provisions are extremely popular. But the law itself isn't. Still.

And while the president is talking about a few million people getting refunds of $100 or $200, Republicans have been talking in much more expansive terms.

"A government-run health care system is at its very basis a beginning of socialism in medicine and we oppose that," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, during the House floor debate Wednesday.

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney derided Republicans' continuing efforts to roll back the law.

Carney said the president is willing to make changes to the law as necessary. "But that is wholly different from this constant and now almost comical effort to spend most of the time in the House of Representatives hoping to repeal in some form or manner a bill that has been passed into law by both houses, signed into law by the president, and upheld as the law by the Supreme Court of the United States."

Still, there's a major difference in the way Republicans talk about the law and the way the president does, says George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and an expert on political messaging.

Lakoff says Republicans talk about the law as a moral issue. "Basically ... they say that democracy is about liberty, the liberty to pursue your own self-interest without you having to take care of anybody else's interests or anybody else having to take care of yours."

But when Obama talks about the health law — at least this week, says Lakoff — "his message was all about money."

And Lakoff says that's pretty much been the president's problem: He's mostly shied away from talking about health care on the same moral terms as have the Republicans.

But he could talk about it from the moral perspective of Democrats if he wanted to, Lakoff says.

"Health care is about life itself, about living a decent life, about living free from fear, and also free from economic fear. Fear of losing your home because you have to pay out of pocket for operations that really ought to be paid for by having healthcare insurance," he said.

The administration, however, has seemed to be all over the place when it comes to its messaging about the health law.

Of course it's been a lot easier for the Republicans. Their message is pretty much one word: No.

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's problems — a sex scandal coupled with federal investigations into possible financial improprieties — may end up being purely personal matters.

But they aren't helping the city's reputation any.

Nearly a decade ago, the city suffered through a pension underfunding scandal that anticipated problems around the country and led to the resignation of a previous mayor, Dick Murphy.

Since then, San Diego has struggled to get its fiscal house in order. Having a mayor who at the very least will be kept busy by lawyers and sexual harassment training undermines efforts to create a healthier, better-governed city.

"If he's distracted or not credible because of these recent events, that will get in the way and we'll see lost opportunities," says Rep. Scott Peters, who represents San Diego and has called on Filner to resign.

The City's Strengths

San Diego has some tremendous assets.

Its climate is perhaps the most pleasant in the entire country, helping to fuel a robust tourism industry. This, along with its resurgent biotech and telecom sectors and the strong naval presence, has made the city affluent.

"If you kept any questions about the city out of it, the political theater, people are feeling pretty upbeat about how things are going," says San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts.

But it's tough for the city to go on offense when the mayor is something of an embarrassment. That matters not just when it comes to initiatives that are already on the table, such as a convention center expansion and the huge centennial celebration planned for Balboa Park, but for setting an overall economic development strategy as well.

A trip to Asia that Filner had planned to drum up business now appears to be off the table, Roberts says.

"It will not keep us from being able to do our work, but it's a huge distraction and one that gives San Diego the image again of being a place mired in problems, after a series of years where we dug ourselves out of that," says Mark Cafferty, president of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Authority.

Starting To Find Footing

Cafferty says the city had begun to find its footing again, following Murphy's resignation and a pension scandal that earned San Diego the nickname "Enron-by-the-Sea."

Voters last year approved substantial changes in pension benefits for city workers.

"The city's been through a process that, as difficult as it was, is something a lot of governments are going to have to face up to," says Peters, a former City Council president.

But San Diego's pension system remains badly underfunded, according to a Stanford University study. Estimates of the shortfall are generally in the $2 billion range.

In addition, the city has chronically shortchanged its own infrastructure. San Diego sometimes borrows money just to pay for basic maintenance of roads.

"The problems are there," says Steve Erie, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. "This couldn't come at a worse time for a mayor."

Better Management To Come?

Erie says one silver lining to come out of the Filner mess is that the mayor has appointed a new management team. That may have been born of necessity — a lot of his staff has fled — but he's now turned to Walt Ekard, a former county administrator who is well-respected for his managerial ability and knowledge of budgets.

"Filner, in part because he's incredibly distracted, brought in probably the best local management expert in Walt Ekard," Erie says.

There are still questions about how things will go. Filner was known as a micromanager prior to his scandal and, being a progressive Democrat, he may see things differently than Republican Ekard.

For now, though, with Filner handing authority over contracts and management decisions to Ekard, it appears the city's day-to-day operations will run smoothly, despite the present crisis atmosphere.

But new initiatives that require the time and effort of a mayor are going to stall. And getting people to see past Filner's problems may prove difficult, Cafferty concedes.

"Other leaders can step in, but it's a lot stronger to be working in unison with the mayor," he says.

Rather than talking about San Diego's advantages, conversations with individuals or businesses thinking about relocating to the city are likely to start with the subject of the mayor being an embarrassment.

"What's really hurt is the city's reputation, its brand name," Erie says. "It's taken another hit. It's been a rough decade for San Diego."

For decades after the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Board served as the arbiter for squabbles between management and unions, or workers who wanted to join a union. In more recent years, though, the board itself has become a battleground.

Democratic appointees to the NLRB have grown increasingly sympathetic to organized labor, while Republican appointees have grown increasingly hostile, says Harley Shaiken, who studies labor relations as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Management tends to in general prefer a far less active NLRB, where unions view it as essential for the future of the labor movement," he says.

Shaiken says that antagonism extends to confirmation battles: Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked President Obama's nominees to the board, making it hard to preserve the three-member quorum the NLRB needs to operate.

"The NLRB has been limping under the Obama presidency simply because the president has been unable to get appointments onto the five-member NLRB board," Shaiken says.

That could end as early as next week, after a Senate deal defused a standoff over Republican filibusters of executive-branch appointees.

The 'Recess' Gambit

Last year, Obama used controversial "recess" appointments to fill vacant seats on the board, when the Senate was out of town, but not technically in recess. Several federal appeals courts have challenged that move, and the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the issue in its upcoming term.

Those recess appointments became a crucial bargaining chip in this week's Senate negotiations over filibuster rules. Republicans agreed not to filibuster a series of presidential nominees, including the Labor secretary and the EPA administrator, both of whom were confirmed on Thursday.

But in return they insisted the White House come up with two new nominees for the NLRB.

"The NLRB nominations, I think, were at the heart of the deal to avert the so-called 'nuclear option' in the Senate," says Ilyse Schuman, an attorney who represents management in labor disputes.

Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is disappointed that Obama had to withdraw his two recess nominees. But Cohen says he's perfectly happy with their replacements: Nancy Schiffer, who has been a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers, and Kent Hirozawa, chief counsel to the NLRB.

Cohen says he thinks they'll be just as favorable for organized labor as were the previous nominees: Sharon Block and Richard Griffin.

"There's no difference, in terms of their skills, their background, their commitment, their values," says Cohen. "There's no difference."

'Full Speed Ahead'

Schuman agrees the new NLRB board members will be equally pro-labor, and without the handicap of a legally dubious recess appointment.

"With this cloud of uncertainty removed from the authority of the board, it is going to return full speed ahead, if not even faster, on implementing, I think, enormous changes to labor-management relations," Schuman says.

Schuman says the NLRB could now make it easier for workers to organize a union, something the Obama administration has tried but failed to do legislatively.

"In the face of the legislative logjam ... there are other avenues — administrative avenues — that are being turned to to try to achieve those same objectives. ... Trying to seek ways to facilitate union organizing and increase the sort of record low numbers of union membership."

Shaiken says Republican senators did come out of the week with a pair of political scalps.

"The Republicans won a symbolic victory in that the president's two initial nominees were withdrawn. But the Democrats won a substantive victory in that the two new nominees — very highly regarded, quite qualified — will be Democratic nominees on the NLRB," he says.

If the deal holds together and the new nominees are confirmed in the coming days, the NLRB will be fully staffed with five Senate-approved members for the first time in a decade.

Researchers have discovered the largest virus ever, and they've given it a terrifying name: Pandoravirus.

