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The online magazine Ozy covers people, places and trends on the horizon. Co-founder Carlos Watson joins All Things Considered regularly to tell us about the site's latest discoveries.

This week, he tells NPR's Arun Rath about a televangelist on the rise in Singapore, a blog that takes a deeper look at viral news photography and the most surprising trend of the Great Recession.

"Fifty-year-old Joseph Prince [is] the founder of New Creation Church. Today, people watch him and enjoy his sermons in over 200 countries. Many people in America, tens of thousands, regularly tune in and watch him, buy his books and listen to his sermons.

"Joseph Prince is the son of a Sikh priest. Started off life as an IT consultant, and has gone on ... to become one of the most popular ministers in the world."

Read 'Joseph Prince And The New Creation Church' At Ozy.com

Now that President Obama has apologized to those who've seen their health care plans cancelled due to the Affordable Care Act, losses he pledged beforehand wouldn't happen, he joins the line of modern presidents who have had to look the American people in the eye and give their regrets.

Actually, Obama didn't so much look Americans in the eye as much as he did NBC News interviewer Chuck Todd. Predictably, the president's apology was rated unsatisfactory to many of his and Obamacare's critics. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, called it "half-hearted." And that was among the nice things critics said.

It's true that, as apologies go, the mea culpa was arguably weak tea. "And I am sorry that they— you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me," Obama said, creating an odd distancing between his administration's actions and their effect on the citizenry.

While it might be too much to expect a president to say: "I'm sorry my administration's policies reallly screwed these Americans," if Obama's formulation seemed off key, it was because it was so circumspect and indirect.

In that, however, Obama isn't alone. Being president means never having to say you're sorry, at least not in a soulful, direct way that resonates with other humans.

Consider just a few examples from Obama's predecessors.

George W. Bush — After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and his administration's response proved to be singularly inept, Bush faced a crisis of confidence in his leadership, fueled by his memorable "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" and other impressions he left that he thought all was well.

Instead of gushing "I'm sorry" — which really wasn't his style, after all — Bush opted for the "I'm responsible" approach. Three weeks after the hurricane swamped New Orleans, Bush took advantage of a joint press conference with the then-Iraqi president to say:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

It was prostate cancer, not an assassin's poison, that killed famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, officials in Chile announced Friday. The Nobel laureate's body was exhumed for testing this past spring, due to claims from an employee and Neruda's family that he had been murdered at age 69.

From The Santiago Times:

"'Each of several examinations revealed the presence of metastatic lesions scattered throughout several segments of the skeleton, corresponding to the disease for which Mr Pablo Neruda was being treated,' Bustos said Friday.

"These results mirror those released in May. Perhaps most important this week was the information from toxicology reports. Bustos announced these results explaining that what they found matched the original cause of death listed in 1973.

"'The toxicological analyses of the bones of Mr. Pablo Neruda confirmed the presence of pharmaceuticals used for the treatment of cancerous diseases, specifically prostate cancer, which were used at the time,' Bustos said. 'Chemical agents which could have caused the death of Mr Pablo Neruda were not found.'"

France, Le Monde

Standard and Poor's has lowered France's credit rating one notch from AA-plus to AA, citing the country's limited ability to get its public finances in order.

French officials called the downgrade unfair. Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault said France's rating remained one of the best in the world while Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici said the country's rating was among the top six in the EU.

Speaking at the World Bank in Paris, French President Francois Hollande defended his current policies, saying they were "the only way to ensure credibility."

Nearly two years ago, S&P lowered France's credit rating from AAA status.

Japan, Kyodo

A Japanese lawmaker at the center of a controversy over the handing of a letter to Emperor Akihito has been barred by the country's upper house of parliament from events involving the imperial family.

Taro Yamamoto, an antinuclear activist and independent lawmaker in the upper house, approached the emperor at the annual garden party at the palace last week, and handed him a letter.

He said he wanted to draw Akihito's attention to the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster on the health of children. A member of the Imperial Household Agency quickly took the letter from the emperor. The agency later described Yamamoto's conduct as inappropriate.

Yamamoto's punishment was decided Friday in a meeting of a parliamentary committee. Kyodo reported that the punishment is considered unusual as it is based on the chamber's right to "maintain order."

The emperor has no political role in Japan, but such contact with him is considered taboo. Akihito's father, Emperor Hirohito, renounced his divine status at the end of World War II, but the emperor's role remains a sensitive one in Japan seven decades later.

Critics from across the political spectrum have blasted Yamamoto. The lawmaker has apologized, but has refused to resign.

Ghana, Ghana Web

Ghana's president has fired a deputy minister reportedly caught on tape saying she'll stay in politics until she makes $1 million.

"His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama has relieved Ms Victoria Hammah, Deputy Minister of Communication of her post as Deputy Minister," said a statement from the Ministry of Information and Media Relation.

The move comes after the leak of a tape in which Hammah can purportedly be heard saying she won't quit politics until she makes at least $1 million.

"If you have money then you can control people," she reportedly tells an associate with whom she appears to be traveling.

The conversation between the two women also reportedly carried unflattering references to Ghanaian political figures. The tape has been widely circulated since it was leaked earlier this week.

There were 204,000 jobs added to payrolls in October, about 80,000 more than expected. Still, the jobless rate still edged up to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

There were 204,000 jobs added to payrolls in October, about 80,000 more than expected. Still, the jobless rate still edged up to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

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

This year's Dylan Thomas Prize has gone to Claire Vaye Watkins for her debut story collection Battleborn. The prize, aimed at encouraging "raw creative talent worldwide," is restricted to writers under 30 and is worth 30,000 (about $48,000). It's the latest of several major prizes for the 29-year-old writer, who in March won the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and the $20,000 Story Prize on the same day. She told Fresh Air that her stories, set in the American West, were inspired by her childhood in Nevada: "I always say I exist in a constant state of homesickness, and that's really the context in which I wrote this book, too. You know, I wrote it five months after my mom committed suicide and about three months after leaving the West for the first time to go study [at graduate school] in Ohio, and there was this landscape of grief and homesickness. I'd never written a word about Nevada until then, and I think suddenly being removed from my home and missing, you know, the mountains and the stars and the dry air and the rocks and the spiny plants, just this tremendous, overwhelming homesickness, which surely had to do with my mom's dying, I guess I kind of felt the need to conjure up Nevada and bring it back to me that way." She was also connected to the desert by her father, Paul Watkins, who had been a member of the Manson "Family." She wrote in an essay for Granta, "My father first came to Death Valley because Charles Manson told him to. He always did what Charlie said; that was what it meant to be in The Family. The desert my father knew then was a place of dune buggies and doomsday, a wasteland accessible only by four-wheel drive, where even Helter Skelter couldn't find him."

BuzzFeed has hired Isaac Fitzgerald, formerly of McSweeney's, to be its new books editor. Fitzgerald told Poynter he won't run negative reviews: "Why waste breath talking smack about something?" (Though it would be shame to miss out on Alexandra Petri's cheerful mauling of Sebastian Faulks' Jeeves and Wooster remake in The Washington Post: "Faulks has a good handle on Wodehouse's rhythm — IF SOMEONE TAKES THIS HALF OF THE SENTENCE AND USES IT AS A BLURB I WILL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR GARTERS — if not his music.")

The shortlist for the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award includes Woody Guthrie, Manil Suri and Susan Choi, among others. The prize was founded in 1993 to discourage the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels." Last year's winner was Nancy Huston, who was honored for this infelicitous metaphor in her novel Infrared: "flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements." In 2008, John Updike was given a lifetime achievement award. This year's winner will be announced Dec. 3.

Poet and Riverhead Books publicity director Jynne Dilling Martin is Antarctica's new poet in residence. After winning a National Science Foundation grant, Martin will spend six weeks living with scientists at the McMurdo research station. She tells Fast Company that she wants to take inspiration from the researchers working there: "It's sort of the opposite of Walt Whitman's famous poem about the astronomer. Whitman was kind of an asshole and has this jerky humanities position that science is a diminishment of the wonder that we feel." But Martin says that "the more you get to know how weird and wonderful these animals are actually increases the majesty and awe that you feel." In an email to NPR, she writes, "The tragedy of life in NYC is that my "nature poems" are about polar bears at a zoo so I am excited to run around with my kindred animal spirits in the Antarctic wild."

NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports that a hundred years after he was born, Albert Camus is still a divisive figure in France and his native Algeria: "But it's Camus politics, not his philosophy, that still makes waves in France. Though he hailed from the left, today he's embraced by conservatives. In the 1950s, Camus fell out with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Paris left bank literary scene after he denounced communism. Camus's stance on the Algerian war infuriated both the left and right at the time. He supported Arab aspirations for political rights, but he couldn't imagine an independent Algeria."

