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It's trial balloon season in presidential politics.

Not for the headline-devouring, top-tier prospects like Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie, but rather for the long shots and lesser-knowns who are floating their names for 2016.

On Sunday, former Montana Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer reiterated his interest in a White House run.

"I'll just say that there's around 100 counties in Iowa, and on my bucket list is to try to and make it to all the counties in Iowa someday," Schweitzer said on MSNBC, in a flattering reference to the state that hosts the first presidential caucuses.

Two Vermont liberals have signaled a similar interest. One of them, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and self-described socialist, recently said he's open to a presidential bid if no other progressive candidate steps up.

"Under normal times, it's fine, you have a moderate Democrat running, a moderate Republican running," Sanders told the Burlington Free Press. "These are not normal times. The United States right now is in the middle of a severe crisis and you have to call it what it is."

Former Vermont Democratic Gov. Howard Dean, who ran for president in 2004, told Buzzfeed last week that people have tried to persuade him to take another shot in 2016.

"We'll see. As I say, you never say never in politics," he said.

A few former Republican presidential candidates are also openly considering another run — or hoping to remain in the presidential spotlight.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said last week that he will make a decision about launching a second bid for the presidency next year. He added that the GOP needs to nominate an "authentic conservative" in 2016 who can "lay out a positive vision for America based on the principles that made our country great" — presumably someone like him.

A month earlier, it was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who insisted he is still in the mix: The 2008 GOP presidential candidate told the Christian Broadcasting Network he is "absolutely" thinking about running for the White House again.

It's not just those with a presidential campaign under their belt who've sought to float themselves as prospective 2016 candidates.

After visiting the Iowa State Fair in August, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said he was "curious" about pursuing a presidential bid "if there's room for a bipartisan problem solver" in the race. He's also considering running for the U.S. Senate again in 2014, but in New Hampshire.

Then there's former GOP Florida Rep. Allen West, who like Brown lost his bid for re-election last year. The one-term ex-congressman said in October he is looking at running for several different offices down the road, including the presidency.

Even real estate mogul Donald Trump and Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota, have raised the possibility of running for president next time around.

All of these candidates have one thing in common: They aren't frequently mentioned on lists of the top 2016 contenders.

Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said many of these potential candidates are after one thing: free publicity.

"Politicians and public figures are taking advantage of the vacuum in presidential electoral politics right now," Scala said. "When there's a name floated, and if they're at all prominent, it will get some coverage."

As for those on opposing ends of the political spectrum, like Sanders and Santorum, declaring an interest in running for president can also be a way to influence the conversation within their respective parties.

"They want to make sure their agenda gets some publicity," Scala said. "It is marketing to some degree."

North Korea says a U.S. veteran, who has been detained for more than a month, has apologized for committing "indelible crimes against" the country in the past and during his current trip.

The North Korean government released an edited video of 85-year-old Merrill Newman reading a handwritten apology.

"I realize that I cannot be forgiven for my offensives [offenses] but I beg for pardon on my knees by apologizing for my offensives [offenses] sincerely toward the DPRK government and the Korean people and I want not punish me [I wish not to be punished]," Newman is quoted as saying by Reuters.

As Mark reported last week, Newman is an 85-year-old veteran of the Korean War who traveled to the country with a friend. According to that friend, the day before they were scheduled to depart, Newman met with North Korean officials and talked about his Army service.

The next day, Newman boarded a plane headed back to California, but a military officer boarded the aircraft and escorted him off.

CNN reports:

"In addition to this statement, [the Korean Central News Agency] ran a story alleging Newman came to North Korea with a tourist group in October and afterward 'perpetrated acts of infringing upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and slandering its socialist system.'

"This story claimed that Newman tried to 'look for spies and terrorists who conducted espionage and subversive activities against the DPRK.' Investigators determined that, as a member of the U.S. military, he 'masterminded espionage and subversive activities ... and, in this course, he was involved in the killings of service personnel of the Korean People's Army and innocent civilians.'

" 'The investigation clearly proved Newman's hostile acts against the DPRK, and they were backed by evidence,' the KCNA story added. 'He admitted all his crimes and made an apology for them.' "

Many small towns across the country are using special events to attract visitors and commerce. The strategy has been a big hit in places like Aspen, Colo., and Park City, Utah, whose names have become synonymous with major festivals.