In mythology, opening Pandora's Box released evil into the world. But there's no need to panic. This new family of virus lives underwater and doesn't pose a major threat to human health.

"This is not going to cause any kind of widespread and acute illness or epidemic or anything," says Eugene Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Institutes of Health who specializes in viruses.

Instead, the Pandoravirus opens up a host of questions about the origins of life on Earth, according to its discoverer, Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France. He says, "We believe that those new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists."

The work appears today in the journal Science.

A typical virus is a tiny sack of genetic material that injects itself into a much larger cell and uses it to make more viruses. The Pandoravirus is enormous by comparison—large enough to be seen in an ordinary microscope (about 1 micrometer).

It's so big it's hard to even tell it's a virus, Claverie says. "They don't have a regular shape like a regular viruses, they really look like blobs. And so they really look like small bacteria".

Bacteria are single-celled organisms that reproduce on their own. Claverie first stumbled across giant viruses a decade ago, when another researcher brought him one that was misidentified as a bacterium. It was only when Claverie saw it infect amoebas that he realized it was a virus.

After a recent survey found genetic hints of giant viruses in seawater, Claverie and his team decided to go on the hunt. They teamed up with oceanographers and scooped out sediment samples from the coast of Chile and a freshwater pond in Australia.

They brought back the samples and placed them in a solution filled with antibiotics, to kill any bacteria that might have been along for the ride. Then they exposed the samples to their laboratory amoebas.

"If they die, we suspect that there's something in there that killed them," says Chantal Abergel, Claverie's co-author and also his wife.

It worked. The infected amoebas spawned lots of Pandoraviruses. When Abergel and Claverie sequenced the genome of the new virus, they were in for a shock. Its genetic code is roughly twice the size of the record-holding Megavirus. And it seems almost completely unlike anything else on the planet. Only 6 percent of its genes resembled the genes other organisms. Claverie says he thinks the Pandoraviruses may come from a different origin – perhaps radically different.

"We believe that those new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists," he says. That life could have even come from another planet, like Mars. "At this point we cannot actually disprove or disregard this type of extreme scenario," he says.

But how did this odd cellular form turn into a virus? Abergel says it may have evolved as a survival strategy as modern cells took over. "On Earth it was winners and it was losers, and the losers could have escaped death by going through parasitism and then infect the winner," she says.

Eugene Koonin, who wasn't involved in the research, isn't buying this theory. "These viruses, unusual as they might be, are still related to other smaller viruses," he says.

The virus's size is probably part of its survival strategy. Amoebas and other simple creatures could mistake it for bacteria and try to eat it, opening them up to infection. "The internal environment of the amoeba cell provides a very good playground for acquiring various kinds of genes from different sources," Koonin says. He thinks that the Pandoravirus's unusual genome may be a mishmash of random genetic material it's sucked up from its hosts.

Nevertheless, Koonin says, the new virus is fascinating. And he predicts this is only the beginning. "We are going to see many, many more giant viruses discovered around the world, some of which, probably will be bigger than Pandoraviruses."

Meanwhile, Claverie is also looking at what Pandoravirus actually does in the wild. The fact that it can be found on different continents, and in both fresh water and salt, suggests it may be a big player in underwater ecosystems around the globe.

Another day, another political dynasty.

This latest one is taking shape in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced Tuesday that she's challenging incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi in the 2014 Republican primary.

Her announcement is a fitting prelude to the next four years, when voters will witness America's political royalty in its full glory.

Cheney is just one of a gaggle of legacy candidates running for the Senate next year. In the South, Sens. Mary Landrieu, daughter of the former New Orleans mayor and sister to the current mayor; and Mark Pryor, the son of former Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, are both seeking re-election. Out west, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, both sons of congressmen, are also vying for another term. So is Udall's cousin, Tom, who is New Mexico's senator and himself the son of a congressman.

In fact, pick any place on the map and you're likely to find dynasty politics in full bloom. In Texas, George P. Bush, son of the ex-Florida governor and grandson of a president, is running for the statewide office of land commissioner. In Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, a senator's son, is running for his second term as governor.

And that's just a sampling.

The scope will become even broader as the 2016 presidential race kicks off. Consider the current top prospects: the son and brother of a former president (Jeb Bush); the wife of a former president (Hillary Clinton); the son of a governor who was once a presidential contender (Andrew Cuomo); and the son of a congressman who ran for president three times (Rand Paul).

Surprised? You shouldn't be. Until Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, every winning ticket since 1980 featured a son of a United States senator or president.

"Americans were born in rebellion, but they crave connection and familiarity. The temptation of dynastic politics may be a contradictory note in our national character, but it's perfectly explicable in human nature," says Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP political consultant. "People look for signifiers that give them a quick shorthand to a candidate's views and character, and because candidates are known generally more by who they are than what they advocate, a famous family name becomes a cornerstone of political branding."

The practice of political inheritance is as old as the nation. In his book America's Political Dynasties, scholar Stephen Hess counted at least 700 families in which two or more members had served in Congress since 1774 — and that was back in 1966, when the book was first published.

One of the most famous American political houses, the Kennedys, counts six politicians with service in the House or Senate, including current House freshman Joe Kennedy III.

There's nothing inherently wrong with dynasty politics. If anything, it underscores the deep commitment of some of the nation's most prominent families to public service.

But it comes at a cost. There's no denying that political scions often have an advantage over candidates of lesser lineage.

"They begin with near universal name identification. They begin with a huge rolodex. They begin with a huge understanding of how politics works," says former Missouri state Sen. Jeff Smith, whose long-shot 2004 campaign for Congress against a scion of a prominent political family was the subject of an award-winning documentary film. "Are any of these skills necessary to become a great public servant? No, but if you understand the game, you may end up spending less time banging your head against the wall learning how things work."

Sometimes, congressional seats end up in the same family's hands for decades — even when the talent and charisma skips a generation.

"My experience coming from a state with lots of prominent political families is that in many of these cases, the political talent and policy depth so evident in the first generation isn't always present in the second generation, in part because it's not as necessary to fuel the rise," says Smith, who's now a professor of politics and advocacy at The New School in New York.

There's another notable downside of dynasty politics: It can fuel voter resentment and mistrust of the motives of the political class. One of the most eye-catching examples took place a decade ago in Alaska, where in December 2002 the state's newly elected Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, appointed his daughter Lisa to fill the vacancy created by his resignation from the Senate.

The episode sparked a backlash that ultimately led to the rise of one of the more successful populist politicians of the modern era — Sarah Palin, who knocked off Frank Murkowski in a 2006 primary election colored by his decision to hand his Senate seat to his daughter.

More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs after giving birth to their first child. That's more than double the rate in the U.S., and it's a problem for Japan's economy.

If more women returned to the workforce, it could give a huge boost to household income in the country, says Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist at Goldman Sachs. "Increasing income levels will boost consumption," she says. "Consumption would increase profits, profits would increase wages, and that turns into a virtuous cycle."

Mothers are leaving the workforce mainly because there's no one else who can take care of their babies; it's almost impossible to find childcare in Japan.

It took Keiko Shima almost two years to get her son into daycare. In the meantime, she had to quit her job at a public relations firm where she had worked for almost 10 years."I had no idea that I myself would become a housewife," she says.

In other countries, childcare jobs are often done in part by immigrants. But Japan has very few foreign-born workers.

Daycare centers in the country are very hard to get into. To encourage more women like to return to work, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to create 400,000 more daycare spots by 2017.

Matsui says government officials tell her that "eventually, robots will be able to take up and assume many of these tasks that women are currently doing at present."

For now, though, working mothers are stuck with scarce daycare, few nannies — and almost no support from their husbands.

Gender roles in Japan resemble those in the U.S. decades ago. Most Japanese men aren't in the room when their children are born. It's not expected that men cook and clean.

And everyone with a job in Japan — men and women alike — work incredibly long hours. It's not unusual for a Japanese professional to leave for the office at 7:30 a.m. and not come home until midnight. Almost nobody in Japan takes their full allotment of vacation time.

