What's new

EcoATMs take old cellphones, MP3 players and tablets in exchange for cash. But the automated kiosks, operating 650 machines in 40 states, are getting bad reviews from police, who are concerned the machines are a magnet for thieves.

The transaction is fairly simple. The machine walks you through the process, scanning your ID to certify you're over 18 and verify your identity. An ecoATM employee inspects the transaction remotely in real time. Once the seller's identity is verified, the kiosk takes the device and assesses its value. You get the cash, and the device is recycled.

The company was purchased in July by Outerwall, formerly called Coinstar, for $350 million. EcoATM officials are hoping the merger will speed the rollout of the machines in more places.

But in Baltimore, officials are trying to ban them.

"I had gotten complaints from the police department that people were stealing cellphones and taking them out to these machines in the county," says Baltimore City Council member Bill Henry.

The region has seen a rise in cellphone thefts. James Green, director of government affairs for the Baltimore Police Department, says ecoATM machines are among many places where stolen phones turn up. Green says law enforcement officials have been in talks with the company.

"We've made some recommendations as to how the data sharing can be improved, and the representatives of ecoATM are working on doing just that," he says.

EcoATM declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying they greatly appreciate the constructive engagement with law enforcement and the Baltimore City Council.

The company also has a page on its website dedicated to addressing "misperceptions" about the kiosks, outlining safeguards against the selling of stolen devices as well as how they use information about the individuals and devices in case theft is reported.

Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier is a vocal critic of the machines. Over the summer, she says her department's investigators traced 200 stolen cellphones to one ecoATM machine. When the D.C. police complained, Lanier says the company stopped giving her department information on phones turned in to its machines.

"Because there was some negative publicity around the use of these machines that fence stolen phones, and I was quoted in those articles, they stopped sending us the data," Lanier says.

The company has since resumed sending the information to D.C. police.

In California, the Riverside City Council banned the machines in August at the recommendation of its police chief, citing the same concerns expressed by Baltimore City Council member Henry and law enforcement officials.

EcoATM says on its website that "less than 1 out of every 4,000 devices" it collects are later reported lost or stolen.

I was in a grocery store one night this week when a sturdy young man approached with a smile.

"Do you remember me?" he asked. "Bini."

Bini — Erblin Mehmataj — was a bony-shouldered 9-year-old boy with a full, toothy grin who lived in an Albanian Muslim housing complex in Pristina, where we stayed to cover the war in Kosovo in 1999.

Bini and his friend Vesa were among the kids who would play in the the housing bloc when there were no bombs going off, and sometimes even when there were; which reminded us how war brings everyday life to a grinding, bloody halt, but it cannot stop children from playing.

There's a picture of us with Bini and Vesa, who is the young woman with a tennis racket, which she held as she walked around as a sign of adolescent sophistication, I always thought, and a reminder of normal life. We hit small rubber balls with Vesa and Bini over an imaginary net on a cracked sidewalk.

Bini — Erblin — is doing great now, getting his Ph.D. in math at a prestigious American school.

I've thought of the kids we played with in Pristina over the years, but especially now as another debate is underway over the merits and morality of U.S. military action that's aimed at stopping a war crime.

The Albanian Muslim families we lived among hailed the U.S. bombers overhead, and the British paratroopers who rolled into the housing bloc after the Serb retreat, because they'd lived through years of brutality under Slobodan Milosevic's regime. Human Rights Watch would eventually report that about 500 civilians died in the NATO bombing, and the Milosevic government trumpeted those deaths while Serb paramilitary units reportedly slaughtered more civilians as they withdrew, knowing that America and other NATO states would not risk sending ground troops to stop them.

But the people in our apartment bloc had seen thousands die in what was called "ethnic cleansing" of Muslim areas. They tended to forgive NATO its lethal mistakes — a misguided bomb that fell on a house of innocent people — if they also blew up the Security Police headquarters in which so much brutality had been plotted.

One of the reasons the U.S. did not send troops to Kosovo or Bosnia was that so many Americans said they didn't want another Vietnam or Somalia, just as many now caution that they don't want Syria to become Iraq or even Benghazi, Libya. History seems to serve up an example for any argument. I wonder what, in a landscape already aflame with war, might give the young Binis and Vesas in Syria today a chance to play without fear.

Baz Luhrmann's first movie, Strictly Ballroom, was a cheap, independent romance set in the world of ballroom dancing. The 1992 film became an international hit. Since then, the director, writer and producer has become known for his lavish operatic movies like Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and the recent The Great Gatsby.

Luhrmann's from Australia, where people are rugged and tough. We're from America, where people are dumb and mix up Australia and Austria. So we're going to ask Luhrmann three questions about that other country that he isn't from, Austria.

If the world as we know it comes to an end, will art survive? And if it does, what kinds of stories will be told after the apocalypse? The answer might surprise you.

The lights come up on a group of people around a campfire in the woods, trying to recall all the details of the hilarious Simpsons episode "Cape Feare," a parody of the Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro movies, in which Bart Simpson is stalked by the evil but incompetent Sideshow Bob.

Then one of the group hears a sound in the woods, and all of a sudden guns are drawn. Turns out something bad has happened. Something very, very bad: The electrical grid is down, nuclear plants are imploding, most of the population of the United States has been wiped out.

"I wanted to take a pop-culture narrative and push it past the apocalypse and see what happened," says Anne Washburn. She's the author of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, an audacious three-act drama that takes place in three different eras: right after the apocalypse, seven years after that, and 75 years farther down the road. The show had its world premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, a notable new-play incubator, and runs at New York's Playwrights Horizons through Oct. 6.

In each of its three acts, Washburn's survivors recount that Simpsons episode, which has become a symbol of all that has been lost, and what hope may be found. And with each retelling, the story changes.

"I was thinking, 'What happens to the story? What's the game of Telephone? What changes, and why does it change?,'" Washburn says. "That was the question. What version led to what version? And who are the people who change a version?"

Enlarge image i

A federal judge who found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers in an e-book price-fixing scheme ordered the tech giant on Friday to modify its contracts and submit to oversight to make sure it doesn't happen again.

The injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan against orders the iPad maker to hire an external compliance monitor for two years to supervise the company's antitrust compliance efforts, The Associated Press reports.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple says it plans to appeal.

As The Two-Way's Mark Memmott reported in July, Cote determined that Apple "conspired to raise the retail price of e-books."

Mark wrote that the Justice Department charged that Apple entered into agreements to sell e-books under the so-called agency model, in which publishers, not retailers, set prices on books. Apple signed deals with five publishers that effectively leveled the playing field with competitor Amazon and guaranteed Apple a 30 percent cut on all book sales. You can find a detailed explanation of the traditional model vs. the agency model here.

The Wall Street Journal writes of Friday's ruling:

"U.S. District Judge Denise Cote prohibited Apple from entering any agreement with publishers that limits its ability to set or alter the retail price for any e-books for up to two years. Under agency agreements it previously reached with publishers, the publishers, rather than Apple, set the retail prices for e-books.

"The prohibitions were tailored for five major U.S. publishers who entered into settlements with the U.S. government, the longest being two years with Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH's Macmillan.

"The judge also prohibited Apple, during those periods, from entering into so-called most-favored-nation agreements with publishers, in which it would be allowed to match the lower price of competitors for best sellers and other books. The most-favored-nation clause was a major issue at trial earlier this summer.

"The judge also said she would appoint an external monitor to review Apple's antitrust compliance policies for two years."

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Next Greatest Generation?

About Neil Howe's Interview

When demographer Neil Howe first coined the term Millennial back in 1991, he didn't expect it to become a loaded word for a generation some call lazy and entitled. But Howe is optimistic about this generation — and so are lots of Millennials.

About Neil Howe

Neil Howe is a renowned authority on generations—who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America's future. He and William Strauss originally coined the term "Millennial Generation" in 1991. They also wrote the pioneering book on this generation, Millennials Rising, in 2000. Howe is founder and president of the consulting firm LifeCourse Associates, where he helps clients understand how generations affect work, marketing, and strategic planning.

It's a typical day — which means it's a very dangerous one — at the Karaj al-Hajez crossing point that separates the eastern part of Aleppo that's held by the rebels and the western part that's held by President Bashar Assad's army.

Despite the risks, street vendors still shout about their merchandise on offer and residents carry on with their daily shopping. An old man urges his wife to hurry so that they can cross back to the other side before trouble erupts, which it does with regularity.

Suddenly, a sniper begins to fire and people start running and hiding behind walls or dashing onto side streets. The shooting gets heavier and machine guns join the noisy exchange of fire.