But it can take a toll. Some residents in the northern Michigan town of Traverse City complain that they're suffering from festival fatigue and would like a little less excitement.

Traverse City has been in the festival business since the 1920s, beginning with the National Cherry Festival. In 2005, Michael Moore launched a film festival, and a wide variety of events have sprung up since.

Sam Porter, who owns an event production company, has been called the party man in his hometown.

"We have about 200 events we've done in Traverse City," Porter says. "You'll see Mario Batali, you'll see microbrew festivals, you'll see the Dandy Horse [Bike] Festival, which was really just a tool to launch the first bike swap."

Lots of Porter's events have a social cause, like selling used bikes to support the area's network of bike trails.

The way he sees it, events are a great way for a region to exhibit itself.

"We always talk about the big events," he says. "That's only two, three or four different events — but really, look at all the thousands of micro-events that really make up who we are as northern Michigan."

The Price Of Tourism

But it's the big events that have some of his neighbors riled up. Earlier this fall, some residents told their commissioners they had enough.

The big events are held on Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay in a downtown gathering place called The Open Space.

"I resent that I can't go there an awful lot anymore because there's always these frickin' fences blocking my access to the Open Space," Karen Nielsen told the city commissioners.

After that meeting, the city proposed limiting the number of festivals, and the concept of "festival fatigue" took off.

Though the business community warned city leaders not to send the wrong message to visitors, Commissioner Barbara Budros was emphatic that tourists cost the city money.

"One point three million people come here, drive on our streets, use our infrastructure, leave trash, whatever," she said. "We're never going to be able to recoup the cost."

Brad Van Dommelen, who heads Traverse City's visitors bureau, looked startled when Budros said that.

He estimates that visitors spend more than $1 billion in the area every year.

"That is money that is earned elsewhere, that is being brought into our community — deposited in local businesses," he says.

Why Festivals Succeed

Lots of places are trying to attract that money. Dan McCole, an assistant professor and tourism researcher at Michigan State University, points to Caseville: It's a tiny town in Michigan's thumb that started a cheeseburger festival more than a decade ago.

The first year, he says, the town of 800 residents attracted 5,000 visitors. Last year, 300,000 cheeseburgers were sold in 10 days.

McCole says festivals like this fit with the way Americans are vacationing now: shorter trips with less advance planning.

"With festivals, you can take a last-minute trip," he says. "Festivals are run on weekends normally, or at least that's when they have their busy time, so that fits in well."

For major destinations, McCole says, events offer a new experience each time, like changing the sets in a play.

But some in Traverse City have been watching the play for decades, and they say they're not certain they want another act.

Whatever they are, our holiday traditions tend to be a mixture of the universal and the specific.

If we celebrate Christmas, for instance, we might have stockings and trees just like our neighbors, but we might also be the only ones in town who wear homemade elf hats while we open presents. It's a mix that helps us feel closer to the rest of the culture while reaffirming what's special about our own little community, family and home.

That balance also energizes theater this time of year. For every touring production of The Rockettes or comforting remount of A Christmas Carol, there's a holiday show specifically intended for a local audience, bringing together a block or a city instead of the world.

Take The Christmas Schooner, a musical about real-life sailors in the early 20th century who risked their lives to carry a boatload of Christmas trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula across Lake Michigan to sell them to Chicago's German immigrants. Written by John Reeger and the late Julie Shannon, the show has been produced in the Windy City almost every season since it premiered in the mid-'90s; for the last three years, it's gotten a highly polished treatment from the Mercury Theater, which opened its latest remount this week.

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An Egyptian blogger who rose to fame during the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak has been arrested under a controversial new law that bans unauthorized protests.

Police arrested Alaa Abdel-Fattah from his home late Thursday night as his toddler slept nearby. When his wife demanded to see an arrest warrant, police beat both of them, a press release from the family said. NPR's Leila Fadel is reporting on the story for our Newscast unit:

"An arrest warrant was issued for him and another prominent youth activist following protests on Tuesday that ended with dozens in jail after police beat and chased them. Abdel-Fattah had publicly declared he would turn himself in on Saturday."

Should the Afghan government sign a security agreement, the U.S. plans to keep between 6,000 and 9,000 American troops in Afghanistan even after the U.S. and NATO's combat mission officially ends late in 2014.