Hiroko, 38, has a 7-month-old son. She didn't want NPR to publish her last name for fear of losing her job. She's currently on maternity leave from her data analysis job at a pharmaceutical company in Kobe. She used to work long hours, sometimes staying at her desk overnight. She says of the 100 people in her department, 70 are women, and only four of them have children. She worries that all her colleagues will have to work harder while she's on maternity leave.

"So I really feel guilty for feeling like I'm taking too much advantage of having children," Hiroko says. "That always makes me blame myself." Hiroko says there's a 50 percent chance that she'll end up staying home with the baby.

For decades after the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Board served as the arbiter for squabbles between management and unions, or workers who wanted to join a union. In more recent years, though, the board itself has become a battleground.

Democratic appointees to the NLRB have grown increasingly sympathetic to organized labor, while Republican appointees have grown increasingly hostile, says Harley Shaiken, who studies labor relations as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Management tends to in general prefer a far less active NLRB, where unions view it as essential for the future of the labor movement," he says.

Shaiken says that antagonism extends to confirmation battles: Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked President Obama's nominees to the board, making it hard to preserve the three-member quorum the NLRB needs to operate.

"The NLRB has been limping under the Obama presidency simply because the president has been unable to get appointments onto the five-member NLRB board," Shaiken says.

That could end as early as next week, after a Senate deal defused a standoff over Republican filibusters of executive-branch appointees.

The 'Recess' Gambit

Last year, Obama used controversial "recess" appointments to fill vacant seats on the board, when the Senate was out of town, but not technically in recess. Several federal appeals courts have challenged that move, and the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the issue in its upcoming term.

Those recess appointments became a crucial bargaining chip in this week's Senate negotiations over filibuster rules. Republicans agreed not to filibuster a series of presidential nominees, including the Labor secretary and the EPA administrator, both of whom were confirmed on Thursday.

But in return they insisted the White House come up with two new nominees for the NLRB.

"The NLRB nominations, I think, were at the heart of the deal to avert the so-called 'nuclear option' in the Senate," says Ilyse Schuman, an attorney who represents management in labor disputes.

Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is disappointed that Obama had to withdraw his two recess nominees. But Cohen says he's perfectly happy with their replacements: Nancy Schiffer, who has been a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers, and Kent Hirozawa, chief counsel to the NLRB.

Cohen says he thinks they'll be just as favorable for organized labor as were the previous nominees: Sharon Block and Richard Griffin.

"There's no difference, in terms of their skills, their background, their commitment, their values," says Cohen. "There's no difference."

'Full Speed Ahead'

Schuman agrees the new NLRB board members will be equally pro-labor, and without the handicap of a legally dubious recess appointment.

"With this cloud of uncertainty removed from the authority of the board, it is going to return full speed ahead, if not even faster, on implementing, I think, enormous changes to labor-management relations," Schuman says.

Schuman says the NLRB could now make it easier for workers to organize a union, something the Obama administration has tried but failed to do legislatively.

"In the face of the legislative logjam ... there are other avenues — administrative avenues — that are being turned to to try to achieve those same objectives. ... Trying to seek ways to facilitate union organizing and increase the sort of record low numbers of union membership."

Shaiken says Republican senators did come out of the week with a pair of political scalps.

"The Republicans won a symbolic victory in that the president's two initial nominees were withdrawn. But the Democrats won a substantive victory in that the two new nominees — very highly regarded, quite qualified — will be Democratic nominees on the NLRB," he says.

If the deal holds together and the new nominees are confirmed in the coming days, the NLRB will be fully staffed with five Senate-approved members for the first time in a decade.

More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs after giving birth to their first child. That's more than double the rate in the U.S., and it's a problem for Japan's economy.

If more women returned to the workforce, it could give a huge boost to household income in the country, says Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist at Goldman Sachs. "Increasing income levels will boost consumption," she says. "Consumption would increase profits, profits would increase wages, and that turns into a virtuous cycle."

Mothers are leaving the workforce mainly because there's no one else who can take care of their babies; it's almost impossible to find childcare in Japan.

It took Keiko Shima almost two years to get her son into daycare. In the meantime, she had to quit her job at a public relations firm where she had worked for almost 10 years."I had no idea that I myself would become a housewife," she says.

In other countries, childcare jobs are often done in part by immigrants. But Japan has very few foreign-born workers.

Daycare centers in the country are very hard to get into. To encourage more women like to return to work, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to create 400,000 more daycare spots by 2017.

Matsui says government officials tell her that "eventually, robots will be able to take up and assume many of these tasks that women are currently doing at present."

For now, though, working mothers are stuck with scarce daycare, few nannies — and almost no support from their husbands.

Gender roles in Japan resemble those in the U.S. decades ago. Most Japanese men aren't in the room when their children are born. It's not expected that men cook and clean.

And everyone with a job in Japan — men and women alike — work incredibly long hours. It's not unusual for a Japanese professional to leave for the office at 7:30 a.m. and not come home until midnight. Almost nobody in Japan takes their full allotment of vacation time.

Hiroko, 38, has a 7-month-old son. She didn't want NPR to publish her last name for fear of losing her job. She's currently on maternity leave from her data analysis job at a pharmaceutical company in Kobe. She used to work long hours, sometimes staying at her desk overnight. She says of the 100 people in her department, 70 are women, and only four of them have children. She worries that all her colleagues will have to work harder while she's on maternity leave.

"So I really feel guilty for feeling like I'm taking too much advantage of having children," Hiroko says. "That always makes me blame myself." Hiroko says there's a 50 percent chance that she'll end up staying home with the baby.

Oh, Jiminy Cricket, you've never looked more scrumptious.

OK, so that photo isn't Jiminy but a close relative — a katydid — on a kabob. It's one of several enticing images of insect cuisine included in the new, revised edition of The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, by avowed entomophagist (i.e., bug eater) David George Gordon.

If you're looking for grilled Japanese food, chef-cookbook author Harris Salat recommends you head over to Fukuoka, a city where yatai, or mobile food carts, line up by the riverside.

The carts became popular after World War II, Salat says, when Japanese were looking to rebuild their lives and find new sources of income.

Even a year ago, the original programming on internet outlets like Netflix and Hulu was an asterisk. We all knew Netflix would be premiering House Of Cards starring Kevin Spacey this spring, and Arrested Development a bit later, and that there were other projects coming. But it all seemed a little abstract, like not-quite-television, like maybe it would feel more like ... renting movies?

But Thursday morning, Netflix earned nine nominations for the drama House Of Cards — including the prestigious Outstanding Drama Series category — and three more for Arrested Development, and even two for the much lower profile Hemlock Grove. They are on their way. It's early, but they're on their way.

They're still no HBO — that premium cable awards hog took 108 nominations. They're not even AMC, which took 26. But they are there, on the list of networks, with HBO and AMC and FX, and they have one more Outstanding Drama Series nomination than ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC combined.

There are a few caveats to keep in mind. Reaching Emmy voters is as much about sending screeners on DVD as it is penetrating their consciousness the rest of the time. And if recognition of online-first shows is a new thing for the Emmys, sucking up to movie people is a very old thing for the Emmys — so the fact that people paid a lot of attention to a David Fincher project starring Spacey is almost as much a nostalgia act as it is a brave new frontier.

Still, cable television didn't get an Outstanding Drama Series nomination at all until The Sopranos was nominated in 1999. And commercial broadcast television — that is, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox — got what was, as of right now, its last Outstanding Drama Series nomination in 2011. It took less than 15 years for cable (and now the Internet) to displace broadcast, at least for the time being, from the biggest award of the night.

Broadcast doesn't show up in the Outstanding Miniseries Or Movie category either. In addition to the competition from cable standard-bearers like HBO, there are new elbows in the scrum all the time, this year including the Sundance Channel, a previously low-profile network that was nominated twice for Restless and eight times for the Elisabeth Moss-led Top Of The Lake.

Moreover, some of the activity on television comes from some of our most celebrated film directors. While prestige cable has a long history as an outlet for the quirky "Difficult Men" of Brett Martin's recent book, cable and online distribution has also matured into an entirely respectable option for people like Fincher, and Jane Campion (who did Top Of The Lake for Sundance), and Steven Soderbergh (who did Behind The Candelabra for HBO, a film that would have seemed perfectly natural as an Oscar-winning theatrical release).