The nation's biggest labor group is taking its support for an immigration overhaul to the TV airwaves, with Spanish-language ads that hammer Republican House members.

One ad uses the words of three GOP members. There's Steve King of Iowa saying: "They're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert," played after a shot of Latinos at a wedding ceremony. And Alabama's Mo Brooks saying: "I'll do anything short of shooting them," after the image of a soldier hugging his wife. Georgia's Paul Broun is featured saying: "These illegal aliens are criminals and we need to treat as such," after a photo of roofers at work.

The spots are running in Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, and Bakersfield, Ca. — the districts of Broun, Daniel Webster, Mike Coffman, and David Valadao. The union said it is spending more than $1 million, with the ads running a minimum of 210 times in each of the markets over two weeks. They are also running English-language versions of the ads in the Washington, D.C., market.

State

District

Name

Obama Vote Share

Romney Vote Share

Percent Hispanic Population

CA

10

Denham, Jeff

50.6

47.0

40.0

CA

21

Valadao, David

54.6

43.5

72.1

CA

23

McCarthy, Kevin

36.1

61.5

35.4

CA

25

McKeon, Howard “Buck"

47.8

49.7

37.9

CA

31

Miller, Gary G.

57.2

40.6

49.3

CO

3

Tipton, Scott

45.8

51.8

24.3

CO

6

Coffman, Mike

51.6

46.5

19.6

FL

10

Webster, Daniel

45.7

53.4

16.2

GA

10

Broun, Paul

36.3

62.5

5.2

NM

2

Pearce, Steve

44.9

51.7

52.1

NV

3

Heck, Joe

49.5

48.7

15.4

We'll likely hear this hour that the U.S. economy slowed in the third quarter, with gross domestic product growth at a 2 percent annual rate vs. the previous quarter's 2.5 percent, forecasters tell Reuters.

If that is what Bureau of Economic Analysis says when it releases its latest data at 8:30 a.m. ET, it will be confirmation that even before the 16-day partial government shutdown in October, the economy was cooling.

News of slower growth before the shutdown would also support the view of many experts that "it's difficult to see the economy taking off in the near term," Standard Chartered Bank economist Thomas Costerg says in Reuters' report.

This morning's report will be the first of three in coming months about the third quarter. As happened with the second-quarter data, initial estimates are often revised. The bureau initially said growth in the second quarter registered at just a 1.7 percent annual rate. As more data came in, it raised the estimate to that 2.5 percent annual rate.

Also due at 8:30 a.m. ET: The latest data on weekly claims for jobless benefits.

Many of the nation's largest cities are about to get what polls suggest Americans want in Washington: an entirely new group of leaders.

Some of the nation's longest-serving big-city mayors are leaving office, including Michael Bloomberg of New York, who has been in office for a dozen years, and Tom Menino of Boston, who has held his post for 20.

"In my view, we've had some amazing leadership at the local level," says Ralph Becker, the mayor of Salt Lake City. "That makes it a fun time to be in local government, unlike being at the state or certainly the federal level."

Minneapolis, Charlotte, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Petersburg and Seattle also elected new mayors on Tuesday. On Nov. 19, San Diego voters will be picking a replacement for Bob Filner, who resigned in August after having accosted numerous women.

The new crop of mayors will have at least one problem in common. They are likely to get less help from their states and the federal government than their predecessors, even while their personnel costs are continuing to rise.

"The pension and health costs of cities are large and growing, and a huge threat to anything else that any incoming mayor wants to do," says Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

"Until they get a grip on those, it's hard to see much of new initiatives that can be launched," he says.

New Ideas But No Money

The turnover with Tuesday's elections follows recent mayoral changes in Chicago and Los Angeles. This changing of the guard will have significance beyond the borders of these individual cities.

The outgoing generation of mayors pioneered ideas that were widely disseminated and copied by other local leaders, on issues ranging from climate change to gun control.

Bloomberg alone was famous — or notorious — for his health regulations, including bans on indoor smoking and trans fats, as well as an abortive attempt to limit large sodas.

Following larger-than-life figures who have held power for a long time is always a challenge, says James Brooks, a program director for the National League of Cities. But the new mayors will bring with them new staffs and new ideas.

"One thing that's likely is outreach to nontraditional stakeholders who perhaps did not get their fair shake or have easy access in the old days," Brooks says.

Certainly, long-standing regimes can grow tired, their ideas fossilized. The problem for the newcomers, though, is that they may not have enough money to try out many new ideas.

"It's going to be a challenge politically to walk the tightrope of raising the revenues many cities need for pension and health costs, while delivering the normal services," says David Swindell, who directs the Center for Urban Innovation at Arizona State University.

The Example Of Rahm

In this sense, Rahm Emanuel may be in the vanguard of the new generation of mayors. He gave up his job as President Obama's chief of staff to become mayor of Chicago in 2011, succeeding 22-year incumbent Richard M. Daley.

Emanuel inherited a city that had enjoyed a major building boom and a gleaming downtown, but also was losing population and was home to some of the worst pockets of poverty in the country.

He's grappled with two major challenges in office — the city's notorious murder rate and finances that are being seriously dragged down by pension debt.

"Rahm has taken on all the issues, in his own way," says Paul Green, a longtime observer of Chicago politics at Roosevelt University. "Whether you like him or not, he's had the guts to take them on — you can't finesse it any longer."

Chicago may be an extreme case, but other cities will have to confront similar problems.

A recent survey by the National League of Cities found that local finances are improving, with most cities better equipped to pay their bills for the first time since 2006.

But the same survey found that cities face long-term problems created by persistent rates of unemployment and inadequately financed pension and health benefits. Some cities have just about run out of cash.

Not All Gloom And Doom

Local officials always like to complain. The feds pass their problems down to the states, which leads the states in turn to take things out financially on their cities and counties.

Mayors are like the younger sibling with no one to hand their problems off to. In a way, that has forced them to keep innovating.

There's a reason the leading candidates for mayor in cities like New York and Boston addressed topics such as education and crime pretty much with generalities, says DiSalvo, the Manhattan Institute fellow.

"The lack of real policy proposals have been highlighted by the campaigns," he says. "In that regard, it's very hard to predict what these guys might do."

Becker, the mayor of Salt Lake, notes that he took office in 2008, at a time when municipal finances were turning most dire. But he's been able to oversee some major development projects nonetheless, while responding to community expectations for a city that's both more walkable and sustainable.

"People are continuing to look more and more at our cities as places where we want to live," he says. "How do we provide that environment?"

It's easy to think of mayors as dealing with quintessentially local problems — potholes and streetlights, says Jennifer Bradley, co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution, a recent book on local leadership.

The incoming mayors, she suggests, will have to steal a page from those they replace — looking outside their city's borders for networks and ideas to address problems they all have in common, such as boosting their economies and addressing the skills gap that is exacerbating income inequality.

"It's doesn't look like the federal government is going to be leading the way," Bradley says. "It's up to mayors to say what we are going to do."

Payday lenders made about $49 billion in high-interest loans last year. More than a third of those loans were made online. I wondered what happens when you apply for such a loan, so I decided to find out.

In the course of reporting a story earlier this year, I logged on to a site called eTaxLoan.com and filled out an application.

I asked for $500 and, to be safe, I made up an address, a name (Mary) and a Social Security number. The site asked for more sensitive stuff — a bank account number and a routing number — and I made that up, too.

In spite of the made-up information, in less than a minute, I got a response.

"Congratulations. Tremont Lending has been selected as your lender and you have been pre-approved for a loan up to $750."

If I wanted to borrow $750 for a week, I would have had to pay $225 in interest. The site said that was an annual percentage rate of more than 1,300 percent.

I did not agree to take the loan.

But within minutes, my phone rang (I had entered my real phone number). It was a guy from Tremont Lending, in South Dakota. I told him I was a reporter, that I didn't really want a loan, and I figured that would be the end of it. But then, I started to get more calls.

"Hi, Mary. My name is Ethan, Ethan Foster, and I'm calling from InstaLoan. And this call is regarding the loan application which you put online. It has been successfully approved by our company as a personal loan."

AGAINST THE MOTION

Joseph "Gray" Davis was the 37th governor of California. As governor, he signed legislation aimed at strengthening California's K-12 system by establishing the Academic Performance Index to increase accountability in schools, and worked to expand access to higher education with scholarships and college loans. Davis also funded and established Institutes of Science and Innovation in partnership with the University of California and private industry. Today, Davis is of counsel at Loeb & Loeb LLP; a member of the bipartisan Think Long Committee; a senior fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs; and honorary co-chair of the Southern California Leadership Council. He has also served as lieutenant governor, state controller and state assemblyman. He began his public service as a captain in the U.S. Army, earning the Bronze Star for meritorious service in Vietnam.