People wait patiently until the shooting stops and the crossing point opens again, allowing residents to go home to the areas controlled by the government forces.

This used to be a main road connecting two neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and commercial capital. But heavy fighting broke out in Aleppo more than a year ago. With the battle now largely a stalemate, Aleppo has been cleaved in two.

And for more than two months now, this crossing on Karaj al-Hajaz street — which residents call the Death Crossing — has been the only point that links the two parts of the city.

Enlarge image i

The nation's jobless rate dipped to 7.3 percent in August from 7.4 percent in July as 169,000 jobs were added to public and private payrolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated Friday morning.

The figures were roughly in line with what economists had been expecting to hear.

But buried within the report was a troubling revision: Instead of the 162,000 jobs that BLS thought had been added to payrolls in July, it now estimates that employment grew by just 104,000 jobs that month.

We'll post more highlights from the report, as well as reactions to it and analyses about how policymakers at the Federal Reserve may react, in the coming hour. Be sure to hit your "refresh" button to see our latest updates.

Update at 9:10 a.m. ET. Fed Could Go Either Way?

The report "'is a mixed bag that can be used to support an immediate tapering of the Fed's monthly asset purchases or delaying that move until later this year," Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, tells The Associated Press.

Update at 9:05 a.m. ET. "Participation Rate" Lowest In 25 Years:

In what could be a disturbing sign that many Americans are still finding it hard to get work, the report says the labor force "participation rate" last month was 63.2 percent — the lowest it's been since August 1978.

Update at 9 a.m. ET. Will The Fed Hold Off On Dialing Back?

Bloomberg News writes that:

"Fed policy makers have been weighing data to determine whether the economy is strong enough for it to scale back the pace of its $85 billion in monthly bond buying. The Fed said Sept. 4 that the economy maintained a modest to moderate pace of growth.

"Fed Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, a voter on policy this year, said today the central bank shouldn't taper its $85 billion in monthly bond buying until inflation and economic growth pick up. He has consistently supported record stimulus."

Curious about how social media sped up news cycles, amplified trivial events on the trail and enabled Washington's "worst tendencies" during the 2012 presidential race, one of the nation's top young political reporters decided to take a deeper look.

In a 95-page paper written at the conclusion of his spring fellowship at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, CNN's Peter Hamby explores the complaint political practitioners and the people who follow them have made for ages: Campaign coverage is shallow, solipsistic and possibly doing a disservice to voters tasked with making serious decisions for our democracy.

The International Olympic Committee will decide Saturday on the host of the 2020 Summer Games. Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo are vying for the honor.

As our reporters noted on Morning Edition, these are all world-class cities with strong selling points, but they also have some serious problems.

Istanbul

NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported this morning on some of the preparations in Istanbul, where there is optimism surrounding the games.

Turkey would be the first predominantly Muslim country to host the Olympics. But there are hurdles, too: "Violent crackdowns on street protests thrust Istanbul into the headlines this summer, and a doping scandal has rocked the country's sporting federation," Anthony says.

And, he says, environmentalists and urban planners say the last thing Istanbul needs in more mega-projects.

Tokyo

Tokyo last hosted the games in 1964. Reporter Lucy Craft says the Olympics are a chance for Japan to show "it still matters."

Tokyo is one of the richest cities in the world, but the Japanese economy has barely recovered from nearly two decades of low growth. Lucy says:

"[For] Japan the Summer Games are a chance to show it still matters. Saddled with a shrinking, graying population, living uncomfortably in the shadow of an ascendant China, Japan is anxious to prove it remains a contender. On the practical side, the Games were seen as a much-needed boost to tourism, for a country that is way off the beaten track and expensive to visit."

Voting in favor of war or military strikes has proved to have long-lasting political consequences for politicians angling for the highest office in the land.

Just ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose 2002 vote for the Iraq War resolution as a U.S. senator contributed to her failure to secure the Democratic presidential nomination six years later.

Or check in with current Secretary of State John Kerry. His for-it-before-I-voted-against-it position on Iraq War funding as a U.S. senator contributed to his loss to incumbent George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

Which brings us to the crop of potential 2016 White House hopefuls, and how they have decided to post up on the Syria issue.

While some remain on the fence (Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.), or say they will not weigh in (New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie), two big players in the Republican fold, Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, formally voted Wednesday against authorizing a military strike against Syria as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The measure passed the committee, 10-7, and now moves to the full Senate.

Two potential presidential candidates on the Democratic side, Clinton and Vice President Biden, support President Obama's plan to launch a missile strike.

Here's what potential 2016 presidential candidates have had to say on Syria.

"While I have long argued forcefully for engagement in empowering the Syrian people, I have never supported the use of U.S. military force in the conflict. And I still don't. I remain unconvinced that the use of force proposed here will work."
-- Sept. 4 statement

"The goal of preventing a dominant Iran is so important that every regional policy we adopt should be crafted with that overriding goal in mind. The current situation in Syria is an example of such an approach. The fall of Assad would be a significant blow to Iran's ambitions. On those grounds alone, we should be seeking to help the people of Syria bring him down."

"But on the Foreign Relations Committee, I've noticed that some members are so concerned about the challenges of a post-Assad Syria that they've lost sight of the advantages of it. First, Iran would lose its ally and see its influence and ability to cause trouble in the region would be correspondingly reduced, but Hezbollah would lose its most important ally too along with its weapons supplier. And the prospects for a more stable, peaceful, and freer Lebanon would improve."
-- April 2012 speech at the Brookings Institution

Hear the words health care and Congress, and you think fight, right?

And you'd be forgiven, particularly because the House has now voted some 40 times in the past two years to repeal or otherwise undo portions of the Affordable Care Act.

But something unusual happened just before Congress left for its summer break. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 51-0 for a bill that would overhaul the way Medicare pays doctors.

The bill would, among other things, repeal something called the sustainable growth rate formula, or SGR, and eventually replace it with a system that would pay doctors based on how healthy they keep their patients.

The current formula has threatened to cut physician pay, often by double-digit rates, for each of the past dozen years.

"Since its passage in 1997, SGR has bred uncertainty and frustration," said Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., during the panel's consideration of the bill. "Doctors have been forced to endure 11th hour fixes, sometimes on a monthly basis, which clearly have stymied physicians' abilities to run their practices."

Efforts to undo those cuts have come to be known as the "doc fix." And finding the money to pay for each fix has become an annual, and, as Upton mentioned, sometimes monthly headache for doctors, lawmakers and seniors.

But while just about everyone agrees that the payment formula is flawed and that cutting Medicare doctor pay is a bad idea for doctors and the seniors they serve, no one seemed to be able to figure out how to fix it.

So pretty much every year since 2001 Congress has put in a patch and promised that next year they'd figure something out for the longer term.

"Over the last 10 years we've spent about $146 billion on patches and patches and patches," says Ardis Hoven, president of the American Medical Association. "We lived through 2010," she said, when Congress had to avert cuts on a monthly basis for part of the year — something Hoven says was more than a little frustrating for doctors and their patients.

"People can't run practices like that," she says. "They can't budget; they can't plan; they can't do anything. And it was very destabilizing."

Still, despite concerns, it seems relatively few doctors followed through on threats to stop treating Medicare patients. While the number of doctors dropping out of the program has increased in recent years, that number is still relatively small, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And the proportion of doctors taking new Medicare patients is actually higher than those accepting patients with private insurance.

But Congress still wants to stop having to deal with the issue of having to affirmatively cancel a scheduled pay cut every year.

So what makes this year different? One thing is that legislators really did got tired of hearing the phrase "kicking the can down the road," said Texas Rep. Michael Burgess. He's a Republican member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, a doctor, and former member of the AMA House of Delegates. He also one of the lead negotiators on the bill.

"I know I've heard leader Cantor talk about it when we were in the minority," said Burgess, referring to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. "That maybe we were in the minority because we didn't solve big problems, and the SGR was one he always alluded to."

Another reason fixing the problem seems more possible this year is that it's on sale. Literally. Because health care costs in general, and Medicare costs in particular, have been growing more slowly, early this year the Congressional Budget Office said that eliminating the SGR formula and its scheduled cuts would only cost about half as much over 10 years as it predicted last year.

That was important, says AMA's Hoven, because "it sent a different message, I think, that the cost of this was something that could be more easily and readily managed."

Of course even at half-price that 10 year cost is still around 140 billion dollars, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee bill sidestepped the thorny issue of how to pay for it.

"If this legislation is to become law is imperative that we continue to work together, along with our colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee, to develop pay-fors that maintain our bipartisan consensus," said Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

All of which raises yet another potential obstacle. Oversight of Medicare in Congress is shared by two committees in the House and one in the Senate. All three are working in tandem — and with the same unusual bipartisan cooperation — to solve the physician pay problem this fall, before the current fix runs out.