TV series now screen at film festivals. Some are never on TV. Movies that seem like they belong at the Oscars wind up at the Emmys. Oscars go to films that were mostly seen at home on demand. Film actors quit movies to do television. The question to an actor, "Why would you choose to lower yourself to television when you're so successful?" has become quaint and out of touch.

Don't misunderstand — the Emmys can still be infuriating and nonsensical in all of their old-fashioned ways. New Girl was a so-so show in its first season and received a few nominations. It was a very good show this year and received none. As cable ramps up the serious, ponderous, dark drama, Kerry Washington was nominated for her lead performance in the over-the-top Scandal, which borders on camp. That's not necessarily a bad nomination, exactly, given how strangely addicting Scandal is, but it's interesting that of all the populist pieces the Emmys could have chosen, they went with that one and ignored a lot of others.

But it's all being slowly drawn down the sides of the same mixing bowl, I think, to the point where these lines between Internet and theatrical release and television will become far less important. Brands will be brands, on television and in theaters and on your tablet. Acting will be acting, writing will be writing, and people will write about which dramas you should watch on your television and which need to be seen in theaters based on considerations other than timing.

And perhaps the Emmy Awards will themselves be a relic.

Susan Jones has no shame in admitting that she's not the world's best cook.

"Whenever someone says, 'Everybody bring a dish,' I'm not happy," she says.

Jones is from Indiana and is the editor and publisher of the New Carlisle News. She's also been a board member of Historic New Carlisle, her town's historical society, for 20 years. For the first five years, the group's bimonthly fundraiser teas were a point of anxiety for Jones.

"We fill our dining room table with wonderful treats that everyone makes — savory finger sandwiches, gorgeous little to-die-for cookies," she says. "And for years, I would show up with this plate of little hard cookies or dry brownies — something that would always be left over after the tea. It was humiliating."

Then one windy day, everything changed. She was taking her dog Wally for a walk on a country road when she noticed papers flying all over the place. She started picking up some of the pages.

"They were recipes. Somebody had cleaned out their kitchen and maybe put them on their computer and dumped them in the recycling," she says.

A recipe for strawberry trifle caught her eye. "It looked like it would be fancy and it would be delicious, and I could actually do it," she says.

Vote For Your Favorite

This recipe is among three finalists in our "Taste of Summer" contest. Take a look at the two others below and vote for your favorite by sending a message to All Things Considered here. Make sure to put "Taste Of Summer Vote" in the subject line.

Patricia Mulvey discovered her favorite taste of summer during a disastrous trip to Mexico in 1995. The bright moment of that trip was the "Ensenada Slaw." She describes it as "a lightly dressed crisp vegetable salad with a touch of heat from hot sauce and a touch of acidity from lime juice."

Mulvey — who now lives in Madison, Wis., and runs a farmer's market menu planning service — was on the trip with her husband. They had borrowed a Ford Escort from a friend in San Diego and were cruising down the Mexican coast when a large rock appeared in the road. It was being used by a construction crew in lieu of a safety cone. Mulvey had to act fast.

"Well, if I swerve left, I'm going to hit 60 mph oncoming traffic. If I swerve to the right, I'm going off a cliff," she says.

She elected to stay the course and drive over it. Mulvey's husband got out to survey the damage, which didn't seem too bad — but when she tried to start the car, she says there was "a hideous, shredding, shrieking, awful sound. [It] threw me into a tizzy and I just spazzed out."

Mulvey jumped of the car and ran toward the construction crew. She waved down the man on the road roller and said, 'Hay un gran pierna in la calle.' Translation: "There is a big leg in the street." He ignored her. She then waved down the next car on the road and hitched a ride to nearby Ensenada

Once in town, they called a tow truck and went back to the car. When they arrived, Mulvey was alarmed to see the area "teeming" with machine gun-wielding federales with drug-sniffing dogs.

"My stomach's doing flips as the guys come up to us with their guns and tell us we can go," she says. "And we so wanted to go."

When the tow truck driver examined the car, he found the entire oil pan had been torn out and there wouldn't be a quick fix.

"We decide to just call it a night — find a restaurant, have a margarita and we order the fish tacos, which are topped with this amazing slaw. It was a revelation to me. It was bright, it was crisp; it had just the right hint of heat," she says.

Vote For Your Favorite

This recipe is among three finalists in our "Taste of Summer" contest. Take a look at the two others below and vote for your favorite by sending a message to All Things Considered here. Make sure to put "Taste Of Summer Vote" in the subject line.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and a broad coalition of major tech companies are making a loud call for greater government disclosure of digital communications monitoring.

In a letter out today, an alliance of 63 companies and groups are calling for dramatically increased transparency around U.S. government surveillance efforts. This comes as the companies — and individual Americans — continue to grapple with recent revelations of a sweeping surveillance program led by the National Security Agency.

(Read the full letter.)

The alliance, which also includes investors and trade organizations — asks for Internet and communications service providers to report national security-related requests with specificity.

In the letter addressed to President Obama, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Attorney General Eric Holder and congressional leaders, they've asked to regularly report:

• The number of government requests for information about their users.

• The number of individuals, accounts or devices for which information was requested.

• And the number of requests that sought communications content, basic subscriber information and/or other information.

The coalition also asks that the government begin issuing a transparency report of its own, and in it, provide similar information — the total number of requests made and the number of individuals affected by each.

You may notice that no hosting providers like Amazon Web Services or Go Daddy have co-signed the letter. Also absent are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. We're reaching out to these companies and will update with their input.

Click to read the full letter.

The crew of a North Korean ship carrying a clandestine cargo of Cold War-era weapons from Cuba has been charged with smuggling by Panamanian authorities, who seized the vessel earlier this week.

The North Korean vessel en route from Cuba was seized as it attempted to transit the Panama Canal.

According to the BBC:

"[Panamanian] Prosecutor Javier Caraballo accused the 35 crew members of endangering public security by illegally transporting war material.

"The charges came just hours after North Korea urged Panama to release the ship and its crew without delay.

"Police found the weapons under bags of sugar. Cuba has said it had sent the weapons to North Korea for repairs."

Even a year ago, the original programming on internet outlets like Netflix and Hulu was an asterisk. We all knew Netflix would be premiering House Of Cards starring Kevin Spacey this spring, and Arrested Development a bit later, and that there were other projects coming. But it all seemed a little abstract, like not-quite-television, like maybe it would feel more like ... renting movies?

But Thursday morning, Netflix earned nine nominations for the drama House Of Cards — including the prestigious Outstanding Drama Series category — and three more for Arrested Development, and even two for the much lower profile Hemlock Grove. They are on their way. It's early, but they're on their way.

They're still no HBO — that premium cable awards hog took 108 nominations. They're not even AMC, which took 26. But they are there, on the list of networks, with HBO and AMC and FX, and they have one more Outstanding Drama Series nomination than ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC combined.

There are a few caveats to keep in mind. Reaching Emmy voters is as much about sending screeners on DVD as it is penetrating their consciousness the rest of the time. And if recognition of online-first shows is a new thing for the Emmys, sucking up to movie people is a very old thing for the Emmys — so the fact that people paid a lot of attention to a David Fincher project starring Spacey is almost as much a nostalgia act as it is a brave new frontier.

Still, cable television didn't get an Outstanding Drama Series nomination at all until The Sopranos was nominated in 1999. And commercial broadcast television — that is, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox — got what was, as of right now, its last Outstanding Drama Series nomination in 2011. It took less than 15 years for cable (and now the Internet) to displace broadcast, at least for the time being, from the biggest award of the night.

Broadcast doesn't show up in the Outstanding Miniseries Or Movie category either. In addition to the competition from cable standard-bearers like HBO, there are new elbows in the scrum all the time, this year including the Sundance Channel, a previously low-profile network that was nominated twice for Restless and eight times for the Elisabeth Moss-led Top Of The Lake.