Michael Lind is a co-founder of the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he is the policy director of its Economic Growth Program and Next Social Contract Initiative. A columnist for Salon, he has been a staff writer or editor at The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic and The National Interest and contributes frequently to The New York Times and the Financial Times. He is the author of a number of books of history, political journalism, fiction and poetry, including Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). Lind has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities. He is a fifth-generation native of Texas, where he worked for the state legislature.

It's only been hours since Kmart announced its Black Friday plan — to remain open for 41 hours in a row beginning early on Thanksgiving Day. But online critics are throwing a red light on the plan, with some calling the company a Grinch for its aggressive approach to the start of the Christmas shopping season.

"Everybody thinks your executives are horrible people," a man named Christopher Sweet wrote on Kmart's Facebook page. Another critic, Ted Talevski, appealed to the workers: "This is a message to all Kmart employees! Do not go to work on Thanksgiving Day!"

Responding to the negative feedback, Kmart says that it will try to staff its stores with seasonal workers to accommodate employees who want to be with friends and relatives.

Amber Camp, who says she works at Kmart, said via Facebook that her bosses "are planning on all the employees to have some time so we can actually spend time with our families on Thanksgiving."

The criticisms began flowing soon after Sears, Kmart's parent company, announced that the stores that long promoted "blue light specials" will be open from 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to 11 p.m. Friday night.

Sears stores will work a less aggressive schedule, opening from 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night to 10 p.m. Friday.

"Kmart has opened at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving for the past three years," reports CNN Money, where we spotted the story about the backlash. "Last year, however, stores closed for a few hours at 4 p.m. to let shoppers and employees get to their Thanksgiving dinners."

The company's social media team repeatedly issued responses to the criticisms on Facebook, saying, "We understand many associates want to spend time with their families during the holiday. With this in mind Kmart stores do their very best to staff with seasonal associates and those who are needed to work holidays."

One person offered their own response to a similar statement on Twitter, saying, "yes, that's what the companies I worked for told us too, however we had no choice in the matter and I doubt your associates do either."

But some defended the move, saying that many retail employees would be happy to earn overtime. And others say they aren't bothered by the plan.

"Nobody is physically forcing employees to work at Kmart if they don't like the scheduling," one Facebook comment read.

This is part one of a two-part report about sexual assault of agricultural workers in the U.S.

Even though it's a warm day in California's Salinas Valley, Maricruz Ladino looks like she's going ice fishing.

"I look like a tamale — so many layers!" she says in Spanish.

The 40-year-old farm worker wears tights, thermal underwear, two pairs of socks, a hairnet, wool cap, big boots and snow pants — clothes to keep her warm on her 10-hour shift in a walk-in cooler where she packs lettuce.

"And even though I'm bundled up like this, some men at work tell me, 'What a beautiful body you have,' " she says. "For me, someone who's lived through what I've lived through, it bothers me."

Ladino is still visibly shaken by what happened back in 2006, when she says a farm supervisor constantly harassed her and pressured her to sleep with him. She tried to rebuff him until one day, on the way back from the fields, he took her to pick up some boxes. And, she says, he raped her. "I couldn't say anything. I couldn't even scream because it's very traumatic. You don't know how to react," she says in Spanish.

Like many other undocumented women, she was afraid she would be branded a troublemaker if she reported the supervisor to management. "I saw my choices: I lose my job, I can't feed my family," she says.

But, she says, after seven months, she finally worked up the courage to lodge a complaint against the supervisor. And she was fired. With the help of a legal aid group, Ladino eventually filed a civil suit against the grower. The accused supervisor denied the allegations. But the company agreed to a confidential settlement in 2010.

Ladino agreed not to tell anyone the company's name and how much money it paid her in damages. She didn't file a police report, and the supervisor never faced criminal charges or went to jail.

"Conditions that allow sexual assault to occur all revolve around who has power," says Bill Tamayo, a regional attorney with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Governors, legislators and mayors were elected Tuesday across the nation. Voters also made key decisions about taxes, marijuana, genetically modified foods — and even secession.

Below is a round-up of some of Tuesday's most noteworthy election results, reported by NPR member stations:

Colorado

Colo. School Funding Measure Fails By Large Margin (CPR News)

Colorado voters rejected a ballot measure to increase income taxes by nearly $1 billion to provide more funding for public schools by a 2-1 margin. The campaign behind the measure had raised $10 million and Gov. John Hickenlooper supported the proposal.

Colo. Pot Taxes Sail To Victory (CPR News)

Meanwhile, 65 percent of the state's voters approved a tax on all recreational marijuana sales, which are set to begin in January. Colorado legalized the use recreational pot state last year.

2013 Election Big Success For Colorado's Fracking Foes (KUNC)

Voters in Fort Collins, Boulder and Lafayette all approved measures that will either ban or pause the practice of hydraulic fracturing.

51st State Supporters Get Mixed Message At The Polls (KUNC)

Six of the 11 counties in Colorado with the question on its ballot voted to secede and create a new state. But the effort is unlikely to succeed, as it would have to be approved by the state and Congress.

Florida

Foster Out, Kriseman In As St. Petersburg Mayor (WUSF)

St. Petersburg, Florida, is getting a new mayor.

Georgia

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed Sails To Re-Election (WABE)

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed sailed to re-election Tuesday, winning "very precinct, every neighborhood, every quadrant of the city of Atlanta." In his second term, he want to make Atlanta the "center of logistics in the Western Hemisphere."

Maine

Portland Becomes First East Coast City To Legalize Pot (MPBN)

Portland, Maine, voted Tuesday to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for adults.

Massachusetts

Walsh Elected The Next Mayor Of Boston (WBUR)

Meet Boston's new mayor, Marty Walsh. A son of Irish immigrants, Walsh overcame a childhood fight against cancer and a young adult's struggle with alcoholism. He succeeds Tom Menino, the city's longest serving mayor in history.

Where Walsh, Connolly Won (WBUR)

Really want to get down in the weeds on the Boston mayoral race? WBUR has a great interactive ward-by-ward map that shows where City Hall was won and lost.

Women Top Boston At-Large City Councilor Race (WBUR)

The Boston City Council will have four new faces next year – the largest turnover in over a decade. In the at-large race, the two top vote earners were women.

Michigan

Duggan Elected Detroit Mayor Under Shadow Of Bankruptcy (WDET)

In Detroit, voters have elected the city's first new mayor since it was taken over by the state and filed for bankruptcy protection. Race also became an issue in the election — Mike Duggan is the first white mayor to represent Detroit's majority black population in four decades.

Minnesota

Betsy Hodges Holds Commanding Lead In Minneapolis Mayoral Race (MPR News)

City Councilor Betsy Hodges looks likely to emerge victorious from the 35-candidate field in the Minneapolis mayor's election after finishing with 36 percent of voters' first-choice ballots. The city is employing a "ranked-choice" voting system for the first time, so the final results won't be known until the second- and third-choice ballots are counted Wednesday.

New York

De Blasio's Long, And Lucky, Campaign (WNYC)

Bill de Blasio won the New York City mayoral election in a landslide, even though he was widely considered to be a long shot just a few short months ago during the Democratic primary.

New Jersey

Christie Re-Elected As NJ Governor (WNYC)

Republican Gov. Chris Christie sailed to re-election over Democrat Barbara Buono in New Jersey, prompting speculation of his prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

North Carolina

Democrats Keep Firm Grip On Charlotte (WFAE)

Patrick Cannon came out on top in Charlotte's mayoral race with 53 percent of the vote as Democrats maintained their solid 9-2 majority on the City Council.

Patrick Cannon Is Charlotte's New Mayor (WFAE)

Cannon says his election as mayor culminates a long, arduous journey where there haven't been any "crystal stairs."

Texas

Texas Voters Approve All 9 State Constitutional Amendments (KUT)

Texas voters approved all nine state constitutional amendments on the November ballot, including Proposition 6, which creates a new water infrastructure loan program with $2 billion from the state's Rainy Day fund.

Referendum's Defeat Could Doom The Astrodome (KUHF)

You know the Astrodome? The so-called "Eighth Wonder of the World"? The failure of a bond issue to repurpose the aging hall means it might have to be demolished.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker Wins Third Term, Pledges Hard Work Ahead (KUHF)

Houston Mayor Annise Parker easily won re-election with more than 57% of the vote – amid chants of "Governor! Governor!"

Virginia

Despite Loss, Cuccinelli Says Conservative Principles Retain Wide Support (WAMU)

Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who lost the Virginia governor's race, and his supporters say his narrow defeat Tuesday was a moral victory.