But for that to happen it means lightning will have to strike not just once, but in three separate places by the end of the year.

There is something new and different for home mortgages: Jumbo loans are being made at lower interest rates than traditional home loans. That's kind of like a first class airplane ticket being cheaper than riding in coach.

At first this seems crazy. For as long as anybody can remember, homeowners have had to pay a premium to get jumbo loans. That's because they're not guaranteed by the federal government. If they're not guaranteed, they're riskier, so they cost more in interest payments.

"That's the old math," says Scott Simon, who for many years was one of the biggest mortgage traders in the world. "In the new world, that doesn't have to be true."

Simon, who worked for investment firm Pimco, says right now banks are making most of those jumbo loans only to the very best customers — wealthy people with perfect credit, who can put a lot of money down.

So cutting them a good deal isn't crazy.

"These are incredible borrowers and the banks want to do business with these people because they can do so much other business with them," Simon says.

Meanwhile, big banks have more cash on hand to loan out to these very best customers.

And also, the government controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been ratcheting up fees they charge to guarantee those traditional loans for the rest of America. That pushes up interest rates for average people who take out those smaller traditional loans.

"I'm not sure it's a good thing or a bad thing," Simon says. "What it's gonna do is make Fannie and Freddie incredibly profitable."

That profit will flow back to the U.S. Treasury, which controls Fannie and Freddie. So Simon says it won't be long before Fannie and Freddie have handed over more money to the government than it cost taxpayers to bail them out.

A Teacher

Director: Hannah Fidell

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 77 minutes

Not rated

With: Lindsay Burdge, Will Brittain, Jennifer Prediger, Julie Dell Phillips

Here's a bit of news that might make you drop that chicken nugget midbite.

Just before the start of the long holiday weekend last Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly announced that it was ending a ban on processed chicken imports from China. The kicker: These products can now be sold in the U.S. without a country-of-origin label.

For starters, just four Chinese processing plants will be allowed to export cooked chicken products to the U.S., as first reported by Politico. The plants in question passed USDA inspection in March. Initially, these processors will only be allowed to export chicken products made from birds that were raised in the U.S. and Canada. Because of that, the poultry processors won't be required to have a USDA inspector on site, as The New York Times notes, adding:

"And because the poultry will be processed, it will not require country-of-origin labeling. Nor will consumers eating chicken noodle soup from a can or chicken nuggets in a fast-food restaurant know if the chicken came from Chinese processing plants."

That's a pretty disturbing thought for anyone who's followed the slew of stories regarding food safety failures in China in recent years. As we've previously reported on The Salt, this year alone, thousands of dead pigs turned up in the waters of Shanghai, rat meat was passed off as mutton and — perhaps most disconcerting for U.S. consumers — there was an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu virus among live fowl in fresh meat markets.

What's more, critics fear that the changes could eventually open the floodgates for a whole slew of chicken products from China. As the industry publication World Poultry notes:

"It is thought ... that the government would eventually expand the rules, so that chickens and turkeys bred in China could end up in the American market. Experts suggest that this could be the first step towards allowing China to export its own domestic chickens to the U.S."

Kale has experienced a renaissance in recent years. Once relegated to the sidelines as a mere garnish, the green now appears on 400 percent more restaurant menus than it did four years ago.

But not everyone has bought into the gospel of the vitamin- and mineral-rich green. Even Deb Perelman, who writes the blog and cookbook Smitten Kitchen, was initially a kale skeptic.

"I've said before that I've often thought the world would be a better place if we could stop pretending that kale tastes good," she tells All Things Considered host Melissa Block.

Perelman says she's since come around to the vegetable and uses it "tepidly" in recipes. But she still doesn't understand the obsession around it.

Touchy Feely

Director: Lynn Shelton

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 89 minutes

Rated R for language, some drug use and brief sexuality

With: Rosemarie DeWitt, Ellen Page, Josh Pais, Scoot McNairy

Adore

Director: Anne Fontaine

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 100 minutes

Rated R for risibility. (We kid, we kid. It's for sexual content and language. And risibility.)

With: Robin Wright, Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville

This won't be a standard party-line vote. Big factions within both parties remain skeptical about President Obama's plans to launch punitive airstrikes against Syria.

If the vote were held today, it might not pass. Obama and his allies — including top House leaders of both parties — have a big selling job yet to do to persuade a majority of members to authorize military action.

Not to mention the public. A flurry of polls has shown that few Americans support a new bombing campaign in the Middle East.

What makes this particularly difficult is the need to get the authorization language just right — tough enough to preserve support among those who favor an aggressive stance against Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, without making it sound too bellicose to drive away those nervous about bombing leading to a broader U.S. engagement.

Here are some of the various congressional factions that Obama will have to contend with:

War-Weary Democrats

Democratic House members such as Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Rick Nolan of Minnesota have publicly described themselves as "war weary." After more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they want to avoid casualties and prefer to spend U.S. funds at home.

In a letter to Obama, Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida warned than an overt military strike "is likely to exacerbate violence in the Middle East."

Those opposed to the use of force could make up a sizable percentage of the Democratic House caucus. Two years ago, 70 Democrats voted against authorizing force in Libya. In July, 111 voted for an amendment that would have blocked the National Security Agency from freely collecting phone data on Americans.

"There's maybe a third of the Democratic caucus who, even when the administration has been supportive of the use of force, have been skeptical," says an aide to one House Democrat.

Tea Party Isolationists

Some Republicans reject the "isolationist" label when it comes to this vote, saying they don't see the value of taking sides in another country's civil war. Senators such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah have said there's no vital interest at stake for the U.S. in Syria.

Many have also questioned Obama's handling of national security issues in general.

"I don't think the president has met the burden with members of Congress or the American people in terms of laying out what exactly a limited strike would achieve and what the way forward is," says GOP Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas. "I'm not convinced it's in our national interest."

Griffin promises to keep an open mind during the coming days of debate, but he says his constituents are almost unanimously opposed to such an operation. "I've heard most of the arguments, I think, and I'm not convinced," he says.

At least in the House, Republican doubters might make up a majority of the caucus.

"Even if you give a limited OK, is there the potential for that to be drawn out into something bigger?" asks Doug Sachtleben, spokesman for GOP Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, who is against authorizing the use of force.

International Norm Upholders

No matter their queasiness about getting the U.S. involved in another war, numerous members of Congress are also troubled by Syrian use of chemical weapons. They can be persuaded to support punitive strikes — as long as such action is strictly limited.

Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, for instance, says he's worried that letting the Aug. 21 gas attack go unanswered will "give the green light" to other nations and terrorist groups.

But he's wary of war. Langevin will only support strikes that are "very targeted, with limited scope and duration," says his press secretary, Meg Fraser. "He's been very strong on that — he does not want to see boots on the ground."

This is Obama's most potentially fertile territory, with lots of Democrats and Republicans alike ready to punish Assad over chemical weapons but not wanting to get drawn deeply into the conflict.

Interventionists

Almost since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, some members of Congress, mostly on the Republican side, have urged that the U.S. play an active military role.

GOP Reps. Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas — both veterans — say that Obama should have acted earlier against Assad.

"Inaction will tell Assad, Kim Jong Un [of North Korea] and others that it's open season for the use of chemical weapons," they wrote in The Washington Post. "If we won't act against a use of weapons of mass destruction, Iran will surely believe that we will not act against its nuclear program."

At this juncture, some members of Congress — notably GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona — want Obama to do more than punish Assad. The U.S. must also "degrade" the Syrian regime's killing capabilities and help the rebels overthrow him.

One way to characterize it: If you're going to go in, go in big. On Wednesday, McCain successfully amended the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's draft resolution to state that it would be U.S. policy "to change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria."

"I'm trying to reconcile why, if we're going to go in there militarily, if we're going to strike, why wouldn't we try to do some kind of knockout punch?" Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said at Tuesday's Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Johnson voted against the resolution approved by the committee on Wednesday. Other Republican members have questioned the value of "pinprick strikes" that wouldn't destroy Syria's chemical weapons stocks or tip the balance of power.

But pleasing them by taking on a more expansive mission could cost Obama more votes among congressional skeptics than he'd be likely to gain.

The author is a Syrian citizen in Damascus who is not being further identified for safety reasons.

A threatened U.S. military strike against Syria, now on hold, has left much of Damascus in limbo, filled with unease and uncertainty.

Since President Obama said that the Syrian government must be punished for allegedly using chemical weapons against its civilians, the capital has turned into one huge military barracks.