Moreover, some of the activity on television comes from some of our most celebrated film directors. While prestige cable has a long history as an outlet for the quirky "Difficult Men" of Brett Martin's recent book, cable and online distribution has also matured into an entirely respectable option for people like Fincher, and Jane Campion (who did Top Of The Lake for Sundance), and Steven Soderbergh (who did Behind The Candelabra for HBO, a film that would have seemed perfectly natural as an Oscar-winning theatrical release).

TV series now screen at film festivals. Some are never on TV. Movies that seem like they belong at the Oscars wind up at the Emmys. Oscars go to films that were mostly seen at home on demand. Film actors quit movies to do television. The question to an actor, "Why would you choose to lower yourself to television when you're so successful?" has become quaint and out of touch.

Don't misunderstand — the Emmys can still be infuriating and nonsensical in all of their old-fashioned ways. New Girl was a so-so show in its first season and received a few nominations. It was a very good show this year and received none. As cable ramps up the serious, ponderous, dark drama, Kerry Washington was nominated for her lead performance in the over-the-top Scandal, which borders on camp. That's not necessarily a bad nomination, exactly, given how strangely addicting Scandal is, but it's interesting that of all the populist pieces the Emmys could have chosen, they went with that one and ignored a lot of others.

But it's all being slowly drawn down the sides of the same mixing bowl, I think, to the point where these lines between Internet and theatrical release and television will become far less important. Brands will be brands, on television and in theaters and on your tablet. Acting will be acting, writing will be writing, and people will write about which dramas you should watch on your television and which need to be seen in theaters based on considerations other than timing.

And perhaps the Emmy Awards will themselves be a relic.

In the 1980s, a popular fast-food commercial touted chicken-breast sandwiches — and mocked chicken nuggets sold by competitors.

In the ad, a competitor's doofus clerk explains nuggets. "All the parts are crammed into one big part," he said. "And parts is parts."

Today, clerks may believe that catchphrase could apply to them as regular full-time schedules disappear. For many workers, hours are not only short, but increasingly erratic as managers scramble to cover shifts without the steadying influence of experienced full-time employees.

"It's ridiculous," says Amere Graham, an 18-year-old high school graduate who works at a McDonald's in Milwaukee. "My schedule is all over the place. It's completely unpredictable."

Government data support Graham's impressions of workplace conditions. The ranks of people working part time because they can't find full-time jobs have roughly doubled since the summer of 2007, from about 4.3 million to 8.2 million.

"There has been a surge in part-time work," says Aparna Mathur, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

The change reflects business owners' reluctance to hire full-time workers while they still have so many worries about the strength of the recovery and the cost of the Affordable Care Act, Mathur says. "You want to maintain flexibility so you can respond to the economy" without having to carry the costs of hiring and firing full-time employees, she says.

In a study of retail working conditions, conducted in the fall of 2011 in New York, only 17 percent of retail workers said they have a set schedule.

With so many people working in so many part-time positions, frustrations are growing, according to Michael Wilder, coordinator at Wisconsin Jobs Now, a union-supported group that advocates for low-wage workers.

Business

Jobs Outlook Is Brighter For Class Of 2013

The Beige Book is weird. It's an economic report released by the Federal Reserve every few months, but it doesn't have many numbers in it. Mostly, it's a bunch of stories gathered by talking to businesses around the country. A Fed economist once described it as the "Ask Your Uncle" approach to figuring out what's going on in the economy.

In the Beige Book released today, for example, we learned that:

Sales of pet supplies are "a bit soft" in the Western U.S.

Sporting goods sales are strong in New England.

Boat manufacturers and medical equipment firms in the St. Louis region are planning layoffs, but bakeries and firearms manufacturers are hiring.

Also, as in the real world, everybody always talks about the weather in the Beige Book — especially when it rains. In today's Beige Book:

Retailers told the Philly Fed that "excessive rain in June kept ... people away from stores, while some showed up just to 'hang out' at the mall."

A "large department store chain" told the Richmond Fed that "cold and damp weather, along with the payroll tax change, had constrained sales."

A "contact in South Carolina noted that heavy rains had damaged the regional wheat crop to the extent that sprouts were unacceptable for export."

The Beige Book does try to pull all this stuff together. At the top of the report, there's a bit of synthesis of how different sectors are doing. ("Manufacturing expanded in most Districts since the previous report, with many Districts reporting increases in new orders, shipments, or production.")

Still, much of the value in the Beige Book lies in all the weird, anecdotal details. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, told us that beer sales at convenience stores, combined with reports from beer distributors, were one early sign of a slowdown in the homebuilding market before the crash.

In other words, collecting anecdotes — asking your uncle — really can be useful. "My uncles and aunts were very helpful in helping me learn some basic lessons in life," Fisher said.

In testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that when and how the Fed winds down its stimulus programs will depend on economic conditions.

Here's the key passage from Bernanke's prepared remarks:

"I emphasize that, because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if economic conditions were to improve faster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising decisively back toward our objective, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook for employment were to become relatively less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back toward 2 percent, or if financial conditions—which have tightened recently—were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives, the current pace of purchases could be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability."

South Carolina's highest court on Wednesday ruled that "Baby Veronica," the 3-year-old central figure in a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act, should be returned to the white couple that agreed to adopt her before her birth, and not her Native American father, who later claimed his parental rights.

Two years ago, the South Carolina Supreme Court had said that the 1978 federal law required that the young girl be removed from her adoptive parents — Matt and Melanie Capobianco — and sent to live with her biological father, Dusten Brown, a member of the Cherokee Nation living in Oklahoma.

But Wednesday, it reversed itself, citing direction from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Scotusblog's Lyle Denniston summarized the ruling.

"Using the authority that the Supreme Court gave it three weeks ago, South Carolina's Supreme Court on Wednesday moved to put an end to a deeply emotional dispute over the custody of a child by ordering that she become a part of the family that fought to have her returned after eighteen months living with her father, a Cherokee Indian. In a three-to-two decision, the state court sent the case back to a family court with instructions to move swiftly to finalize the rights of the 'adoptive couple' to the child known as 'Baby Veronica.' She will be four on September 15."

Nelson Mandela is making "remarkable progress" and could be released from a Pretoria hospital soon, his daughter tells Sky News on the eve of the anti-apartheid icon's 95th birthday.

Zindzi Mandela, 52, also says her father is communicating with his eyes and hands, watching television and that "you can see he is there in his eyes; the same energy and strength."

The elder Mandela, who spent 27 behind bars as a political prisoner during the long battle against South Africa's apartheid system, went on to become president in 1994 after his nation's first democratic elections.

Mandela has been in a hospital since June 8 for treatment of a life-threatening respiratory infection. On Thursday, his birthday is being celebrated as Nelson Mandela Day in South Africa.

Earlier on Wednesday, The Daily Telegraph reported that a granddaughter — Ndileka Mandela — says her grandfather's condition is "stable." It added that on Nelson Mandela Day his family will, "like many South Africans and people around the world ... spend 67 minutes undertaking charity work ... in recognition of the 67 years South Africa's first black, democratic president spent in public service."

Enlarge image i

Before it became China's capital in 1949, Beijing was a fairly provincial little city of 2 million people.

Today, it has grown into a megalopolis of some 18 million people.

I've recently returned to the city after a few years away, the first thing that strikes me is: Who the heck are all of these 20-somethings and how did they get to be driving all these Ferraris and Maseratis?

Enlarge image i

It was later revealed that the anti-Morsi areas were usually packed — Al-Jazeera just showed them at the times of day that they were empty.

Then came the killing of more than 50 pro-Morsi demonstrators by Egyptian security forces. Some Al-Jazeera reports initially said the number was in the hundreds.

The military later held a press conference on the killings. An Al-Jazeera correspondent was booed out of the room by other reporters.

For Haggag Salama, who had freelanced for Al-Jazeera for 10 years, the misreporting of the number of slain protesters was the last straw. He called another local TV station and announced his resignation on air.

Salama says Al-Jazeera had no sources and exaggerated the numbers to favor the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the days that followed, reports surfaced that some 20 more Al-Jazeera employees had quit — although at least one might have been a fake and others now say they will probably go back.