Washington

Ed Murray Pulls Ahead Of McGinn With 56 Percent (KUOW)

State Sen. Ed Murray appears poised to defeat incumbent Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, earning 56 percent of the vote in the initial round of ballot counting. Since Washington voters submit ballots by mail, some votes have yet to be tabulated.

Effort To Label GMO Foods Failing In Washington State (KUOW)

A ballot measure that requires the labeling of genetically modified food is headed for defeat in Washington State. Some influential members of the food and beverage industry opposed the initiative, raising a state record $22 million to defeat it.

Catherine Chung went from mathematics to writing, though she says words were always her first love. She was named one of Granta's New Voices in 2010, and her first novel, Forgotten Country, received honorable mention for a PEN/Hemingway Award last year.

In Forgotten Country, Chung writes of a family with a curse that stretches back generations — from their time in Korea to their life in America. Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, each generation of the family has lost a daughter.

"I tried to pull my hand out of my mother's grasp, but she held on. She had lost her sister; she had lived in the aftermath of war. This was always what it came down to, in the end. My grandmother had told me once that my mother had never gotten over the death of my aunt. 'Never talk of it,' my grandmother had said. 'Never bring it up.' "

This past weekend's Saturday Night Live was the most-watched episode of the season, but viewers may have been looking for something other than laughs. Saturday's show followed weeks of criticism over SNL's painfully obvious lack of diversity.

Swiss scientists report that tests on the remains of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "moderately support" the theory that his 2004 death "was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210."

It was almost a year ago that Arafat's grave was opened in the West Bank city of Ramallah so that samples could be taken. Palestinian officials took the unusual step because Arafat's widow, Suha Arafat, said earlier in 2012 that traces of the radioactive element had been found on clothing that belonged to her husband.

Now, Al-Jazeera has what it says is an exclusive: the report from scientists at the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne about what they've discovered. (Al-Jazeera also shared the report with The Guardian.)

Al-Jazeera writes that the tests "found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat's ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs." The Guardian notes that the levels of polonium were "at least 18 times higher than the norm in Arafat's ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his leaked bodily fluids."

Other scientists are also studying the samples from Arafat's remains. Al-Jazeera writes that "60 samples of his body tissue were taken and 20 each distributed to the Swiss team, a French team of judges and forensic experts assigned to [a French-led] murder investigation, and a Russian group invited at the request of the Palestinian Authority. The Russians are expected to disclose their results soon. The French are not expected to release their results before the murder investigation concludes."

It was an Al-Jazeera documentary that last year led French authorities to launch a murder probe. Arafat, 75, died in November 2004 at a French hospital. He had been flown to France from the West Bank after falling ill.

The Palestinian leader's death has long been the subject of conspiracy theories and questions.

In 2005, The New York Times wrote that medical records indicated that he "died from a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unidentified infection." But the Times added that "the records show that despite extensive testing, his doctors could not determine the underlying infection." There's no sign in the Times report that doctors suspected polonium poisoning.

Al Jazeera notes if Arafat was poisoned, then:

"In terms of motive, the chief suspects would be Arafat's Palestinian rivals or the Israeli government, his sworn enemy. Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2004, viewed Arafat as a 'terrorist' and called his death 'a turning point in Middle Eastern history.' A year earlier, then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said killing Arafat 'is definitely one of the options.'

"However, Israel has always vehemently denied it had anything to do with Arafat's sickness or death and to date no evidence has emerged that implicates it."

Israel Haaretz

Israel's Foreign Ministser Avigdor Lieberman, one of the country's most prominent and polarizing political figures, was acquitted of fraud charges on Wednesday in a closely watched case.

Lieberman, who is known for his hard-line policies against the Palestinians and Arab countries, is now expected to return to the job from which he resigned a year ago while the case was working its way through the courts.

"This chapter is now behind me. I am now focusing on the challenges ahead," Lieberman told reporters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has kept the foreign minister's post for himself, in effect babysitting the position until the court ruled on Lieberman.

Netanyahu called Lieberman immediately after the verdict to congratulate him.

Lieberman's right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party is a close ally of Netanyahu's Likud party and together they constitute the foundation of the ruling coalition.

The fraud charge revolved around an Israeli diplomat, Zeev Ben Aryeh, who allegedly provided Lieberman with confidential information about a police investigation concerning Lieberman. Several months later, Lieberman named Ben Aryeh as his diplomatic advisor, the newspaper reported.

Britain The Guardian

Masked protesters from the group Anonymous threw fireworks and bottles outside of Buckingham Palace on Tuesday night to protest government austerity cuts.

At one point, a fire broke out near the gates of the palace and 11 people were arrested.

The protest was billed as part of an Anonymous Million Mask March that also included demonstrations in Japan, Australia and New Zealand to oppose "austerity cuts, corruption and an increase in state surveillance," the newspaper reported.

"I joined Anonymous because I was arrested under the Computer Misuse Act," said Sean Roesner, 21, a self-employed computer programmer. "I spent eight months on police bail last year and had done nothing wrong. We are here to stand up for what we believe in, to make the world a better place."

Japan Japan Times

Japan has subsidized its rice farmers for decades, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration has now proposed reducing that assistance and abolishing it entirely by 2018.

The rice farmers are a powerful political force in Japan and nearly 1 million participate in a program to limit production in order to keep rice prices high. In addition, tariffs of up to 778 percent are imposed on imported rice, the Japan Times reported.

Trade negotiations could force the government to cut those tariffs.

The newspaper said that Abe's administration "has set its sights a policy that will invite more competition, apparently because government controls, including numerous protective measures, have failed to prevent the rice industry from shrinking."

Several hundred doctors and nurses jammed the courtyard of the No. 1 People's Hospital in Wenling, a city with a population of about 1 million in Zhejiang province, a four-hour train ride south of Shanghai.

They wore surgical masks to hide their identities from the government and waved white signs that read, "Zero tolerance for violence."

"Doctors and nurses must be safe to take care of people's health!" video shows them chanting.

The medical workers were reacting to a triple stabbing at the hospital three days earlier. Wenling officials responded by deploying dozens of riot police, further angering already traumatized hospital staff.

"Withdraw the special forces," chanted the nurses and doctors, many of whom wore white lab coats.

The last couple of weeks have been bad ones for medical workers in China, even by the violent standards of the country's hospitals. In addition to the attack in Wenling on Oct. 25, another angry patient in Harbin, in China's far northeast, stabbed a doctor to death. And in south China's Guangdong province, family members of a patient who died beat two doctors, leaving one with kidney damage.

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The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case questioning the use of prayer at government meetings. But first, the marshal will ask "God" to "save the United States and this honorable court."

In 1983, the high court ruled that legislatures could begin their sessions with a prayer, as long as there is no attempt to proselytize or disparage any faith, and as long as the process for selecting the prayer-giver is not discriminatory. Since then, dozens of other cases have tested the constitutionality of prayers at government venues other than legislative sessions, with often conflicting rulings in the lower courts. Wednesday's case could produce some guidelines for the future. It involves almost exclusively Christian prayers that took place at one town's board meetings in upstate New York.

Until 1999, the town of Greece, N.Y., opened its board meetings with a moment of silence. But when John Auberger was elected supervisor, he instituted formal prayers, given by a rotating group of clergymen — a group that until 2008 was exclusively Christian. Often prayers were "in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who lives with you," for instance.

Two women objected to the prayers at board meetings and sued to stop the practice. One is an atheist; the other, Susan Galloway, is Jewish.

Galloway doesn't object to nonsectarian prayers, but she says that prayers alienate people from their government when they are connected to a particular religion. She has felt uncomfortable, she says, when she does not bow her head or stand as invited to do during the prayers.

"I don't feel like ... I'm welcome at my town government anymore," Galloway said in an interview with NPR. "My grandmother had to leave Russia because of the Cossacks. My father had to leave Germany because of Hitler." She feels strongly that Americans must "make sure that our government and religion are separate, because we are a diverse country." This is necessary, she says, to recognize diversity and "protect the minorities' rights."

Supervisor Auberger is no longer granting interviews, but earlier this year, in an interview with PBS, he explained why he instituted and has fought for prayers at board meetings. "Our Founding Fathers believed in the right for us to pray and have that freedom of expression in prayer," Auberger said, and the town of Greece is simply continuing that tradition. There are no guidelines for what prayers are appropriate, he said, because that would amount to censorship.

So, what if someone were to say, "Believe in Jesus or you'll burn in hell"?

"We could not object," Auberger says, "because our purpose is to allow ... a freedom of expression in their prayer."

The town of Greece has in fact become more diverse in its prayers since the lawsuit was filed in 2008. Among those who have offered prayers are a Jewish layman, the leader of a Baha'i assembly and a Wiccan priestess. But the prayers are still overwhelmingly Christian.