State security personnel and soldiers have abandoned their garrison compounds on the outskirts of town and moved into the city, closing off entire streets for their own use and seemingly taking shelter among civilians.

They have moved into underground garages in upscale neighborhoods like Kafar Sousseh, many of them bringing new government-issued cars and SUVs.

Residents there say state security men now also occupy empty homes, not always with permission from the owners, a theme commonly heard in many other neighborhoods.

One upset resident in another upscale neighborhood, Mazzeh, said she awoke a few days ago to find several state security men occupying the first-floor apartment, which was left empty several months ago by its owners.

Enlarge image i

U.S. competitiveness among global economies suffered after the 2008 global economic crisis. Four years after the crisis, the U.S. slipped in the World Economic Forum's annual competitiveness ranking. This year it's back up a bit: The U.S. rose to fifth position overall from seventh last year, in the forum's latest survey, which was released Wednesday.

Here's what the survey says about the U.S., the world's largest economy:

"Overall, many structural features continue to make the US economy extremely productive. US companies are highly sophisticated and innovative, supported by an excellent university system that collaborates admirably with the business sector in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its domestic economy — the largest in the world by far — these qualities continue to make the United States very competitive.

"On the other hand, some weaknesses in particular areas remain. Although the assessment of institutions improves this year, the business community continues to be rather critical, with trust in politicians still somewhat weak (50th), concerns about the government's ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (54th), and a general perception that the government spends its resources relatively wastefully (76th). The macroeconomic environment continues to be the country's greatest area of weakness (117th), although the deficit is narrowing for the first time since the onset of the financial crisis."

By measuring the citric acid concentration, together with that of malic acid and the ratio of two other compounds (pyroglutamic acid and inositol for all your flavor buffs), the team could successfully separate the real McCoy coffee from the fakes. It reported its findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

So could a boost in citrus acid be the secret behind Kopi Luwak's appeal? Perhaps, says coffee buyer Mark Overly, who runs Kaladi Coffee Roasters in Denver and blogs at The Coffee Heretic.

"Citric acid is highly prized in coffee," Overly says. "It has a nice lemony quality. It brightens a cup of coffee and makes it more lively — much like with a good glass of orange juice."

Ironically, he says, citric acid is an indicator that the beans are fresh and clean. "Having more of it in the civet coffee seems counter to what I thought sitting around in the cat's digestive tract would do," he says.

But still, the extra acid doesn't change Overly's mind about the civet poop coffee: He refuses to touch the stuff. "I won't taste it. I won't put it in my roaster," he says adamantly. "It goes against my philosophy about having clean coffee" — by which he means the unadulterated flavor of pure coffee beans.

The Salt

Here's The Scoop On Cat Poop Coffee

U.S. competitiveness among global economies suffered after the 2008 global economic crisis. Four years after the crisis, the U.S. slipped in the World Economic Forum's annual competitiveness ranking. This year it's back up a bit: The U.S. rose to fifth position overall from seventh last year, in the forum's latest survey, which was released Wednesday.

Here's what the survey says about the U.S., the world's largest economy:

"Overall, many structural features continue to make the US economy extremely productive. US companies are highly sophisticated and innovative, supported by an excellent university system that collaborates admirably with the business sector in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its domestic economy — the largest in the world by far — these qualities continue to make the United States very competitive.

"On the other hand, some weaknesses in particular areas remain. Although the assessment of institutions improves this year, the business community continues to be rather critical, with trust in politicians still somewhat weak (50th), concerns about the government's ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (54th), and a general perception that the government spends its resources relatively wastefully (76th). The macroeconomic environment continues to be the country's greatest area of weakness (117th), although the deficit is narrowing for the first time since the onset of the financial crisis."

President Obama landed in Sweden on Wednesday — the start of a European trip that will take him to Russia for a summit of world leaders at which he'll try to build support for his plan to strike targets inside Syria.

As The Washington Post says, it's a "high-stakes trip ... that could show whether the United States has broad international backing for action."

The most prominent skeptic about taking military action in response to Syrian President Bashar Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons is the G20 Summit's host, Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, Agence France Presse writes, Putin "suggested Russia could approve military strikes against the Syrian regime if the West presented watertight evidence of chemical weapons crimes but warned the use of force without U.N. approval would be an 'aggression.' "

The two-day G20 Summit is set to start Thursday in St. Petersburg.

While Obama is in Europe, debate continues in Washington, D.C., over his request that Congress authorize military action against Syria. On Tuesday, as we reported, the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "came to a bipartisan agreement that would allow President Obama to use force against Syria, but would also give him a time limit."

Wednesday morning, the committee is expected to vote on that resolution.

Over on the House side of the Capitol, the Foreign Affairs Committee meets at noon ET to hear from the same administration officials who testified before the Senate panel on Tuesday: Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

We posted Tuesday about the "4 exchanges you should listen to" from the officials' Senate testimony. They're expected to get a more skeptical reception from the House members Wednesday.

Related headlines:

— "Senators Rand Paul And John McCain Differ On Syria Strikes." (Morning Edition)

— "How Concerns For Israel's Security Enters Into Sryria Plan." (Morning Edition)

— "Syria Crisis: Vladimir Putin Under Growing Pressure." (The Guardian)

— "Standing Firm, Assad Wages War Shielded With A Smile." (The New York Times)

— "Middle East Strains Under The Weight Of Syria's 2 Million Refugees." (The Wall Street Journal)

The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.

The new estimate was a sharp upward revision from the bureau's initial report on growth in the spring. A month ago, BEA thought gross domestic product had expanded at just a 1.7 percent annual rate from the end of March through June.

Stronger-than-thought growth could mean that the Federal Reserve, which has been watching for the right moment to begin reducing its efforts to give the economy a boost, will decide that the time has come. Investors' concern about what might happen if the Fed does start to scale back its huge bond-buying program are one reason financial markets have been nervous in recent weeks.

Of course, if traders decide that good news about the economy is ... well, good news ... that might give financial markets a boost.

Behind the upward revision in GDP: U.S. firms exported more goods than previously thought.

Bloomberg News analyzes the news and writes that:

"The improvement is consistent with projections that the U.S. has been able to weather the fallout of government budget cuts and higher taxes and is poised to pick up once those restraints fade. Gains in employment and home prices that are shoring up confidence signal households will sustain spending, the biggest part of the economy.

" 'The economy is doing fine,' said Brian Jones, a senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, who projected a 2.5 percent gain in GDP. 'It is going to weather the sequestration. Growth will accelerate in the second half.' "

U.S. competitiveness among global economies suffered after the 2008 global economic crisis. Four years after the crisis, the U.S. slipped in the World Economic Forum's annual competitiveness ranking. This year it's back up a bit: The U.S. rose to fifth position overall from seventh last year, in the forum's latest survey, which was released Wednesday.

Here's what the survey says about the U.S., the world's largest economy:

"Overall, many structural features continue to make the US economy extremely productive. US companies are highly sophisticated and innovative, supported by an excellent university system that collaborates admirably with the business sector in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its domestic economy — the largest in the world by far — these qualities continue to make the United States very competitive.

"On the other hand, some weaknesses in particular areas remain. Although the assessment of institutions improves this year, the business community continues to be rather critical, with trust in politicians still somewhat weak (50th), concerns about the government's ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (54th), and a general perception that the government spends its resources relatively wastefully (76th). The macroeconomic environment continues to be the country's greatest area of weakness (117th), although the deficit is narrowing for the first time since the onset of the financial crisis."

Although he says he did not ask Congress to authorize the use of force against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime "as a symbolic gesture," President Obama reiterated Wednesday that "I always reserve the right and responsibility to act on behalf of America's national security."

The president's comment came during a joint news conference in Stockholm with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. Obama had been asked what he will do if Congress rejects his request to use military force as a way to respond to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. While the president did not say he would go ahead with his plan even without the OK of Congress, he did not rule that out.

Obama is on the first day of a short visit to Europe, during which he will press other international leaders to agree that the world must act in response to the attack near Damascus two weeks ago in which, the U.S. says, about 1,400 people were killed and even more were injured.

"If we don't" respond forcefully, Obama said of taking military action against Assad, "we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it [the use of chemical weapons] ... somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity."

Echoing a comment made Tuesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Obama also said that "I didn't set a red line" by saying Assad would be crossing such a mark if he used chemical weapons. "The world set a red line," Obama said, "when governments representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons [is] abhorrent."

And Congress, he added, "set a red line when it ratified that treaty" after World War I.

Nations cannot just "shake our heads and go about our business" after attacks such as what happened in Syria, Obama said.