Media watchers say it's important to stress the difference between Al-Jazeera Live Egypt, Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English. The latter is the channel most well-known in the U.S., and Al-Jazeera English correspondents maintain their coverage is unbiased.

They also say part of what's happening in Egypt is a witch hunt by some Egyptians who are now rabidly anti-Morsi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood. Other Islamist channels have been closed down since Morsi's ouster.

Related NPR Stories

Political Crisis In Egypt

What Egyptian State TV Says About The State Of Egypt

Ruby Keeler was an unknown actress when she starred in the 1933 production of Busby Berkeley's 42nd Street.

But, the movie was so popular she was able to land two more splashy musicals that same year — and seven more by the end of the decade. There was nothing extraordinary about her talents as a vocalist or as an actress, but audiences of the Depression-era really bought into Keeler's "innocent" on-stage persona. In fact, they craved it.

Her life story was also a source of optimism for many during bleak times. She had truly earned her way to stardom, rather than being born into it. And unlike more graceful, natural performers, she had to work hard when she was on stage. They loved that about her.

But while Keeler was a huge star during the '30s, as the decade wound down, so did her career. Her marriage to Al Jolson came unraveled, and in 1940, she remarried outside Hollywood to a wealthy real estate broker and retired from showbiz — for what she thought be forever.

Thirty years later, the nation had survived World War II, a baby boom, television, Elvis, the Civil Rights movement, a presidential assassination, the Beatles, anti-war demonstrations, hippies, and astronauts walking on the moon.

Basically, there were a lot of reasons to forget about Ruby Keeler.

But she had come back, this time as a 61-year-old grandmother, performing in No No Nanette — a creaky old '20s musical that centers on a young flapper. The Broadway producer told her that if she agreed to do the play, she'd only have to do two musical numbers.

Enlarge image i

Get recipes for Chickpea Flour Cake With Chard, Savory Almond Cake With Toasted Beets, Yeasted Savory Cake With Fennel, Savory Cake With Cornmeal, Chickpea Flour Cake With Tarragon

The Beige Book is weird. It's an economic report released by the Federal Reserve every few months, but it doesn't have many numbers in it. Mostly, it's a bunch of stories gathered by talking to businesses around the country. A Fed economist once described it as the "Ask Your Uncle" approach to figuring out what's going on in the economy.

In the Beige Book released today, for example, we learned that:

Sales of pet supplies are "a bit soft" in the Western U.S.

Sporting goods sales are strong in New England.

Boat manufacturers and medical equipment firms in the St. Louis region are planning layoffs, but bakeries and firearms manufacturers are hiring.

Also, as in the real world, everybody always talks about the weather in the Beige Book — especially when it rains. In today's Beige Book:

Retailers told the Philly Fed that "excessive rain in June kept ... people away from stores, while some showed up just to 'hang out' at the mall."

A "large department store chain" told the Richmond Fed that "cold and damp weather, along with the payroll tax change, had constrained sales."

A "contact in South Carolina noted that heavy rains had damaged the regional wheat crop to the extent that sprouts were unacceptable for export."

The Beige Book does try to pull all this stuff together. At the top of the report, there's a bit of synthesis of how different sectors are doing. ("Manufacturing expanded in most Districts since the previous report, with many Districts reporting increases in new orders, shipments, or production.")

Still, much of the value in the Beige Book lies in all the weird, anecdotal details. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, told us that beer sales at convenience stores, combined with reports from beer distributors, were one early sign of a slowdown in the homebuilding market before the crash.

In other words, collecting anecdotes — asking your uncle — really can be useful. "My uncles and aunts were very helpful in helping me learn some basic lessons in life," Fisher said.

The mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got hit so hard by the housing crisis that they required a massive federal rescue. Now lawmakers are looking to scale back the two entities' role — and the government's — in the mortgage market.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected to vote Thursday on President Obama's nominee to head the agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie.

The government took them over during the worst of the housing crisis, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $200 billion. Now that the housing market is recovering, the companies have turned profitable, and they are sending money back to the Treasury.

But many lawmakers remain worried about the government's outsized role in the mortgage market, and they're looking to make a change.

Before Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the government in 2008, they operated in a kind of legal limbo. They were for-profit companies, helping to funnel money into the housing market. But they had an implicit guarantee that if they got into trouble, the government would bail them out.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker says that has always been a problem. He says "almost everybody would say" that it's not appropriate to have "private gain and public losses."

"This implicit guarantee is incredibly inappropriate," he says.

New Approaches

Corker, a Republican, and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia have crafted a plan to gradually do away with Fannie and Freddie, while handing one of their functions over to a new government agency. That agency would guarantee mortgage-backed securities, to keep money flowing into the housing market. But unlike Fannie and Freddie, the new agency would collect a fee for the government's backing.

The plan includes a number of other safeguards designed to protect taxpayers: Homebuyers would have to make a 5 percent down payment. And the companies issuing mortgage-backed securities would have to hold at least 10 percent capital in reserve. Corker says that's twice as much capital as Fannie and Freddie would have needed to weather the housing crisis without a government bailout.

"If Fannie and Freddie had had 5 percent capital, there would have been no taxpayer contributions," he says.

The Obama administration says it welcomes the bipartisan Senate approach.

Meanwhile, House Republicans, led by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, have crafted an alternative bill. It would move the government even further out of the mortgage market, leaving only a limited role for the Federal Housing Administration to help first-time homebuyers and low-income families.

But Warner told a gathering at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Wednesday that the House approach is a political nonstarter. He said Hensarling's bill is an "ideologically pure exercise which will never have a single Democrat ever support it."

What Change Could Mean For Homebuyers

Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics says either bill would result in slightly higher interest rates on home loans.

But Zandi says the increase would be bigger under the House Republicans' bill because the measure would lack a government guarantee.

"More importantly for most Americans, there probably would be very few 30-year, fixed-rate loans out there — at least not for the typical homebuyer," Zandi says. "And the other thing to consider is that in really bad times, if the government really didn't step in, it would be pretty tough to get a mortgage loan for anybody at any time."

House Republicans insist their bill would not end 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. They note such loans are already available for high-priced homes that are too expensive to qualify for a government guarantee.

But Zandi says the experience in other countries suggests that without a government backstop, long-term fixed-rate mortgages would not be widely available. He also says it's unrealistic to pretend the government would stay out of the mortgage market altogether.

"The reality is that when push comes to shove, if things are really bad, the government will step in," he says. "So it's important that we all understand that, make that explicit, price for it to make sure that taxpayers don't pay for it in the future."

These days, it's Fannie and Freddie who are paying taxpayers. The companies have returned $131 billion in dividends to the Treasury so far.

Corker argues that's one more reason the government should move quickly to wind down the mortgage giants — before lawmakers become too attached to that money, and it becomes harder than ever to cut the cord.

A new investigative report from Reuters says payroll errors in the military are widespread. And that "once mistakes are detected, getting them corrected — or just explained — can test even the most persistent soldiers."

In "How the Pentagon's Payroll Quagmire Traps America's Soldiers," Reuters special enterprise correspondent Scot Paltrow and his colleague Kelly Carr report on how the antiquated and error-ridden computer system of the Defense Finance and Accounting System has at times erroneously cut soldiers' paychecks because, it claimed, the service men and women owed money or were overpaid. In some cases, Paltrow and Carr report, the military has hired collection agencies to try to recover these mistakenly charged overpayments. It has also garnisheed wages at new civilian jobs, and ruined soldiers' credit ratings.

One large part of the problem, says Paltrow, is the technology the agency uses to manage the military's payroll.

Paltrow tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that DFAS relies "on an ancient computer system that's more than 40 years old, dates basically from the dawn of the computer age, and it runs on COBOL, which is one of the first computer languages and [is] so old that it can't be updated and consequently there are a tremendous number of mistakes."

The Defense Department developed a new computer system, but according to Paltrow, "They worked on it for roughly 10 years and ended up spending a billion dollars on it, and in 2010 they decided it had been a failure, that it just wasn't going to work. They pulled the plug on it and so the billion dollars spent on the program went down the tubes, and the military was left with this antiquated system that hadn't been updated at all in more than a decade because everyone was anticipating this new, now canceled, system to come online."