"The houses of worship in the Greece community are predominantly Christian," says lawyer Tom Hungar, who represents the town, and the prayer-givers who volunteer will inevitably reflect that make-up. "But anyone is free to pray," he says, and "the plaintiffs in this case were both offered the opportunity to deliver invocations."

"The plaintiffs don't want to give the prayers," responds Douglas Laycock, who represents those challenging the prayers. The town's claim of equal access, he says, is a myth — the board never announced that all comers were welcome to deliver the invocation, nor does it publicize its policy.

"The prayers here advance Christianity and they proselytize Christianity," Laycock says.

Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and one of the nation's leading scholars in this area, will tell the justices that town board meetings are very different from sessions of the legislature. Often the board meetings include high school classes, community members who are being honored and those seeking action from the board.

"The way these meetings are structured, everyone is drawn into participation in the prayer," says Laycock. "You're either part of the prayer or you're visibly outing yourself as a religious dissenter." Ultimately, the challenge is "about protecting religious liberty for everybody, not just the majority but also the religious minorities," he says.

And if the town wants to have prayers at the beginning of meetings, Laycock contends, it should have guidelines for nonsectarian prayers.

But lawyer Hungar, representing the town, counters that the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the courts should not be in the business of parsing prayers. "Government is not supposed to be in the business of telling prayer-givers what the content of their prayers should be," he says.

The history of this country, Hungar observes, began with public professions of religion. Indeed, prayers opened sessions of the first Congress — the Congress created by the same Constitution that included, as its First Amendment, a ban on government establishment of religion.

Part two of our "Secret Persuasion" story reported with the Center for Responsive Politics. Read the first part here.

As tax-exempt organizations become a vehicle of choice for big political donors, one powerful appeal is the anonymity. Federal laws allow tax-exempt groups — unlike political committees — to withhold their donor lists from disclosure.

And some groups take the low profile a step further. An investigation by NPR and the Center for Responsive Politics found a tier of social welfare groups that operate behind the scenes, raising money and doling it out to other, more public groups, while reporting those grants to the IRS only annually.

One pioneer in this activity is the Wellspring Committee, founded in 2008. Based in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, it has raised $24 million, and distributed nearly $16.9 million to other social welfare groups. Using tax records, the NPR-CRP investigation identified three of its donors — other social welfare groups — and found they accounted for just over $251,000, or 1 percent of Wellspring's revenues.

About This Investigation

As the year goes on and as Mullen — a poet renowned for her ability to play with language and sound — becomes more acclimated to the form, the seemingly random collection begins to cohere and gives us perspective into how she sees the world. The tankas don't offer much space for storytelling, but there are moments in the book, particularly thrilling, in which the tankas seemed linked by the common story of her routine day and how it's transformed by her attention. In one tanka, for example, she writes:

So light and delicate, skimming tips
of maidenhair trees. I thought you were butterflies.
Now I see you are the tiniest birds.

Another super-typhoon is brewing in the western Pacific, and forecasters are saying it will likely slam into the Philippines on Friday, packing winds of 155mph.

Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters says Typhoon Haiyan "will likely be the most dangerous tropical cyclone to affect the Philippines this year."

The Weather Channel says:

"Given this more southern track than past tropical cyclones this season, the Philippine capital of Manila, home to roughly 12 million people in the metro area, is in danger of a direct strike by Haiyan Friday night or early Saturday local time (Friday, U.S. time).

"Furthermore, another tropical cyclone (T.D. 30W) has already soaked parts of the central Philippines. Any additional rain from Haiyan will fall over saturated ground in the central Philippines, raising the threat of flooding and mudslides.

"Haiyan is then expected to sweep quickly into Vietnam by Sunday, possibly still as a strong typhoon."

India's launch Tuesday of a satellite bound for Mars is the latest milestone in a space race among Asian nations. China, though, is still seen as the leader. A decade ago, China became the third nation to put up a manned spacecraft; it has worked on a lunar rover, a space station as well as its own unmanned mission to Mars.

I recently visited China's National Space Science Center, which is spearheading much of the research behind these programs. The center aims to be China's answer to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Goddard Space Flight Center.

Asia

China Seeks To Carve Out A Space Of Its Own

One of the big questions facing social media giant Twitter ahead of its New York Stock Exchange debut this week is how much money it could actually make for investors.

"We have incurred significant operating losses in the past, and we may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability," the company writes, in its business prospectus.

Twitter expects revenue growth, but that it will be slow. We've written before on how it's planning on cornering mobile advertising as its main revenue booster. These user numbers a new Pew/Knight study out this week help its argument.

Even though Facebook dwarfs Twitter in the number of users (Facebook's at more than one billion to Twitter's 200 million), the study shows those who consume news on Twitter are younger, better educated and more mobile than Facebook news consumers. That's a huge selling point for Twitter in its bid to lure advertisers. Pew and Knight note:

"Mobile devices are a key point of access for these Twitter news consumers. The vast majority, 85%, get news (of any kind) at least sometimes on mobile devices. That outpaces Facebook news consumers by 20 percentage points; 64% of Facebook news consumers use mobile devices for news. The same is true of 40% of all U.S. adults overall, according to the survey.

Twitter news consumers stand out for being younger and more educated than both the population overall and Facebook news consumers.

Close to half, 45%, of Twitter news consumers are 18-29 years old. That is more than twice that of the population overall (21%) and also outpaces young adults' representation among Facebook news consumers, where 34% are 18-29 years old. Further, just 2% of Twitter news consumers are 65 or older, compared with 18% of the total population and 7% of Facebook news consumers."

Payday lenders made about $49 billion in high-interest loans last year. More than a third of those loans were made online. I wondered what happens when you apply for such a loan, so I decided to find out.

In the course of reporting a story earlier this year, I logged on to a site called eTaxLoan.com and filled out an application.

I asked for $500 and, to be safe, I made up an address, a name (Mary) and a Social Security number. The site asked for more sensitive stuff — a bank account number and a routing number — and I made that up, too.

In spite of the made-up information, in less than a minute, I got a response.

"Congratulations. Tremont Lending has been selected as your lender and you have been pre-approved for a loan up to $750."

If I wanted to borrow $750 for a week, I would have had to pay $225 in interest. The site said that was an annual percentage rate of more than 1,300 percent.

I did not agree to take the loan.

But within minutes, my phone rang (I had entered my real phone number). It was a guy from Tremont Lending, in South Dakota. I told him I was a reporter, that I didn't really want a loan, and I figured that would be the end of it. But then, I started to get more calls.

"Hi, Mary. My name is Ethan, Ethan Foster, and I'm calling from InstaLoan. And this call is regarding the loan application which you put online. It has been successfully approved by our company as a personal loan."

In recent years, companies ranging from JPMorgan Chase to Walmart to Boeing have announced special hiring programs for veterans. Seattle coffee giant Starbucks is the latest.

All of these companies are trying to bring down a stubbornly high unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But to succeed, companies have to take the time to understand the skills of service members.

For 37 years, Carrol Stripling served in the U.S. Army, both active duty and reserves, mostly as a paralegal. She retired from the military in 2011, and then worked for the state of Washington until she got laid off this year.

Stripling says she faces a trifecta of possible obstacles: She's 62 years old; she has a military background; and as a woman, she's not who people think of when they imagine a veteran.

"It's real hard for veterans to say, 'I need help,' because we're taught from the very beginning to be self-reliant," Stripling says. "So it's difficult to say, 'I'm failing at this.' And basically, I feel like I'm failing at this."

Rob Porcarelli is a staff attorney at Starbucks who helped dream up the plan announced Wednesday. Starbucks will hire at least 10,000 veterans or their spouses over the next five years.

Porcarelli was a prosecutor in the Navy in the 1990s. But when he started hunting for a civilian job, he encountered prejudice. "In one interview downtown, the head of the department said, 'You know, Rob, I think you're going to find more of the intellectual type in the law firm environment.' And I remember thinking, 'Maybe he's joking. Did he just call me and all my friends stupid?' "

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates sits on Starbucks' board. He says sometimes people coming out of the service have a hard time translating their skills. That's why the company will have a recruiter specialized in hiring service members.

"It may be a little tougher for business at the beginning of the process, but I think the long-term benefits are tremendous," Gates says. The jobs will range from making lattes to supply chain management.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says it's complicated to tease out why transitioning back to civilian employment is hard, but companies can help.

"Businesses and business leaders have an obligation and a responsibility to do something about that and to meet these people more than halfway," Schultz says.

The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University estimates that a few hundred thousand veterans have been hired through targeted programs in the past two years. That's probably shaved a percentage point or two off their unemployment rate.