Prime Minister Reinfeldt said of Sweden's position that "this small country will always say 'let's put our hope in the United Nations' " and that he's hoping any decision on the use of force will be put off until U.N. inspectors report about what they found at the site of the attack in Syria. But, Reinfeldt added, "I understand the problem of not having a reaction to the use of chemical weapons and what kind of signal that sends to the rest of the world."

A majority of Congress remains undecided, at least publicly, on President Obama's plan to launch a military strike against Syria.

Not Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan. The 69-year-old Democrat is a firm 'no' vote.

He's characterized the administration's evidence of a chemical attack as "sketchy and confusing at best." He remains unconvinced that it was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and not the al Qaeda-linked rebels, who ordered the use of chemical weapons that killed 1,429 Syrians, including 426 children. During a Monday briefing on the situation, he got into a vigorous exchange with Secretary of State John Kerry.

"A careful examination of the evidence in this case shows a profound neglect in exploring the other possibilities," Nolan said Tuesday. "We do know is that this whole thing will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and we'll kill a lot of people as well."

Nolan, who was first elected to Congress in the 1970s on an anti-Vietnam War platform, is emblematic of the resistance in the Democratic Party's liberal wing.

One of an estimated 50-plus left-leaning Democratic House members expected to vote against Obama's plan to strike Syria, Nolan is deadset against the use of force, arguing that the role of the U.S. is "not the policeman of the world."

"I've had the good fortune to vote to end several wars that we ought not to have gotten into," says Nolan, who declined to run for re-election in 1980 but was sent back to the House last fall after a 32-year hiatus. "I'd like to be on the front end of stopping one before it got started."

Nolan says he can't get into the specifics of the contretemps with Kerry because it occurred during a classified meeting. He summed it up this way: "He obviously hasn't read the same documents that I have — but he has invited me to meet with him in his office to go over the ones he has." The meeting is being planned.

Strange Bedfellows

The liberal Democratic congressman finds himself in the unusual position of being aligned with fellow Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, the conservative founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, who also adamantly opposes military action.

Some characterize the opposition to intervention in Syria as libertarian, ultra-conservative, or ultra-liberal. Nolan explained it this way during a Tuesday radio interview in his home state: "I think it's just good common sense."

Yet for all the chatter about liberal anti-interventionists like Nolan teaming up with libertarian or conservative anti-interventionists like Bachmann, history — and especially recent history — is not on their side.

The closest such a coalition came to victory recently was a vote on a bi-partisan House amendment that would have restricted the NSA's power to collect domestic phone records. The amendment, sponsored by libertarian GOP Rep. Justin Amash and liberal Democratic Rep. John Conyers, both from Michigan, attracted votes from both parties but failed 205-217. Bachmann voted against the amendment; Nolan voted for it.

Could the unlikely coalition against military action in Syria produce a different result?

"I would love to be proven wrong because President Obama promised us no stupid wars," says Michael Heaney, a former House committee staffer under Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. "But you don't see any coordination across these groups, and you would need to see that to build a winning coalition."

"Given the polarization in Washington, I don't see it being built — to build a majority, you really need coordinated opposition across both parties," says Heaney, who has written extensively about what he calls the "demobilization" of the anti-war movement since Obama won the White House.

"My prediction is that there will be opposition from both political extremes, people who are fairly marginal in American politics, but most in the middle will support the president," he says.

There is at least one wild card, however: House leaders of both parties have designated the Syria vote one of individual conscience, meaning members will not be pressured by the leadership team to vote a certain way.

"When you have a free vote, or a conscience vote, members have to make up their own minds," says Keith Poole, a political scientist who tracks U.S. politics and polarization at the University of Georgia. "This vote will separate the serious from the unserious, and that's why it's so important."

It's a situation where it will be difficult to predict votes based on previous positions, says John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World, a progressive organization that advocates for the control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

"This is a new situation for everyone," Isaacs says. "Congress is like the dog that chases the car — now they've caught the car, what do they do?"

Slim Prospects For No Vote?

On Tuesday, the chances of the no-on-Syria movement appeared to dim as House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor issued strong statements of support for the president's plan to launch a military strike.

And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who along with Obama, opposed the Iraq War in 2002, has continued to stand by the president.

In a letter Tuesday to Nolan and his fellow House Democrats, Pelosi said that a military response to the use of chemical weapons is "in the national interest," and evidence of the use of chemical weapons is "clear, convincing and devastating."

The rallying that's occurring around the president's plan points to the difficulty that unlikely coalitions face when trying to put together a win.

Nolan concedes the uphill nature of his fight. Even he'd bet on the "power of the presidency and the military-industrial influence on Congress" to ultimately extract a yes vote for Obama's plan.

One reason is that the fervor of those opposing war during the Bush administration was all but extinguished by Obama's election, says Heaney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan where he and a colleague have tracked the modern anti-war movement.

"It's not easy," Nolan says of his anti-war efforts. "The president has a very formidable PR machine."

He also tweaked major media outlets, suggesting that they have failed to balance the voices of advocates for the strike against Syria with contrarians.

"These wars of choice," Nolan said Tuesday in Minnesota, "are bankrupting the country."

He wants Assad's fate to be placed in the hands of the International Criminal Court – despite the fact that it's an alternative that many see as toothless on its own, especially in the face of Syria-like situations. (It took U.S.-led bombings and NATO intervention to bring Bosnian war criminals to trial, for example.)

Still, Nolan argues that courts and the rule of law should be allowed to play their roles despite their flaws.

"It's not easy, but in the progress of humanity, killing begets more killing begets more killing," he said. "I think, in this instance we don't have any friend in this conflict, on either side."

If you've ever wondered just how much marketing companies know about you, whether it's your education or income or purchase preferences, today you can see for yourself.

With the beta launch of AboutTheData.com, marketing technology company Acxiom is giving you a glimpse of the online profile your shopping habits have created for you — the one digital marketers use to sell things to you. As The New York Times reported:

"The company collects, stores, analyzes and sells consumer data with the aim of helping its clients — including well-known banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies, department stores and carmakers — tailor marketing to their most valuable current customers or identify new customers.

Though he says he did not ask Congress to authorize the use of force against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime "as a symbolic gesture," President Obama repeated Wednesday that "I always reserve the right and responsibility to act on behalf of America's national security."

The president's comment came during a joint news conference in Stockholm with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. Obama had been asked what he will do if Congress rejects his request to use military force as a way to respond to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. While the president did not say he would go ahead with his plan even without the OK of Congress, he did not rule that out.

Obama is on the first day of a short visit to Europe, during which he will press other world leaders to agree that the world must act in response to the attack near Damascus two weeks ago in which, the U.S. says, about 1,400 people were killed and even more were injured.

"If we don't" respond forcefully, Obama said of taking military action against Assad, "we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it [the use of chemical weapons] ... somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity."

Echoing a comment made Tuesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Obama also said that "I didn't set a red line" by saying that Assad would be crossing such a point if he used chemical weapons. "The world set a red line," Obama said, "when governments representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons [is] abhorrent."

And Congress, he added, "set a red line when it ratified that treaty" after World War I.

Nations cannot just "shake our heads and go about our business" after attacks such as what happened in Syria, said Obama.

Prime Minister Reinfeldt said of Sweden's position that "this small country will always say 'let's put our hope in the United Nations' " and that he's hoping any decision on the use of force will be put off until U.N. inspectors report about what they found at the site of the attack in Syria. But, Reinfeldt added, "I understand the problem of not having a reaction to the use of chemical weapons and what kind of signal that sends to the rest of the world."

Secretary of State John Kerry says that tests have shown evidence of Syria's use of the chemical agent sarin in an attack on the opposition last month that the White House has blamed on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"I can share with you today that blood and hair samples that have come to us through an appropriate chain of custody from East Damascus, from first responders, it has tested positive for signatures of sarin," Kerry told CNN on Sunday.

"Each day that goes by, this case is even stronger," he said on the cable network's State of the Union program.

Kerry said the U.S. obtained the samples "independently," giving no indication the results came from the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors, who left Syria with samples on Saturday.

The U.N. has not said how long it would take to test its samples, but speaking on Saturday, a spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon suggested it might be days or a week.

Kerry said "we have confidence" that Congress will authorize the use of force against Syria.

"They are good people in the Congress," he tells CNN. "Politically, it's been difficult, but this is a matter of national security, it's a matter of the credibility of the United States of America, it's a matter of upholding the interests of our allies and friends in the region."

Update At 4:22 p.m. ET:

Arab League officials called for action against the Syrian regime for its use of chemical weapons, according to Reuters.