Liz Cheney, the elder of former Vice President Dick Cheney's two daughters, a former State Department official and a conservative commentator who's often on Fox, is going to challenge Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi in next year's Republican primary.

According to The Associated Press, Cheney, 46, confirmed what had been wide speculation about her plans on Tuesday — not long after the 69-year-old Enzi said that he will seek a fourth term.

Her family's roots are in Wyoming. Dick Cheney was the state's congressman from 1979-89.

According to The Hill, Cheney could give Enzi, "a tough race. She is well-known to national Republican donors, especially those focused on international issues."

The New York Times has noted that a Cheney run:

"Threatens to start a civil war within the state's Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family. Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out. It would bring about 'the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,' Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview. ... 'It's a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.' "

In testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that when and how the Fed winds down its stimulus programs will depend on economic conditions.

Here's the key passage from Bernanke's prepared remarks:

"I emphasize that, because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if economic conditions were to improve faster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising decisively back toward our objective, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook for employment were to become relatively less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back toward 2 percent, or if financial conditions—which have tightened recently—were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives, the current pace of purchases could be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability."

Kristin Wiig will be in the NPR house today to talk about her film Girl Most Likely. I'm very much hoping that last night's Michael Jordan impression will be mentioned, at least in the hallways, because lord knows it's all over the social medias today. ("Name six of them" might be my favorite moment.) [Crushable]

You've been clamoring for a Mrs. Doubtfire musical, right? Excellent: 20th Century Fox's move to create a Broadway pipeline for its film properties just upped the chances that you'll see one. (Put that reflexive cynicism on hold, though: As the story notes, the Broadway guy they've enlisted knows his stuff.) [The New York Times]

It's intriguing to read that Helena Bonham Carter, who's both one of the great beauties and one of the great eccentrics of the current cinema, came at her performance as Elizabeth Taylor with an appetite for the icon's nuttier side. Here's hoping BBC America's Taylor and Burton works out better than that other project. [Wales Online via Tom + Lorenzo]

Consider this deep(ish) dive with Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn, who posits that "art is an act of violence, in a way." More specifically:

I think that violence in the cinema is necessarily a fetish. Emotionally, our artistic expression consists of sex or violence. It all boils down to those two pure emotions that we have. But where erotica or sexuality is not fantasy, because most of us do it, violence, on the other hand, is fetish, is fantasy. There is a sexuality to violence that I find very intoxicating.

The Chesapeake Bay once supplied half the world's oyster market. But pollution, disease and over-harvesting have nearly wiped out the population. It's a dire situation that's united former adversaries to revive the oyster ecosystem and industry.

Scientists and watermen have joined forces to plant underwater farms in the bay with a special oyster bred in a lab. Called triploid oysters, they have been selected for attributes like disease tolerance and fast growth.

The oysters are sterile, which means that instead of using their energy to reproduce, they use all of it to grow. That allows them to reach market size twice as quickly and be harvested year-round.

"It stays fat all the time," notes Tucker Brown, one of about two dozen oystermen collaborating with scientists on the project.

And when it comes time to plant these lab-bred oysters, says Dave White, a Maryland state biologist, "the watermen have a great input in it, because they're more familiar with the bottom than most of the researchers."

A few years ago, scientists like White might have found themselves fighting with watermen over the best way to manage the oyster. And indeed, decades ago, watermen used to be able to harvest hundreds of thousands of bushels of oysters a year from the Potomac River. But these days, they're lucky to harvest a few thousand, says Jim Wesson, the lead scientist on the project from Virginia.

That's led to collaborations like this underwater farm, one of several ongoing projects that officials in Virginia and Maryland hope will help restore Chesapeake Bay oyster populations. As NPR has previously reported, some projects have focused on using man-made reefs to attract wild baby oysters; others have created oyster sanctuaries where harvesting would be banned.

Enlarge image i

Nelson Mandela is making "remarkable progress" and could be released from a Pretoria hospital soon, his daughter tells Sky News on the eve of the anti-apartheid icon's 95th birthday.

Zindzi Mandela, 52, also says her father is communicating with his eyes and hands, watching television and that "you can see he is there in his eyes; the same energy and strength."

The elder Mandela, who spent 27 behind bars as a political prisoner during the long battle against South Africa's apartheid system, went on to become president in 1994 after his nation's first democratic elections.

Mandela has been in a hospital since June 8 for treatment of a life-threatening respiratory infection. On Thursday, his birthday is being celebrated as Nelson Mandela Day in South Africa.

Earlier on Wednesday, The Daily Telegraph reported that a granddaughter — Ndileka Mandela — says her grandfather's condition is "stable." It added that on Nelson Mandela Day his family will, "like many South Africans and people around the world ... spend 67 minutes undertaking charity work ... in recognition of the 67 years South Africa's first black, democratic president spent in public service."

Quinoa lovers have been put on a bit of a guilt trip with stories suggesting that the increased demand in the U.S. has put the superfood out of reach for those living closest to where it's grown.

How can poor Bolivians in La Paz afford to pay three times more for quinoa than they would pay for rice, critics have asked?

So some quinoa farmers in Bolivia and distributors are talking back. And what they want us to know is that their incomes are rising. As the price of quinoa has tripled since 2006, and farmers plant more of the crop, they're typically making more money.

Enlarge image i

In testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will say later today that when and how the Fed winds down its stimulus programs will depend on economic conditions.

Here's the key passage from Bernanke's prepared remarks:

"I emphasize that, because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if economic conditions were to improve faster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising decisively back toward our objective, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook for employment were to become relatively less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back toward 2 percent, or if financial conditions—which have tightened recently—were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives, the current pace of purchases could be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability."

In testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will say later today that when and how the Fed winds down its stimulus programs will depend on economic conditions.

Here's the key passage from Bernanke's prepared remarks:

"I emphasize that, because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if economic conditions were to improve faster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising decisively back toward our objective, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook for employment were to become relatively less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back toward 2 percent, or if financial conditions—which have tightened recently—were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives, the current pace of purchases could be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability."

Wal-Mart's long-standing plans to come to Washington, D.C., are now up in the air. The City Council passed a living wage law that would require the world's largest retailer to pay $12.50 an hour, more than the city's current $8.25 minimum wage.

So Wal-Mart is saying it will abandon three of the six stores it planned to build in the District, and is evaluating whether to forge ahead with the remaining stores currently under construction. The case highlights some of the difficulties — and opportunities — big-box stores sometimes face entering urban markets.

D.C. Councilman Vincent Orange is not a big-box store hater. "I was very instrumental in bringing Home Depot and Costco to town, and back then we had to provide incentives to give entities to come into town," he says.

But Orange, who chairs the council's business and regulatory affairs committee, says Wal-Mart can afford to pay employees more. A decade ago, D.C. courted retailers and offered tax incentives. Now, the city's population is growing and is well to do — and Orange says that gives Washington the upper hand.

"Whereas before, back in 2002 and 2003, we were begging entities to come to the city, we wanted what they had. And now they want what we have," he says.

Indeed, cities are a key growth area for big retailers. Rob Grossman, a partner in Deloitte's real estate consultancy, says the exurbs and suburbs are already saturated with big-box stores.

"The landscape is such that the market is pretty much covered, leaving the urban markets as kind of the last untapped market," he says.

The Two-Way

Wal-Mart Meeting Spurs Protests Over Low Pay, Safety Issues

In a blog series we're calling "Weekly Innovation," we'll explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Last week we featured the sink-urinal. (Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.)

You are wasting valuable time when you make your bed in the morning, say designers Jon Wheatley and Marshall Haas. The process of tucking, untangling and realigning the flat sheet that often winds up bunched at your feet can be eliminated, they say, with their new sheet set called Smart Bedding.

Smart Bedding includes a top sheet and a duvet cover that connect at the edges using a snap system. You would still sleep under the sheet — this isn't a sleeping bag. The innovation comes in preventing that flat sheet from bunching up or becoming a hassle to straighten out when making the bed. If this works as promised, making the bed will only require flattening the duvet.