Beginning in 2015, the remaining troops would train Afghan soldiers and mount operations against any remnants of al-Qaida.

But they wouldn't be the only ones who stay behind: U.S. troops would almost certainly be outnumbered by civilian contractors.

Ever since the U.S. ramped up its forces in Afghanistan in 2007, during the Bush administration, the contracting force has grown at an even faster clip.

In December 2007, there were 25,000 American troops, compared to 36,000 contractors.

In March of this year, the number of U.S. troops stood at about 66,000 — supported by a contracting force of 108,000.

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, monitors military spending. "The contractors are there doing jobs to support the troops and those jobs in previous wars were often done by other troops," he says.

Gone are the days when soldiers suffered through kitchen duty or cleaned latrines. Now those jobs are being done by young contractors from places like Sri Lanka.

"It's not very cost effective to recruit people and put them in a career job in the military and then have them peel potatoes," Harrison says.

The U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan, a lot of that paying for contracts. Because there's no final decision on the number of U.S. troops, it's hard to know how many contractors will be needed after 2014.

Officials expect that the U.S. will maintain a presence at Bagram Air Field, a sprawling facility north of Kabul. And American training teams will likely be spread around at Afghan bases throughout the country.

Harrison says operating in Afghanistan has consistently cost twice as much as in Iraq. Part of the reason is Afghanistan lacked decent roads and buildings and bridges before the Americans invaded in 2001.

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Eighteen Sunni men abducted from their homes near Baghdad by gunmen wearing military uniforms were found shot in the head just hours later, Iraqi police said Friday.

The Associated Press reports:

"Authorities found the bodies early Friday in farmland near the Sunni town of Mishahda, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Baghdad. Gunmen in four cars snatched the men, who included two army officers and the town's mayor, from their houses late Thursday."

Feeling extra American this week? Wanna keep that post-turkey glow going?

Well, how about a very American beverage: cider?

We're not talking about the hot mulled stuff that steams up your kitchen, or the sweet pub draft in a pint glass.

This cider is more like sparkling wine.

"This is a phenomenally funky, sour, even mildly smoky cider that had to be tasted to be believed," says Greg Engert, one of the owners of a bar in Washington called ChurchKey.

He's pouring cider from a tall champagne-style bottle that retails for around $15.

ChurchKey is a bar known for beer, but tonight, lots of people are drinking cider.

Tom Diliberto has celiac disease, so beer is out for him.

Cider, on the other hand, is gluten free.

Cider is still a small part of the overall alcohol market. But it's growing faster than any other category, according to Donna Hood Crecca, an adult beverage analyst with the company Technomic.

"In 2013, we're projecting that we'll end the year at 14 million cases," she says.

Most of that comes from major beer makers that have jumped into the cider game. The companies that brew Sam Adams, Coors and Budweiser have all gotten into the apple fermenting business in the last couple of years.

But just as craft microbrews have taken root in the beer market, artisanal ciders are now growing in the shadow of the big guys.

Vintage Virginia Apples and Albemarle CiderWorks is just around the bend from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia. "If we were crows we'd get there very shortly, but it would take us probably 20 minutes by the way the roads go," says Charlotte Shelton, who with her brothers grows some 200 varieties of rare American apples here.

Fruit with names like Ashmead's Kernel, Arkansas Black, Burford Red Flesh and Geneva Crab.

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The U.S.-led international coalition in Afghanistan is apologizing for an airstrike that killed a 2-year-old child, a death that Afghan President Hamid Karzai said imperils a long-term security agreement between the two countries.

The International Security Assistance Force said it carried out an airstrike Thursday on a militant riding a motorbike in Helmand Province. The child was also killed, and two women injured in the attack.

"ISAF, along with Afghan authorities, will immediately conduct an investigation into the incident," ISAF said in a statement Friday. "ISAF deeply regrets any civilian casualties caused by this airstrike yesterday."

The Washington Post reported that Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, called Karzai on Thursday night to offer his regret at the killing.

Reuters reports that Karzai said Thursday that the killing showed the U.S. didn't respect Afghan lives, and if such attacks continues, he won't sign a bilateral security pact with the U.S.

As NPR's Greg Myre noted over at our Parallels blog:

"The U.S. wants a nail down a deal that would allow perhaps as many as 10,000 troops to remain in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdraws its combat forces by the end of next year. The American troops would mostly train and assist the Afghan military, though the Americans are also seeking the authority to carry out counterterrorism raids.