In a resolution issued at the conclusion of an emergency session on Sunday in Cairo, the Arab League foreign ministers said the United Nations and international community to "take the deterrent and necessary measures against the culprits of this crime that the Syrian regime bears responsibility for."

The foreign ministers said those responsible were "war criminals" who should face trial.

NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, reporting from Cairo, says Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal, speaking in Arabic at a news conference, had described the attack on Syrian citizens "inhumane" and said it was time to take action. But he and Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said their preferred solution would be to bring the warring sides together for talks in Geneva.

Update At 4:20 p.m. ET:

Several key Republicans, led by Arizona Sen. John McCain, are calling on the administration to lay out a comprehensive "strategy and a plan" to ensure that Syria is never again able to use chemical weapons as a condition of their vote to authorize the use of force.

Speaking on CBS' Face the Nation, McCain said he and others believe "the best way to eliminate the threat of Bashar Assad's continued use of chemical weapons would be the threat of his removal from power. And that, I believe, has to be part of what we tell the American people."

Meanwhile, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), on NBC's Meet the Press, said Congress should vote against authorizing force unless the White House can provide assurances that the U.S. will not be drawn into a wider war.

Update At 10:10 a.m. ET:

Reuters reports that Iran's former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is quoted by the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency on Sunday as saying Syria, an ally of Iran, had used chemical weapons:

"The people have been the target of chemical attacks by their own government and now they must also wait for an attack by foreigners," Rafsanjani said, according to ILNA.

With Republican House leaders lining up behind President Obama's planned U.S. military strike on Syria, the chances for congressional authorization seemed higher on Tuesday than they did over the weekend.

Still, despite Speaker John Boehner's and Majority Leader Eric Cantor's full-throated support for Obama, approval of military action is far from certain. An attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime is unpopular, to say the least. A new Pew Research Center poll indicates 48 percent of the American public opposes such strikes; only 29 percent approves.

A "no" vote in Congress could still happen, then, especially in the GOP-led House, whose members all face re-election next year and where those on the ideological right and left tend to be more distant from the political center than senators.

What would happen if Congress, or one half of it, voted against authorizing a punitive U.S. strike against Syria?

A view shared by the Obama administration and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alike is that it would prove disastrous to U.S. standing and trust. After meeting with Obama Monday, McCain said outside the White House:

"If the Congress were to reject a resolution like this, after the president of the United States has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic in that the credibility of this country with friends and adversaries alike would be shredded. And it would be not only implications for this presidency, but for future presidencies as well."

Here's why Microsoft says its $7.2 billion deal to buy Nokia's smartphone business as well as that company's patents and services makes sense.

"It all starts with the phone," writes PCWorld, in a piece that analyzes why "the phone is key to everything."

According to the magazine:

"In its 'strategic rationale' explaining the deal, slide 15 of Microsoft's presentation makes the case that the foundation for Windows PCs begins with Windows Phone. ... 'Windows: 300M+ devices a year,' the slide notes. 'Success in phone is important to success in tablets. Success in tablets will help PCs.' "

By measuring the citric acid concentration, together with that of malic acid and the ratio of two other compounds (pyroglutamic acid and inositol for all your flavor buffs), the team could successfully separate the real McCoy coffee from the fakes. It reported its findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

So could a boost in citrus acid be the secret behind Kopi Luwak's appeal? Perhaps, says coffee buyer Mark Overly, who runs Kaladi Coffee Roasters in Denver and blogs at The Coffee Heretic.

"Citric acid is highly prized in coffee," Overly says. "It has a nice lemony quality. It brightens a cup of coffee and makes it more lively — much like with a good glass of orange juice."

Ironically, he says, citric acid is an indicator that the beans are fresh and clean. "Having more of it in the civet coffee seems counter to what I thought sitting around in the cat's digestive tract would do," he says.

But still, the extra acid doesn't change Overly's mind about the civet poop coffee: He refuses to touch the stuff. "I won't taste it. I won't put it in my roaster," he says adamantly. "It goes against my philosophy about having clean coffee" — by which he means the unadulterated flavor of pure coffee beans.

The Salt

Here's The Scoop On Cat Poop Coffee

With Republican House leaders lining up behind President Obama's planned U.S. military strike on Syria, the chances for congressional authorization seemed higher on Tuesday than they did over the weekend.

Still, despite Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor's full-throated support for Obama, approval of military action is far from certain. An attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime is unpopular, to say the least. A new Pew Research Center poll indicates 48 percent of the American public opposes such strikes; only 29 percent approve.

A "no" vote in Congress could still happen, then, especially in the GOP-led House, whose members all face re-election next year and where those on the ideological right and left tend to be more distant from the political center than senators.

What would happen if Congress, or one half of it, voted against authorizing a punitive U.S. strike against Syria?

A view shared by the Obama administration and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alike, is that it would prove disastrous to U.S. standing and trust. After meeting with Obama Monday, McCain said outside the White House:

"If the Congress were to reject a resolution like this, after the president of the United States has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic in that the credibility of this country with friends and adversaries alike would be shredded. And it would be not only implications for this presidency, but for future presidencies as well."

It's been a long time since the people who lived in rural Xuanping saw their little town, which was flooded by a powerful earthquake in 2008. But thanks to a steep drop in water levels, parts of their village in China's Sichuan Province are visible again, from homes and businesses to its school.

The village's ghostly return began in July, when water levels fell from 712 meters to 703 meters above sea level — a difference of nearly 30 feet, as news site China Daily Asia reported.

Ironically, it was more water that helped the village to resurface, as the banks of the barrier lake that covers the village were damaged by severe flooding, causing the overall water level to drop sharply.

The phenomenon has continued, and some former residents have seized the chance to return to their doomed village.

"Incredibly, the national flag hanging on the pole of Xuanping primary school has even been spotted," Anthony Bond reports in The Daily Mail. "Many people have returned to the area to look at their former village - with some even able to have a look around their former homes."

And as photos at the Daily Mail and China Daily show, at least one resident also tried to salvage some household items, taking what look to be refrigerator shelves and a television set.

Patricia Greenfield has tracked families in Chiapas, Mexico, over four decades. Many were very poor when she started her study. Slowly, generation over generation, they grew wealthier.

Along the way, Greenfield noticed something: As the people she followed grew richer, they became more individualistic. Community ties frayed and weakened.

Greenfield expanded her findings to form a more general theory about the effects that wealth has on people: "We become more individualistic, less family and community oriented."

In a new study, the UCLA researcher makes the argument that the same thing has happened in the U.S. over a longer period.

Greenfield bases her finding on an analysis she conducted of more than 1 million books published in the U.S. between 1800 and 2000. Greenfield used the Google Ngram viewer, a tool that allows rapid keyword searches of the frequency of words in the books.

As the country grew wealthy over that 200-year period, Greenfield found, some words became more likely to be used in books, while other words became less frequent.

"The frequency of the word 'get' went up, and the frequency of the word 'give' went down," she said.

The words Americans used to describe themselves changed, too.

"Words that would show an individualistic orientation became more frequent. Examples of those words were 'individual,' 'self,' 'unique,' " she said. "Words that would represent a more communal or more family orientation went down in frequency. Some examples of those words are 'give,' 'obliged,' 'belong.' "

Greenfield's findings and theories dovetail with a variety of other studies and research projects, including Robert Putnam's 2000 book, Bowling Alone, which explores the decline in community relationships in the U.S.

Planet Money

The Charity That Just Gives Money To Poor People

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

The last words of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel laureate and Irish poet who died last week, came in a text message to his wife: "Noli timere," Latin for "Don't be afraid," the poet's son Michael said at his father's funeral. Heaney was buried in Northern Ireland's County Derry, where he grew up and where many of his most famous poems are set. Hundreds of mourners attended his funeral, including Irish President Michael D. Higgins, taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, Sinn Fein members Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and celebrities such as Bono. The Irish poet Paul Muldoon said in a eulogy delivered at the funeral and printed in The New Yorker, "It was Seamus Heaney's unparalleled capacity to sweep all of us up in his arms that we're honoring today. ... I'm thinking of his beauty. Today we mourn with Marie and the children, as well as the extended families, the nation, the wide world. We remember the beauty of Seamus Heaney — as a bard, and in his being."

Alabama state Sen. Bill Holtzclaw has asked schools to ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from high school reading lists. He told the Alabama Media Group: "The book is just completely objectionable, from language to the content." The book, which tells the story of a black girl who wishes for blue eyes, includes descriptions of incest and rape. Holtzclaw's appeal comes after criticism from fellow Republicans that he failed to oppose the Department of Education's Common Core school standards.

The prestigious Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy were announced this weekend, honoring John Scalzi's Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas and Brandon Sanderson The Emperor's Soul, among other works.