Most of us are familiar with that hot, musky-smelling, cloudy drink served in teacups at sushi bars and sometimes called, erroneously, "rice wine." In other words, most of us have had bad sake.

But finally, Americans are learning to love the good stuff.

Imports of high-end sake from Japan are escalating, and countless sake-focused bars and restaurants in cities across the country are carrying hundreds of bottles each. Savvy gourmands are pairing sake with cheese and chocolate. Mixologists are making sake cocktails. Portland, Ore., has hosted a sake festival three summers in a row.

Perhaps best of all, Americans are now making their own sake. SakeOne, in Portland, Ore., has been doing so since the 1990s and now sells almost a million bottles per year. Much more recently, microbreweries have begun appearing in garages, warehouses and restaurant kitchens across America, turning white pearls of rice into Japan's most famous table beverage.

Several such operations are already in business, while a half-dozen others are gearing up to go. In Asheville, N.C., two microbreweries may be just weeks away from launching: Blue Kudzu and Ben's American Sake.

The latter will be based out of an izakaya-ramen restaurant called Ben's Tune-Up. Co-owner and brewer Jonathan Robinson says that, in a local market saturated with craft beers, sake helps his place stand out.

"I wouldn't want to be opening a brewery now," Robinson tells The Salt. "Everyone is making beer now, and here a lot of people have been brewing for twenty years. But with sake, we're breaking new ground."

Ben's American Sake will be brewed onsite and served on tap. The bar list will include a sake infused with honey and kumquats as well as a carbonated, bubbly sake. Robinson also has plans to borrow a trick from the specialty beer world to make a decidedly nontraditional brew: bourbon barrel-aged sake.

Enlarge image i

Latin American cartels are fueled by U.S. drug demand so their illegal retail networks often stretch throughout America. And Mexico's arrest of Miguel Angel Trevino Morales was a reminder that the connections between drug traffickers and the U.S. are not just commercial. They're also personal.

As NPR's Carrie Kahn and others noted, Trevino's formative crime years were during his adolescence in the Dallas area where he joined a local gang. The Dallas Morning News says he still has a mother and sister in Dallas.

The newspaper says that he eventually returned to his native Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and climbed the murderous criminal ranks.

By the time of his arrest by Mexican Marines early Monday morning, Trevino was alleged to head the Zetas, the most vicious Mexican gang. Known as "Z-40," "Death" and "Chacal (Jackal)," authorities blame him for beheadings and mass killings in which victims were left dangling from highway overpasses to terrorize residents.

Video of yesterday's perp walk, showing Trevino in a blue golf shirt, can be found on the website of the Mexican magazine Proceso.

Many Nacros With U.S. Links

Trevino's not the only notable narco with U.S. origins or strong ties.

One of the most famous and photogenic was U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie" for his Anglo good looks.

His casual wear and irrepressible smirk while in custody helped launch a Mexican fashion trend for the "Big Pony" Ralph Lauren golf shirts - he wore one after his 2010 arrest.

Valdez was from Laredo, Texas, just across the skinny Rio Grande river from Trevino's Nuevo Laredo. Valdez was a charismatic high school football player from a respected local family. After he moved south, he became a key figure in a regional cartel that did battle with the Zetas among others.

His arrest came as he was losing out to his enemies. That led to speculation that he had made a life-saving deal in which he promised to inform on colleagues.

In 2011 then-Laredo, Texas police chief Carlos Maldonado told me that those rumors prompted him to have police visit Valdez' relatives and encourage them to report any threats so they could be protected.

Maldonado's department found the traffickers' U.S. ties helpful. He said they often tracked and arrested cartel players when they got "complacent" while checking in on property and family north of the border. Some were spotted as they confidently came through legal border crossings with visas or passports in hand.

Among those probably celebrating Trevino's arrest is the alleged king of all Mexican kingpins, billionaire Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, reputed head of the dominant Sinaloa cartel.

The fall of a major rival like Trevino probably makes Guzman almost as happy as the day in 2011, when his wife gave birth to their twin daughters in Los Angeles County hospital.

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

Juror B37 has dropped her plans to write a book about the George Zimmerman trial. In a statement released by literary agent Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management, Juror B37 wrote, "I realize it was necessary for our jury to be sequestered in order to protest our verdict from unfair outside influence, but that isolation shielded me from the depth of pain that exists among the general public over every aspect of this case. The potential book was always intended to be a respectful observation of the trial from my and my husband's perspectives solely and it was to be an observation that our 'system' of justice can get so complicated that it creates a conflict with our 'spirit' of justice." Juror B37 told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an anonymous interview on Monday night that she thought Zimmerman's "heart was in the right place," but that "it just went terribly wrong."

BookRiot features photos of the Cleveland Public Library's outdoor "reading nest," an enormous nest for sitting and reading perched outside the library. Designed by the artist Mark Reigelman, the nest is made from more than 10,000 pieces of wood and measures 13 feet high and 36 feet in diameter.

Patrick Juola, one of the linguistic experts who helped The Sunday Times determine that The Cuckoo's Calling was written by J.K. Rowling, tells TIME magazine that writers' fingerprints can be found in the little words: "Propositions and articles and similar little function words are actually very individual. It's actually very, very hard to change them because they're so subconscious."

Following the news that Robert Galbraith is actually a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, our colleagues at The Onion reveal that J.K. Rowling is, in turn, a pseudonym for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: "Gingrich went on to say while he mostly tried to keep his political life separate from his fiction, the character of Ron Weasley was based almost entirely on Tom Daschle."

In 2011, the controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq failed to show up for part of his book tour, and speculation ran wild that he had been kidnapped, perhaps by al-Qaida. Houellebecq reappeared a few days later with no explanations. The Guardian reports that a French film company has now announced that it completed filming a movie starring the author and called L'enlvement de Michel Houellebecq (The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq). Director Guillaume Nicloux has promised to reveal where the writer was for those mysterious several days. Houellebecq is notorious in France for his claim that Islam is "the stupidest religion" and his subsequent trial for inciting racial hatred. (He was found not guilty.)

The New York Times' David Carr explains why Barnes & Noble is good for Amazon: "One of the parties that might want to root for Barnes & Noble is Amazon. Sales of e-books fell immediately after Borders went under, leading some to suggest that reduced opportunity to browse the physical artifact resulted in less online buying."

Mandela, who turns 95 on July 18, was hospitalized in early June with a lingering lung ailment he first developed during the 27 years he spent in prison during the country's apartheid era. The office of South Africa's president describes Mandela's condition as critical but stable, and says that he is responding to treatment.

At the hospital entrance, people have left mementos for Mandela, many of them handwritten notes addressed to "Madiba," Mandela's clan name, or "tata," which means "father" in his native tongue, Xhosa.

Hundreds of these notes plastered the walls — so many that a janitor would occasionally squeeze through the crowd to sweep up any that had been blown away into the street.

Directly in front of the wall, next to a Bible and a small portrait of Mandela, visitors left candles that have melted down in various stages. A row of floral bouquets, some fresh, some wilted, occupied much of the ground below the wall. The area smelled of spent wax and protea flowers.

At times, the crowd seemed festive, singing songs, telling jokes, hugging each other. Some outwardly prayed for Mandela's recovery; others stood in silence, forming circles and holding hands with whatever strangers happened to be standing next to them.

Related NPR Stories

Parallels

The Day Nelson Mandela Walked Out Of Prison

To escape Washington's summer's swelter, I've flown to Argentina and discovered that there's one big surprise among the many things that set this part of the world apart at the moment.

Yes, the steaks are great, the tangos catchy, and the weather here in Buenos Aires cool in July. But who'd have expected that the Coca-Cola logos would often be green?

I used to collect Coke memorabilia, and red is what I've always associated with Coke — a specific, blazing, eye-catching shade of red, in fact. The company does have a rainbow's worth of product packaging these days: blue and green for Sprite; silver and gold for caffeinated and non-caffeinated Diet Coke; black for Coke Zero.