But Russell Burgos of Pepperdine University, who himself is an Iraq War vet, says it's hard to pin down the numbers. "We don't know how many people apply for jobs at job fairs, how many fill out applications, how many are hired, and I think most importantly, what the employment outcomes of those who are hired turn out to be," Burgos says.

That's why Starbucks plans to have a program manager to help with veteran retention, and the company says it will provide updates on hiring.

Stripling, the Army vet, says she's applied to Starbucks before. but not as a barista. "I've already done my entry-level career," she says.

This summer, she applied there for paralegal positions. And even with her decades of experience, she didn't get a response. She plans to apply to Starbucks again. And this time, she hopes she'll get somewhere.

Since the financial crisis hit five years ago, there aren't as many Americans starting new businesses. In uncertain economic times, it's harder for entrepreneurs and investors to take the risk.

And if you look back over the past 25 years, it turns out the overall trend is toward fewer new businesses getting started, too — and that's not good at all when the country needs more jobs.

The Next Google

New businesses are really important for the economy. For one thing, they often come up with new technologies and better ways of doing things. And when they do that, a small percentage start growing very fast and hiring hundreds or thousands of people.

"Out of this vast number of startups, about 10 percent take off, and they create an enormous number of jobs," says John Haltiwanger, a professor at the University of Maryland. He's an economist who studies these young, high-growth companies.

"If you add up the job creation in the United States from just the fast-growing businesses, they account for over 50 percent of all job creation in the United States," Haltiwanger says.

The State Of The American Small Business

When It Comes To Jobs, Not All Small Businesses Make It Big

One of the big questions facing social media giant Twitter ahead of its New York Stock Exchange debut this week is how much money it could actually make for investors.

"We have incurred significant operating losses in the past, and we may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability," the company writes, in its business prospectus.

Twitter expects revenue growth, but that it will be slow. We've written before on how it's planning on cornering mobile advertising as its main revenue booster. These user numbers a new Pew/Knight study out this week help its argument.

Even though Facebook dwarfs Twitter in the number of users (Facebook's at more than one billion to Twitter's 200 million), the study shows those who consume news on Twitter are younger, better educated and more mobile than Facebook news consumers. That's a huge selling point for Twitter in its bid to lure advertisers. Pew and Knight note:

"Mobile devices are a key point of access for these Twitter news consumers. The vast majority, 85%, get news (of any kind) at least sometimes on mobile devices. That outpaces Facebook news consumers by 20 percentage points; 64% of Facebook news consumers use mobile devices for news. The same is true of 40% of all U.S. adults overall, according to the survey.

Twitter news consumers stand out for being younger and more educated than both the population overall and Facebook news consumers.

Close to half, 45%, of Twitter news consumers are 18-29 years old. That is more than twice that of the population overall (21%) and also outpaces young adults' representation among Facebook news consumers, where 34% are 18-29 years old. Further, just 2% of Twitter news consumers are 65 or older, compared with 18% of the total population and 7% of Facebook news consumers."

"Yes I have smoked crack cocaine... Probably in one of my drunken stupors."

That's what embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford just dropped on the media during a surprise press conference just after noon ET on Tuesday.

According to The Toronto Star, Ford qualified:

" 'I am not an addict,' he told the media.

" 'I wasn't lying. You didn't ask the correct questions,' Ford explained to why the admission was so long in coming.

"Ford said he smoked crack about a year ago. 'I don't even remember.' "

It's only been hours since Kmart announced its "Black Friday" plan — to remain open for 41 hours in a row beginning early on Thanksgiving Day. But online critics are throwing a red light on the plan, with some calling the company a Grinch for its aggressive approach to the start of the Christmas shopping season.

"Everybody thinks your executives are horrible people," a man named Christopher Sweet wrote on Kmart's Facebook page. Another critic, Ted Talevski, appealed to the workers: "This is a message to all Kmart employees! Do not go to work on Thanksgiving Day!"

Responding to the negative feedback, Kmart says that it will try to staff its stores with seasonal workers to accommodate employees who want to be with friends and relatives.

Amber Camp, who says she works at Kmart, said via Facebook that her bosses "are planning on all the employees to have some time so we can actually spend time with our families on Thanksgiving."

The criticisms began flowing soon after Sears, Kmart's parent company, announced that the stores that long promoted "blue light specials" will be open from 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to 11 p.m. Friday night.

Sears stores will work a less aggressive schedule, opening from 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night to 10 p.m. Friday.

"Kmart has opened at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving for the past three years," reports CNN Money, where we spotted the story about the backlash. "Last year, however, stores closed for a few hours at 4 p.m. to let shoppers and employees get to their Thanksgiving dinners."

The company's social media team repeatedly issued responses to the criticisms on Facebook, saying, "We understand many associates want to spend time with their families during the holiday. With this in mind Kmart stores do their very best to staff with seasonal associates and those who are needed to work holidays."

One person offered their own response to a similar statement on Twitter, saying, "yes, that's what the companies I worked for told us too, however we had no choice in the matter and I doubt your associates do either."

But some defended the move, saying that many retail employees would be happy to earn overtime. And others say they aren't bothered by the plan.

"Nobody is physically forcing employees to work at Kmart if they don't like the scheduling," one Facebook comment read.

A spinning wheel used by Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to make "homespun" cloth as a protest against British rule, has been sold at auction in the U.K. for $180,000 – about twice as much as expected.

The portable spinning wheel, known as a charkha in Hindi, was used by Gandhi to spin thread and make his own clothes while he was held as a political prisoner in Pune's Yerwada jail in the early 1930s. Shunning British textiles in favor of homemade cloth was part of a self-reliance campaign that encompassed the larger "Quit India" independence movement championed by Gandhi.

The wheel, being sold at Ludlow Racecourse in Shropshire, England, "folds into a bundle about the size of a portable typewriter and has a handle for carrying. When unfolded for use it is operated by turning a small crank which runs the two wheels and spindle of the device," the BBC quotes American monthly Popular Science as writing in 1931.

DNA India says the spinning wheel was given by Gandhi to American Free Methodist missionary Rev. Floyd A. Puffer.

"Puffer was a pioneer in Indian educational and industrial cooperatives. He invented a bamboo plow that was later adopted by Gandhi.

Gandhi presented the charkha to Puffer for his work in Colonial India."

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced 152 soldiers to death in connection with a mutiny by border guards in 2009.

Bangla News 24 reports that life sentences plus an additional 10 years were handed to 160 others, and terms of between three years and 17 years to 263 soldiers; 271 others were acquitted. Four of the accused died during the trial.

The BBC notes that the soldiers have already been jailed by military tribunals for the mutiny over better pay and working conditions. Here's more:

The 30-hour uprising over pay and other grievances broke out in Dhaka and left 74 people dead, 57 of them officers.

The mutiny began at the Bangladeshi Rifles Headquarters in the capital. Senior officers were killed and their bodies dumped in sewers and shallow graves.

The revolt spread to other army bases around the country before being put down. Nearly 6,000 soldiers have already been jailed by military courts.

Many soldiers who packed into the special civilian court in Dhaka on Tuesday were charged with murder, torture, conspiracy and other offences.

Voters in New York City go to the polls Tuesday to choose their next mayor, and it appears all but certain that they'll elect Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate.

The Democrat has built a wide lead in the polls by distancing himself from the incumbent mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg. In fact, de Blasio has made income inequality the central issue of his campaign, name-checking the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities dozens of times at debates and stump speeches.

"It always falls back to, 'It's a tale of two cities,' " Republican candidate Joe Lhota complained in a recent interview with MSNBC. "There's nothing more divisive than saying we are two cities, whether it's rich versus poor, black versus white."

But de Blasio won't back down. "There's nothing divisive about acknowledging the struggle that so many New Yorkers face. It's not class warfare," de Blasio said in a speech last month to a group of business leaders. "It's arithmetic. And it's reality."

For the stock market and the real estate business, these have been the best of times, or pretty close. But de Blasio argues those gains haven't been spread equally among all New Yorkers, including the record number of 50,000 people in the city who are homeless.

De Blasio has been eager to emphasize his differences with outgoing mayor Bloomberg. De Blasio lives in Brooklyn, where he sends his children to public school; Bloomberg is one of the richest men in the country, who used his personal fortune to win three terms in office — first as a Republican, later as an independent. And Bloomberg did his best to make the wealthy feel welcome in New York.

"If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here, it would be a godsend," Bloomberg said in September during his weekly radio interview on WOR.

"They're the ones that spend a lot of money in the stores and restaurants and create a big chunk of our economy," Bloomberg said. "And we take tax revenues from those people to help people throughout the entire rest of the spectrum."

“ Great as New York is, it is not actually the federal government.