Frederik Pohl, the author whom Kingsley Amis once called "the most consistently able writer science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced," died Monday. He was 93. He won several Hugo awards and a National Book Award for science fiction. Best known for his novels, particularly 1977's The Gateway, he was also a blogger, with recent posts on subjects as various as fracking, pig farmers and H.G. Wells.

The Best Book Coming Out This Week:

In the new book from Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus, a man and a child arrive in a distant place, perhaps the afterlife, perhaps some socialist dystopia where blandly content people live without passion or lust ("a strange thing to be preoccupied with," one character tells the old man when he mentions sex). They remember only snatched of their previous lives, just "the shadows of memories." The man sets out to find the boy's mother, convinced he will know her when he sees her, and settles on a virgin named Ines. Coetzee's sentences are sparse, almost barren, though also characteristically lovely. This is a frustrating and captivating book, one that offers many questions and few answers.

In the grand days of railroad travel, passengers arrived in monumental terminals. There was grandeur, style and comfort — qualities that today's equivalent for long-distance travel, the airport, mostly lack. Especially in the United States.

In a survey of international travelers by the British firm Skytrax, not a single U.S. airport ranked anywhere near the top of the list. Singapore got top honors, while the best the United States could do was Cincinnati's airport — which came in at No. 30.

So what makes the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport the top-ranked in the U.S.? I decided to fly there to find out.

The Midwestern Touch

When you arrive at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (airport code CVG), one of the first things you hear is a welcome message recorded by Marty Brennaman, the voice of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

It's one of the touches that airport customer service director Brian Cobb highlights — the airport's Midwestern charm.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Report: Beijing, Shanghai Among Worst Airports For Delays

A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad said Monday that the international community has not produced evidence to substantiate claims that his regime used chemical weapons in a deadly attack last month.

"Those who make accusations must show evidence. We have challenged the United States and France to come up with a single piece of proof. (Presidents) Obama and Hollande have been incapable of doing so," Assad told the French newspaper Le Figaro in an interview in Damascus.

Assad has made few public appearances and given few interviews since an uprising began more than two years ago. But with the U.S. and France favoring military action, the Syrian leader said such strikes could unleash much greater violence across the region.

"The Middle East is barrel of powder and today the flames are creeping closer. It is not just a question of the Syrian response but what else might happen after the first (Western) air strike," Assad said. "Everyone will lose control of the situation when the powder barrel explodes."

More On Syria

Politics

Syria Resolution Could Be A Hard Sell On Capitol Hill

Once a standard fixture at every gas station, good old fashioned paper maps have all but folded in the digital age. But, there are places that can baffle your high tech gadgets.

Getting yourself lost in a rural state is an easy thing to do. Pavement turns into dirt track, and before you know it, you're driving through miles of woods and boulders, and your GPS isn't helping.

"Where it's an electronic device and has batteries and relies on a satellite signal, there's a lot of things that can go wrong," says Bryan Courtois, a search and rescue specialist. Trying to rely solely on electronic mapping, he says, is a good way to get yourself lost. Even he doesn't do that.

"I'll probably look at a map ahead of time, and just have a rough idea. And then if I agree with where the GPS is bringing me then I follow it. If not then I'll probably pull over and look at the map," he says.

But that's assuming you can find a paper map.

"I think there's definitely a slowing down of the production of paper maps," says Shannon Garrity, a data specialist with Delorme, a company that sells GPS units, but still publishes paper maps.

Since 1998, map sales have steadily fallen for Delorme. A spokesperson for Illinois-based Rand McNally confirmed that the market is trending away from paper. But for Delorme, the slump has finally leveled out, and people are buying maps again in addition to their GPS units. And that's probably a good thing says Garrity, because the most common GPS units aren't really meant for wilderness exploration.

Maine has actually had several incidents in recent years of motorists driving into remote bodies of water, most recently in the small coastal village of Roque Bluffs where two women on a foggy evening accidentally drove their car right into the ocean and drowned. It's not known if the women were using a GPS device, but driving along that same road, here's what happened when a GPS was set for Roque Bluffs: "Your destination is straight ahead."

But, "straight ahead" at that point is actually the ocean. Getting too caught-up in the turn-by-turn instructions that are so helpful when trying to find a coffee shop in Boston, won't serve you well here. Not having that "big picture" view is perhaps the flaw with current GPS technology says Garrity. For Maine Guide Bryan Courtois, a GPS unit is a worthy addition to your road trip supplies, but it shouldn't be the only thing in your glove box.

"It's a nice tool, but you still have to have a map and compass, and look at the map and compass more than the GPS," he says.

In time, as more remote areas are digitally mapped, GPS services WILL be improved for remote parts of the United States, but for now, when taking the road less traveled, you might also want to take along an old fashioned map — even if you can't fold one.

Patent trolls — a term known more among geeks than the general public — are about to be the target of a national ad campaign. Beginning Friday, a group of retail trade organizations is launching a radio and print campaign in 17 states.

They want to raise awareness of a problem they say is draining resources from business and raising prices for consumers.

Patent trolls, known officially as nonpracticing entities, or NPEs, are companies that don't make or sell anything. They just own patents. They make their money by getting licensing fees from businesses that use technologies covered by the patents they own.

For many years, these "trolls" largely targeted companies that make new technologies and develop software. But Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel for the Food Marketing Institute, one of the trade groups paying for the ads, says the patent trolls now target grocery stores, restaurants and clothing shops.

"We are not for the most part developing these technologies," he says. "We're simply using them." Among the other groups behind the ad campaign are the National Restaurant Association and the National Retail Federation. The ad campaign is their way of fighting back against the patent trolls.

As Labor Day honors American workers, stress weighs on many. A changing world — and therefore a changing workplace — has many employees on the job and staring at screens for hours upon hours. Some have reached a breaking point.

John Challenger, CEO of workplace consulting company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, diagnoses burnout. He tells NPR's Jacki Lyden stress can manifest emotionally, mentally or physically. "It can be combined with doubts about your confidence or the value of the work you do," he says.

Businesses can take a hit from burnout, too. At least one study indicates that U.S. businesses lose an estimated $300 billion a year to stress, according to the American Psychological Association.

The federal workforce is facing a particularly high turnover rate, according to Jeffrey Neal, who spent nearly 30 years working in human resources for the federal government.

"Federal employees have been beaten on pretty severely for the last several years. Federal employees haven't gotten a pay raise in more than three years. They are constantly being used as a political football," he says. "You're hearing these constant attacks on the federal workforce, and people are reacting to that. You can only take so much of it before it breaks your spirit."

Neal says federal retirements have increased every year for the last four years. Not only are older workers retiring more quickly, younger workers are also leaving.

"They're coming in, taking a look around, and saying, 'No, this isn't really for me,' " Neal says. "So not only are we losing the most experienced people at the upper end of the age ranges, we're losing a lot of the younger folks who really should be the future."

Moreover, agencies like the Small Business Administration require a specific skill set that takes training and support. "You may find the agency's ability to carry out its mission crippled by the lack of qualified personnel," Neal says.

During his time with the government, Neal says he used words like "burnout" and "crush."

"Because that's what's happening to folks. ... You can crack down on a workforce, and they will perform, for a while," he says. "And then the fatigue sets in. The frustration sets in. The anger sets in. And at some point, they just break. And then they leave."

So what's a company to do? Challenger says there may be some insight to gain from humans' cyclical emotions.

"We stay in one place and grow to the point where, all of a sudden, things are just too much the same," he says, "and there's burnout and change has to occur."

For the past year and a half, Mike Hallatt has been driving across the U.S.-Canada border and back, bringing loads of groceries back to Vancouver. There's no food shortage in Canada — but there's an absolute lack of Trader Joe's grocery stores, and that created an opening for an entrepreneur who doesn't mind making a long drive.

Originally called Pirate Joe's, Hallatt's store serves a niche market: Canadians who wish Trader Joe's was in their country and who will pay a bit extra for triple ginger snaps and fanciful trail mixes.

Trader Joe's is not pleased. It filed a lawsuit this summer, complaining that Pirate Joe's harms the grocer's brand by selling its products outside its control and confusing customers. In response, Hallatt changed the store's name to _irate Joe's.

"I bought the stuff at full retail. I own it," Hallatt says. "I get to do with it whatever I want to, including reselling it to Canadians. My right to do this is unassailable."

And, he says, "There is no confusion in the marketplace. Pirate Joe's, now _irate Joe's, is blatant and unambiguous."