"An Afghan Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, on Sunday resoundingly approved the proposed deal with the U.S. and urged Karzai to sign it soon. The assembly, which consisted of 2,500 prominent Afghans from around the country, was seen as a barometer of public sentiment.

"But the unpredictable Karzai keeps moving the goal posts and putting the deal in doubt, according to the U.S.

"Karzai says more time is needed to negotiate and that he might not sign the agreement until after a presidential election in the spring. Karzai is stepping down and will not contest the polls."

China is flexing its muscles these days. Over the weekend, it declared a sprawling air defense identification zone that covers disputed islands controlled by Japan. And it has sent its lone aircraft carrier for first-time trials in the South China Sea, where Beijing has territorial feuds with other neighbors, including Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines.

None of this was making China any friends in Manila, where the Chinese government is particularly unpopular these days.

"It only tends to confirm and reinforce the fears and worries of many people in the region," says Jay Batongbacal, a University of the Philippines law professor, who has spent a decade and a half studying territorial disputes in the South China Sea. "Right now, I think they are seen more as a bully, because of the actions that they've taken."

Among those actions was last year's takeover of a disputed and potentially strategic shoal in the South China Sea that had been under Philippine control.

It started when Philippine authorities tried to arrest Chinese they accused of illegally fishing inside the shoal, which is really a shallow, triangle-shaped reef with a small opening at one end. China sent marine surveillance ships to block action by a Philippine navy frigate.

"One of the measures that they put in place was to string a line across the mouth of that entrance," says Batongbacal, "because if any vessel tries to cross that line, it will get entangled in the propellers."

The Chinese effectively sealed off the reef from Philippine fishermen and took control of Scarborough Shoal without firing a shot.

The shoal, rich in fish, is about 140 miles from the Philippine mainland and more than 500 miles from China. At high tide, only five rocks stick up out of the water, but Philippine officials worry China might one day declare them Chinese territory.

Batongbacal says in the worst-case scenario — from the Philippine perspective — China could turn the shoal into a safe harbor for Chinese government vessels and a way to extend its influence and power in the region.

"Right now, it's clear that their motivation is that they want to vindicate their claim to the entire South China Sea," Batongbacal says.

Parallels

China's Air Zone Showcases Its Ambitions, Neighbors' Worries

Pakistani officials said Friday that a suspected U.S. drone strike in the country's tribal belt has killed at least two people and injured several others. The incident comes amid growing controversy in Pakistan over American drone attacks.

NPR's Philip Reeves filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Pakistani officials say two missiles hit a house late at night in a village in North Waziristan, close to the Afghan border. An official source told NPR the dead are thought to be civilians. If so, that'll further stoke opposition here to the U.S. use of this weapon.

"The issue is particularly in the spotlight right now. For the last several days, supporters of the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan have been protesting against drones by trying to block trucks carrying supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Khan's party's this week published the name of the man it claims is the CIA's top spy here, saying they want him booked for murder.

"But opinion here is divided — some Pakistanis support the use of drones, so long as they hit the right target."

"You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself 'that's a bad idea'? I really did have that," James Howells says. And boy, was his intuition right: Howells tossed a hard drive that held millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoins, the currency whose value has skyrocketed this year.

Howells' story is emerging on the same day Bitcoin rose above the $1,000 mark for the first time on the Mt. Gox exchange, as CNET reported. At that exchange rate, Howells' stash of 7,500 Bitcions would have been worth $7.5 million today. (Because there's no central exchange for Bitcoins, prices can vary.)

The Bitcoins were in a digital wallet in a hard drive that was sitting in a desk drawer in Newport, Wales. It contained the unique access key that would allow Howells to control the money. Howells, who reportedly works in IT, did not make a backup file.

As Howells tells The Guardian, it was months before he realized he had tossed the Bitcoins along with the drive, the survivor of a Dell laptop he had used to "mine" the currency in 2009.

"I don't have an exact date, the only time period I can give – and I've been racking my own brains – is between 20 June and 10 August," he tells the newspaper. "Probably mid-July."

His attempts to find the missing hard drive have been stymied by the epic size of the local landfill. Its operators told Howells that his hard drive was probably about four or five feet deep, in an area the size of a soccer field. And with no guarantee of finding the Bitcoins, he can't take on the expense of an excavation.