Anyone waiting expectantly for Vice President Biden to namecheck President Obama at an election eve rally Monday went away disappointed.

Besides singing the praises of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe at the Northern Virginia event, Biden mentioned Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner (favorably) and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (unfavorably). He singled out McAuliffe's Republican opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, by name. Biden even referred to his own wife and his father.

But there was no mention of the president. Nor any mention of health care, aside from a reference to Cuccinelli's participation, as Virginia attorney general, in conservative efforts to restrict women's health care (read abortion rights) in the state. It was noticed.

Biden's omission signaled how the Affordable Care Act's recent troubles have turned the president's signature domestic legislation from an asset to a liability, if not in solidly blue places like Massachusetts then in purple states like Virginia.

At a rally in Virginia a day before Biden's appearance, Obama didn't mention Obamacare either. He did mention Biden, however.

The vice president's omission may have also signaled something else. In their new book about last year's presidential campaign, Double Down: Game Change 2012, due out Tuesday, journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reported that Obama campaign aides considered dropping Biden from the ticket in favor of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Veteran Obama political strategists like David Axelrod and David Plouffe have denied Biden was ever at risk of being jettisoned.

It's possible to read too much into such moments, of course. But sometimes a politician says more by what he doesn't say than by what he does.

Racism and right-wing violence are threatening Russia's reputation in international sports as the country prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February and the World Cup soccer finals in 2018.

The latest incident was a riot at a soccer match last week in Yaroslavl, between the local Shinnik (Tiremakers) team and Spartak, a squad from Moscow.

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Good morning, fellow political junkies.

This week, the political headlines are expected to be dominated by several important off-year elections whose outcomes seem a foregone conclusion, if you believe the polls.

Democrat Terry McAulliffe in Virginia and Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey have significant polling leads in their governor's races. In New York City, Democrat and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio appears poised to win in a blowout.

But that's tomorrow's news. On Monday, a critical procedural vote is scheduled in the Senate on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would give lesbian, gay, bisesexual and transgender workers similar federal protections against workplace discrimination like those protecting most other workers.

And that's a good place to start with a quick look at some of the more interesting pieces of political news or analysis that caught my eye this morning.

The Senate is thought to be one vote away from the 60 needed to advance the ENDA legislation to a final vote. One of several Republican senators is expected to provide the needed vote on a divisive issue for the GOP, the New York Times' Jeremy Peters reported. The bill's prospects in the GOP-controlled House are less certain.

And in an op-ed whose timing couldn't have been better for the ENDA debate, Maine congressman Michael Michaud, a Democrat running for governor, confirms that he's gay in an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News. "Yes, I am. But why should it matter?"

President Obama's aides have had to remake his schedule for the next few months because of the problems with the Affordable Care Act website. The president won't be spending nearly as much time at events urging people to enroll under Obamacare since the website is under repair. Instead, he will do more immigration and economic events, report Carol E. Lee and Peter Nicholas of the Wall Street Journal.

Mitt Romney made news over the weekend by accusing President Obama of "fundamental dishonesty" in his sales pitches for the Affordable Care Act. Appearing on NBC New's Meet the Press, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee said Obama "has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it is rotting away."

Obamacare giveth. Under the ACA, millions of low-income people will be eligible for health plans that will cost them nothing because of the government-provided subsidies, report the New York Times' Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas.

Obamacare taketh away. The growing political threat to Democrats can be measured in the anecdotes that keep rolling in of people who have to buy more expensive insurance coverage because their older policies aren't being renewed under the law, report the Washington Posts Ariana Euchung Cha and Lena Sun.

Obama's tech buddy, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, slammed the NSA over allegations that the spy agency monitored traffic between the data centers of several Internet giants. He told the Wall Street Journal's Deborah Kan the NSA practices, if true, were "outrageous."

Former House Speaker Jim Wright, 90, was rebuffed on his first attempt to get a voter ID card in Texas, report the Ft. Worth Star Telegram's Terry Evans and Anna M. Tinsley. "Nobody was ugly to us but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," he was quoted as saying.

Channeling his inner Andrew Jackson, Sen. Rand Paul joked (at least we think he was joking) to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that if dueling weren't illegal in Kentucky he might challenge one of the "hacks and haters" who have accused him of plagiarizing in his speeches.

The Senate is expected to vote Monday evening for cloture on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would forbid employers with at least 15 employees from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The measure, which has been around in various forms for decades, has more Senate support than ever before — but likely not enough in the GOP-controlled House to become law.

Politico reported Monday that House Speaker John Boehner opposes the legislation, and believes it would cost jobs and lead to frivolous lawsuits.

So far, every Democratic senator and both independents have said they will vote for the bill this year. And there are two Republican co-sponsors, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.

Still, at least five Senate Republicans will have to support ENDA to defeat a filibuster.

Two Republicans — Orrin Hatch of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — are also expected to support ENDA, although neither has officially stated they will. Both voted for the Senate bill in its current form this summer, when it passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this summer.

On Monday, Republican Dean Heller of Nevada added his support for the bill. "After listening to Nevadans' concerns about this issue from a variety of viewpoints and after numerous conversations with my colleagues, I feel that supporting this legislation is the right thing to do," Heller said in a statement.

That puts the tentative vote count at 60, just enough to defeat a filibuster. The bill's advocates hope even more Republicans will throw their support behind the legislation, which they believe would send a strong message of bipartisan support for LGBT protections.

Fred Sainz, the vice president of communications and marketing at the Human Rights Campaign, said the organization has focused its efforts on getting support from Heller, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

"We are cautiously optimistic that we'll be there [on Monday], but we're not taking anything for granted," said Sainz. "Nothing is sure until the vote takes place."

Sainz said organizers in seven states have held 150 events to garner grassroots support for ENDA. So far, these events have generated over 200,000 constituent contacts to these prospective senators in support of the bill. Supporters of the legislation have been targeting Portman, in particular, who came out in support of same-sex marriage earlier this year.

Caitlin Dunn, Portman's press secretary, said in an email that the Senator "agrees with the underlying principle of ENDA and supports ending unjust discrimination based on one's sexual orientation. He doesn't think one of his constituents should be able to be fired just because he or she is gay. The bill as it stands, however, is not perfect, and he continues to discuss his concerns with the bill's sponsors and is exploring ways to strengthen the bill, including its religious liberties provisions."

The last time ENDA faced a vote in the Senate was in 1996, when Republicans held the majority. It failed with a final vote of 49-50.

Currently, 29 states have no legislation banning employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 33 states are without gender identity employment protections.

Federal employment protections that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information are already in place.

If the Senate votes for cloture on the bill Monday, a final vote is expected on Wednesday.

BlackBerry says it is abandoning a $4.7 billion deal to sell the struggling mobile company to a consortium of investors lead by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited.

The tentative deal was announced in September. The Globe and Mail reports today that the company will instead raise $1 billion in new funds and "replace its chief executive and some directors."

The paper explains:

"The new plan will involve raising roughly $1-billion by selling convertible notes to a group of investors, according to people familiar with the transaction. Chief executive officer Thorsten Heins will depart the company, and the company will announce changes to its board, the people said.

"Mr. Heins was named to the top job early last year, taking over from Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who had run the company since its earliest days.

"Mr. Heins' short tenure was marked by the rocky launch of BlackBerry's new phone lineup. The new phones met tepid demand, and BlackBerry made the decision to officially put itself up for sale in August."

On this 34th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, thousands of Iranians gathered outside that building to once again chant "Death to America."

But New York Times Bureau Chief Thomas Erdbrink told NPR's Steve Inskeep Monday that though the shouts were the same as they've been since 1979 and the demonstration was larger than in recent years, the people he interviewed there were not virulently anti-American.

"All the people I spoke with," Erbrink said, "didn't really mind Iran talking to the United States ... [and they] admitted they want to see some sort of solution" to three-plus decades of fractured relations.

Anti-American hardliners, Edbrink added, "who feel their interests will be threatened" if multi-national talks lead to a resolution of the impasse over Iran's nuclear ambitions, packed Monday's demonstration with "government workers and school kids."

He noted that hardliners are upset about the willingness of new President Hassan Rouhani and his aides to sit down with the U.S. and its partners. Iran wants a lifting of economic sanctions. The nations on the other side of the table want to make sure Iran does not join the list of nations with nuclear weapons.

Over the weekend, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a message that praised and defended the work of Iran's nuclear negotiators, NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul. That would seem to be an endorsement of Rouhani's efforts.

But the ayatollah also lent some support to those who organized the "death to America" protest. As Peter reports, the ayatollah said those who stormed the embassy in 1979 — taking hostages who would be held for 444 days — were the first to uncover the "den of espionage" at the diplomatic mission.