But Hallatt adds that he doesn't see the big chain, which is owned by the same German family that owns the Aldi supermarkets, as an enemy. And he says the company is damaging its own brand by pursuing him in court. Hallatt has spoken to numerous news outlets about the case, including NPR member stations in Southern California and New Hampshire.

"I would prefer Trader Joe's accept my long-standing offer to follow guidance on how they would like me to operate," Hallatt says in an email.

As for reselling Trader Joe's products, he says he's far from alone.

"I discovered there are many people running resale businesses on eBay and Amazon," Hallatt says. "The amount online resellers manage to mark up the prices is the stuff of legend among TJ's employees."

More intriguingly, he adds, "There are three grocery stores reselling Trader Joe's products in the U.S. that I know of."

The Vancouver store's motto carved into its threshold reads, "Better than nothing" — with a trademark symbol identifying it as a protected slogan. It seems that the Canadians who crave Trader Joe's treats would agree.

As Hallatt says, "Business is brisk!"

The unique business model led us to get in touch with Hallatt. Below is a lightly edited version of his answers to our questions. Trader Joe's has not been speaking publicly about the active lawsuit.

NPR: Will there be a hearing on Trader Joe's lawsuit soon?

Hallatt: "We filed a motion to dismiss a few weeks ago, they responded [last] Monday and we [responded] to that. The court will take a look at it soon I hope. Parallel to that we are in the early stages of discovery ahead of a jury trial to resolve their complaint — if it comes to that."

I assume people get really attached to some products. What are your biggest sellers?

"We have people come in and say things like, "My babies," as they pull items off the shelf. I'm amazed how many specific and emphatic requests we have received in the past year and a half. There are at least a few people attached to every product we carry, and if I don't have it sitting on the shelf I hear about it.

"I'm reluctant to open on a day we are out of stock on Ridge Cut Salt & Pepper Potato Chips, for example.

"Once a week we get a call from a guy who asks only, 'Is it safe?' This is code for Low Calorie Lemonade. There are maybe 25 people in Vancouver who know about that stuff. It's fantastic."

Have you been told to leave Trader Joe's stores?

"Not formally from corporate. When the first squeeze came around the time of the cease and desist letter last year, it was the manager of the Bellingham [Wash.] store who apologetically asked me not to shop there anymore.

"I'm still OK if I'm shopping for myself or my family, although my cart gets looked over.

"I tell people who are 'helping' me shop not to clear out shelves but to shop like a typical shopper in there, stocking up. Get one or two of a set of items, bag them yourself and get out of there."

Do you have to portion supplies out to several vehicles?

"For too long it was just my Honda Element. The record was 98 bags of groceries. A few were on my lap. I've since up/downgraded to a '93 E-250 extended van. [It has a] straight six, so I need earplugs over 50 mph. Ninety-eight bags barely dents capacity.

"We call our product acquisition program 'Plan C' and we have a sign in the store that reads, 'Don't ask because we can't tell you.' "

What are the export laws for bringing groceries over the border?

"Pretty much anything I can buy in the U.S., I can legally import into Canada. There are permits required for meat, seafood and dairy. We stick to vegetarian packaged nonperishable items.

"Packaging compliance is also required and we are working closely with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ensure we are fully compliant."

Do you have any plans to expand?

"_irate Joe's is a unique response to the market Trader Joe's created in Vancouver when it opened a store just over the border in Bellingham. I feel they should either open a store up here or leave the free market to sort itself out. Requiring a 160-mile round trip across an international border to get their products is anything but neighborly."

Twenty-four hours after President Obama announced on Saturday that he'll wait for congressional authorization before launching strikes on Syria; members of Congress attended a classified briefing at the Capitol.

For days, most of the discontent among members of Congress has been about not being included in the deliberations on Syria, about not getting the chance to vote. Now that they've gotten their way, each member of Congress will have to go on the record.

"Right now, I would say, if the vote were today, it would probably be a no vote," Republican Rep. Peter King of New York told Fox News Sunday.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said this on NBC's Meet the Press, "Listen, I think Congress passes the authorization."

And, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky also weighed in on NBC, "I think it's at least 50-50 whether the House will vote for involvement in the Syrian war."

A number of their colleagues came back Washington, D.C. on Sunday — the same day as the first classified briefing on Syria. It was open to any lawmaker, and members who attended estimate more than 100 showed up.

And there were reminders it was still summer recess. Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan strolled in wearing jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Darth Vader.

But lawmakers kept touching on the gravity of the question before them.

"It's a vote of conscience, and I think this is the supreme vote that any member of Congress can take," says Xavier Becerra, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "So this is not going to be a matter of trying to enforce party discipline, or to vote for or against the president. This has got to be something you believe in

Becerra says he believes in limited, brief strikes on Syria. But if you ask other lawmakers what the president should do, the most frequent response — from both Democrats and Republicans — was a version of, "I don't know yet."

"I'm not there yet," says Democratic Rep. Janice Hahn of California. "I feel terrible about the chemical weapons that have been used. However, we know that chemical weapons have been used in other instances, and we did not take military action."

Lawmakers were holed up in the briefing room for almost three hours.

House Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut said there was a barrage of skeptical questions for White House officials. The specter of Iraq hung over the discussion.

"In that room today, there were a lot of memories over another time when a President came and said — or at least the president's people came and said — that this slam-dunk intelligence, and of course, that was not I think an episode that most members would ever want to repeat," Himes says.

Many members are struggling with the question of how attacking Syria because of chemical weapons would actually protect U.S. national security. Others are wrestling with the goal of the mission. Is it to punish the use of chemical weapons, or should the U.S. go further, and try to overthrow the regime? And still others are fearful the U.S. is treading into an open-ended conflict, despite the president's assurances the strikes would last just a few days.

"Well, this is a partial blank check the way it's currently drafted," says House Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. He says explicit limits are missing from the language in the resolution the president wants Congress to pass.

Van Hollen wants to see an express provision forbidding boots on the ground, and a time limit on the attack.

Caution like that was perceptible from nearly every lawmaker emerging from Sunday's briefing.

Republican Mike Burgess of Texas says he's probably voting no.

"I just think back to what General Eisenhower said in 1954. That was a pretty rough year for him. He said you shouldn't go to war for emotional reasons. And right now, I think it would be in response — it would be an emotional response. And that probably is not a good enough reason," Burgess says.

One day after the president's announcement, it's clear the debate on Syria will be intense and divisive. And somehow Congress will have to fit that conversation into an already jam-packed schedule. After the summer recess, they'll have just a matter of weeks to figure out the country's debt and deficit problems too.

Radiation surrounding Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has increased 18 fold following a report last month that radioactive water had leaked into the ground around the plant, which was badly damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the Dai-Ichi Fukushima plant, reports that radiation around the site is at 1,800 millisieverts per hour, a level that Reuters says is "enough to kill an exposed person in four hours."

Previously, the utility, also known as Tepco, said the leaking water was at around 100 millisieverts per hour.

The BBC says:

"In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour.

The plant has seen a series of water leaks and power failures."

Secretary of State John Kerry says that tests have shown evidence of Syria's use of the chemical agent sarin in an attack on the opposition last month that the White House has blamed on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"I can share with you today that blood and hair samples that have come to us through an appropriate chain of custody from east Damascus, from first responders, it has tested positive for signatures of sarin," Kerry told CNN on Sunday.

"Each day that goes by, this case is even stronger," he said on the cable network's State of the Union program.

Kerry said the U.S. obtained the samples "independently," giving no indication the results came from the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors, who left Syria with samples on Saturday.

The U.N. has not said how long it would take to test its samples, but speaking on Saturday, a spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested it might days or a week.

Kerry says "we have confidence" that Congress will authorize the use of force against Syria.

"They are good people in the Congress," he tells CNN. "Politically it's been difficult, but this is a matter of national security, it's a matter of the credibility of the United States of America, it's a matter of upholding the interests of our allies and friends in the region."

Nelson Mandela, still in critical condition with a chronic lung infection, was discharged from a hospital and taken by ambulance to his home in Johannesburg on Sunday after three months of intensive care. The former South African president and anti-apartheid leader is 95.

The news comes a day after mistaken reports that he had already been sent home from a Pretoria hospital.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton says the office of current South African President Jacob Zuma says Mandela's condition has "vacillated between serious to critical and at times unstable."

"His home has been reconfigured to allow him to receive intensive care there," the statement said. "The health care personnel providing care at his home are the very same who provided care to him in hospital. If there are health conditions that warrant another admission to hospital in future, this will be done."

The Nobel Peace laureate was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night in June 8. His recent health scare has prompted an outpouring of love, sympathy in and outside South Africa.

Zuma has urged South Africans to accept that Mandela is now old and frail, saying all they could do was pray for him.