"I'm at the point where it's either laugh about it or cry about it," Howells says. "Why aren't I out there with a shovel now? I think I'm just resigned to never being able to find it."

At least Howells has company. As we reported this past spring, a man named Stefan Thomas told Der Spiegel that he lost 7,000 Bitcoins because of a hard-drive failure. Back then, the currency made headlines for hitting the $200 mark.

It's a sign of the times: More people are commuting for more than an hour to get to work, and many of the longest commutes are at least partially on public transportation.

Take Sarah Hairston's commute from her apartment on Chicago's South Side to her part-time job at a shelter for homeless teens on the north side of town.

Hairston, a 25-year-old graduate student, begins her trek at 4 a.m. by walking to a nearby bus stop, in the hopes of catching a bus to the L train. But if Hairston misses the bus to that train or if the bus is late, she'll turn to plan B — walking a few more blocks to a different train station where she'll have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for the next train. Or she defaults to plan C: walking to a different bus stop to take her to yet another train line.

And generally, she does a whole lot of waiting. In fact, Hairston spends almost as much time waiting outside in Chicago's sometimes brutal weather as she does riding, all while navigating a complicated public transit puzzle. For Hairston, it's a two-hour commute to go 15 miles to work a four-hour shift at the shelter. If she could afford a car, she says the drive to the shelter would take her just 20 minutes.

More Commuting Stories

U.S. Commutes: The Way We Get To Work

'You Just Get Used To It': An LA Commuter's Diary

Black Nativity

Director: Kasi Lemmons

Genre: Musical, drama

Running Time: 93 minutes

Rated PG for thematic material, language and a menacing situation.

With: Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson

You are not imagining it, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season starts earlier and earlier. Black Friday has been around for decades — that's the point where retailers hope to begin to make a profit.

Shoppers looking to get a jump on deals can shop on Gray Thursday – think Black Friday intruding into Thanksgiving Day.

This Turkey Day, many national chains will open their doors early in an effort to boost sales. K-Mart opened at 6 a.m.

To find out more about the early shopping frenzy, Morning Edition host David Greene, talks to Mark Ellwood, author of Bargain Fever: How to Shop in a Discounted World.

"I am fascinated to see the creep," says Ellwood, who admits he will be sitting out this first Gray Thursday.

He says it was just two years ago when stores were opening at 12:01 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, and it was "scandalous."

Is it worth leaving your turkey in the oven to going shopping?

"Much like outlet malls," Elwood says, "Black Friday isn't full of true bargains."

He says it's best to check with a clerk to see when the merchandise arrived. If it's been around for a while, there's a chance you're saving because it is being marked down over time. But if the items just arrived, they could be inexpensive but not a real bargain.

Predictions for next year?

"There really is a movement to try and protect Thanksgiving and not transform it into Gray Thursday, but I guarantee, next year, we'll see someone opening at 12:01 a.m. on Thanksgiving," Ellwood says.

A U.S. judge says American Airlines can exit bankruptcy and join forces with US Airways Group, all but ensuring that their merger can take place within weeks. Wednesday's bankruptcy court ruling was one of the final hurdles for a huge merger that's been in the works for more than a year.

The ruling by Judge Sean Lane comes months after he gave his preliminary approval to the plan. The two companies are now planning to finalize their merger on Dec. 9, when they would combine to create the world's largest airline.

After the ruling, a message was posted to the merger's website, newamericanarriving.com, was titled "The New American Airlines is Cleared for Takeoff."

The bankruptcy court decision also comes 15 days after the Justice Department said it would settle its lawsuit that had sought to block the airline merger. Part of that settlement required the two companies to give up space at terminals and gates at "seven key airports" in the U.S. to competitors that specialize in low-cost flights, such as JetBlue and Southwest.

The affected airports are Boston Logan International, Chicago O'Hare International, Dallas Love Field, Los Angeles International, Miami International, New York LaGuardia International and Ronald Reagan Washington National.

A private antitrust lawsuit against the merger is still pending. The plaintiffs in that case had requested that Lane issue a restraining order holding up the merger as their suit proceeds. That request was denied Wednesday.

And now new details are coming out about the merger. Citing a press release from American Airlines, The Dallas Morning News, which has been following the merger closely, says the new company will trade under the symbol "AAL."