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

Following allegations that he borrowed passages from Wikipedia, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is now accused of lifting passages from the Heritage Foundation without proper attribution in his book Government Bullies. BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski writes, "Paul included a link to the Heritage case study in the book's footnotes, though he made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Heritage." Doug Stafford, who co-wrote the book, responded, saying that "the end notes clearly define the sourcing for the book. In no case has the Senator used information without attribution." On Sunday, Paul responded to the Wikipedia accusations: "I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting." He added, "If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, it'd be a duel challenge." Meanwhile, The New York Times helpfully explains Kentucky's fraught history of duels: "In the 1800s, so many Kentuckians were killing one another in duels that the Legislature saw fit to require that incoming state officeholders swear an oath that they had not fought in a duel, issued a challenge for a duel or assisted at a duel, 'so help me God.' "

Kate Hahn imagines "Pottery Barn Catalogue Descriptions Written by an Aspiring Crime Novelist" for McSweeney's: "The door to the Farmhouse Armoire stands slightly ajar, revealing room for a 60-inch television and something more sinister... The solid pine doors can withstand the pounding fists of a captive lunatic, but not ammonia-based cleansers."

For The New York Review of Books, Claire Messud defends Albert Camus' infamous stance on Algerian independence: "To witness the progression of his responses is to recognize above all the remarkable consistency of Camus's moral conviction, the dogged optimism of his outlook, and his unfailing ability, even in the complex turmoil of emotional involvement with the issue, to cleave to his own principles of justice." Also worth reading is Joshua Hammer's article in last month's Smithsonian Magazine that asks why "despite Camus' monumental achievements and deep attachment to his native land, Algeria has never reciprocated [his] love."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week

Joe Sacco's The Great War is a wordless, 24-foot panoramic illustration of a scene from the Battle of the Somme during World War I. A work of both history and art, it shows the scope and sweep of the battle in beautiful detail. Sacco told the Los Angeles Times, "What I wanted to portray was a very large army with one objective: moving forward and dying together."

Iran may not love America politically, but Iranians love American food — especially fast food.

With no formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, though, it's rather hard to find a McDonald's or a Pizza Hut. But if you wander through the streets of Tehran, you might find a Pizza Hat or a Mash Donald's.

The rise of the "fake franchise" caught the attention of Iranian-American Holly Dagres, a Middle East analyst and commentator, who travels to Tehran often from her home in Cairo. She published a photo essay on BuzzFeed in October highlighting some of these eateries.

The Salt

Mon Dieu! Fast Food Now Rules In France

But the group that really caught my attention was the group at McClure's Magazine, and what they were was investigative reporters. I mean, what he did, which would be so special if it could be done today, was to allow his reporters maybe two years of research — Ida Tarbell spent two years studying Standard Oil before her famous set of articles came out that essentially produced legislation and antitrust regulation. Ray Baker had a couple years to do the studies of the abuses of the railroad that, with Teddy Roosevelt's help, essentially produced railroad regulation.

On the themes from that time that felt familiar

That's what's so interesting. The echoes of the past, it just seems, are so clear in today's world and that turn-of-the-century world. Because what you had at the turn of the century was a growing gap between the rich and the poor, a growing set of mergers that produced trusts that seemed to be snuffing out the possibilities of small businessmen; you had people moving from the country to the city, you had the pace of life speeding up in ways that it hadn't before, and most importantly you had the big question ... what should government's relationship be to the problems created by the age? Roosevelt answered that it should be a positive force, and this was the first time that really the government stepped in to have a real role in the economic and social problems of the age.

On whether reporters ever felt manipulated by Roosevelt

I think sometimes they did, and sometimes he might have felt disappointed in them — Ray Baker eventually turns and goes towards Wilson, Lincoln Steffens becomes more radical, Ida Tarbell had her own disappointments with Roosevelt, but still they all would say he was probably the most colorful, most interesting politician they had ever known, and they knew later in their lives when they looked back on this period with huge nostalgia — I mean, Ray Baker and the other editor at McClure's, John Phillips, would say they just hoped there would be another time when there'd be a generation of journalists who enjoyed what they did, the feeling that they had a mission and a call to change the country. And that's what united them. That was their goal. And he helped them to make that goal — yes, he helped himself with it, too, but they cared deeply about the role of a journalist in informing the country and creating stories that would then move public opinion forward.

More on Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Doris Kearns Goodwin On Lincoln And His 'Team Of Rivals'

Virginians go to the polls Tuesday to pick the man they dislike the least to be their new governor: longtime Clinton moneyman Terry McAuliffe or hardline Tea Party conservative Ken Cuccinelli.

If McAuliffe prevails, as polls suggest he will by dominating the women's vote, the result will likely reverberate beyond the Old Dominion, amplifying the GOP's post-government shutdown struggle to tame its more radical, nose-thumbing Tea Party wing.

"Republicans have said their strength is in the states, and with governors," says Quentin Kidd, whose Friday poll for Christopher Newport University had McAuliffe up by 7 points over Cuccinelli, the state's attorney general. "What happens if you nominate a Tea Party candidate, rev up the base and lose?"

Presidents And Would-Be Presidents

The schedule in the campaign's final days leaves little doubt about the stakes.

President Obama plans to campaign Sunday with Democrat McAuliffe, a longtime Bill and Hillary Clinton adviser who last week was joined on the trail by the former president.

And Cuccinelli has lined up a trio of potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — for his final push in battleground Virginia.

Not everyone, however, agrees that a Cuccinelli loss would have national implications.

Sure, it would be the first time in three decades that the party not in power in the White House would have lost the Virginia governorship. But conservatives like Norm Leahy argue that Cuccinelli faced a specific set of state-based challenges that don't translate nationally.

"I don't buy the argument peddled in national GOP circles that Cuccinelli's problems stem from his conservatism," says Leahy, an editor at the popular conservative Virginia political website BearingDrift.com. "There were a lot of specific issues here that don't apply elsewhere."

Cuccinelli's decision to stay on as attorney general while running for governor meant that he was, fairly or not, tainted by a gift-taking scandal that engulfed Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.

He antagonized many in the GOP when he engineered his nomination at a party convention instead of a primary, sidelining popular Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.

And his position on women's reproductive rights, including high-profile support of a failed bill that would have required invasive ultrasounds for women contemplating abortion, provided a trove of advertisement fodder for the well-financed McAuliffe.

Still, Leahy argues that if Cuccinelli had run a better campaign with a strategy to corral moderates and Bolling supporters, he would have maintained his early lead in the polls.

"Bob McDonnell was a strong social conservative who won a landslide victory for governor in 2009," Leahy says. "Bob McDonnell gave Republicans the blueprint on how to win statewide: Focus on the economy and education. Change the emphasis as needed, but stick to it."

"Ken appears to have tossed those plans into the James River," he says.

Libertarian And The Tea Party

Cuccinelli's path is further complicated by the presence of largely unknown, poorly-financed third-party Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis. Recent polls suggest that Sarvis' support is approaching double digits, drawing largely from Republican rolls.

But is it magical thinking to assume that a better strategy would have propelled Cuccinelli to the governor's office, especially on the heels of the Tea Party-fueled federal government shutdown, which hit Virginia especially hard?

For Judy Ford Wason, a former National Republican Committee member from Virginia, the answer is clearly "yes."

Wason, once a state GOP stalwart, endorsed McAuliffe after her party nominated Cuccinelli, along with E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor, and state Sen. Mark Obenshain for attorney general.

Jackson, a pastor, is known for his anti-gay statements, and has suggested that God created the Tea Party. Obenshain is a social conservative who once proposed a bill to require that women report miscarriages to police.

"The convention nominated a ticket that was unlike a ticket that's been nominated by a party in a long, long time," says Wason, who supports legal abortion and previously endorsed Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. "It took the party so far to the right, and was so ideological that Virginia independents and moderate Republicans really couldn't wrap their arms around it."

'Never-Ending Nightmare'

The larger message Virginia's gubernatorial race should hold for Republicans, she says, revolves around the issue of alienation.

"If you alienate demographic voters — women, African-Americans, Hispanics, environmentalists," she says, "at some point it's impossible to put together a winning coalition."

"If the McAuliffe ticket sweeps, and brings in House of Delegates Democrats, the Republican Party really better step back and figure out what's wrong, and how we fix it," says Wason.

It's not that McAuliffe is popular: When likely voters who said they supported the Democrat were asked if they were casting their vote for McAuliffe or against Cuccinelli, 64 percent told Washington Post surveyors that it was against the Republican.

There may not be agreement about whether the result of Virginia's race will be nationally predictive, or just parochially significant. But there is some common ground: Just about everyone will be glad when what Leahy characterized as the "never-ending nightmare of a race" is over.