This week, JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over the sale of faulty mortgage securities that led to the financial crisis. It's the largest settlement with a single company in U.S. history.

From that settlement, $4 billion must go to help the millions of families who saw the values of their homes plummet and who still struggle to keep up with mortgage payments.

Your Money

When You Hear $13 Billion, Don't See Dollar Signs

Protests aimed at bringing down Yingluck Shinawatra's government entered a fifth day in Bangkok on Thursday.

The embattled prime minister survived the no-confidence vote in Parliament by a vote of 297 to 134.

There was no question that the motion would fail because her party has a majority in the House of Representatives.

She was elected to office more than two years ago but protesters say she is just a front for her brother former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted during a military coup in 2006.

The billionaire former telecommunications tycoon was convicted of corruption in 2008 and lives in self-imposed exile.

The demonstrations are led by former opposition lawmaker Suthep Thaugsuban, 64, who has vowed to take over all government ministries.

While the protests have spread outside Bangkok, the Associated Press reported the number of demonstrators has dropped off from the 10,000-plus level when they began on Sunday.

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First, the good news:

There were 316,000 first-time claims filed for unemployment insurance last week, down 10,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration said Wednesday.

The pace of claims slowed in September to a rate not seen in six — before the economy slipped into its last recession. In October, as lawmakers argued in Washington and the federal government partially shut down, the pace picked back up. But at 316,000, claims are now down around that pre-recession rate once again.

Bloomberg News says the latest number is a sign "that the labor market is showing resilience."

But when it comes to reporting about the economy, there's always "the other hand."

So here is Wednesday's bad news:

Orders for durable goods declined 2 percent in October from September, the Census Bureau says. Durable goods are such things as equipment, appliances and other products designed to last three or more years.

The Associated Press says "businesses spent less on machinery, computers and most other items. The decline suggests companies may have been reluctant to invest during the 16-day partial government shutdown."

Peppered with complaints from citizens about burning eyes, sore throats and headaches, city officials in Irwindale, Calif., went to court to see if they could do something about smells coming from a factory that produces Sriracha hot sauce.

Now, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has said the factory must partially shut down while the city and Huy Fong Foods try to address the issue. According to the Los Angeles Times, though, "the injunction does not order the company to stop operating entirely, or specify the types of actions that are required."

The Associated Press and the Times say Huy Fong Foods did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

You might say the judge has imposed a cooling-off period. Or, perhaps, a dash of compromise. Maybe, even, that he's appealing to the two sides to be resauceful and reach a compromise. (We could go on; please feel free to do so in the comments thread.)

As for the very popular sauce, the AP notes that:

"The company had previously argued that there is no reason to close the plant now because harvest season and subsequent grinding of red-hot Jalapeno peppers, the sauce's key ingredient, has passed. That suggests that the injunction may not have a major immediate effect on the company's production or the nation's hot sauce supply as Huy Fong keeps up its year-round mixing and bottling."

Officials in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac, Wash., say the town's voters have approved a $15 minimum wage for workers in and around its international airport, by a margin of just 77 votes, according to local government data.

Placed on the ballot by a citizen's initiative, Proposition 1 would raise Washington's minimum wage of $9.19 — already the highest in the nation. The measure still faces several challenges, including calls for a hand recount. If it stands, it would take effect on Jan. 1, 2014.

From Seattle, NPR's Martin Kaste reports for our Newscast desk:

"The election was three weeks ago, but the vote was so close that it's taken this long to call a winner. Opponents say they'll pay for a recount. Alaska Airlines is the airport's primary carrier; spokesman Paul McElroy says the company is concerned about wage inequality, but he says it has to stay competitive.

"'The number one factor that air travelers look at when buying a ticket is low airfares,' McElroy says. 'And as our costs go up, that does affect our ability to offer the best value and low-cost airfare to our customers.'"

"Alaska Airlines and some other affected businesses are suing to block the wage, arguing that it conflicts with state and federal laws."

Get recipes for Farro Salad With Lemon, Avocado And Pistachios, Cauliflower Salad, Yam And Russet Potato Salad With Greens And Bacon and Not Your Aunt Zelda's Waldorf Salad.

Should President Obama be as unpopular once the 2014 midterm campaign is in full swing as he is now, there are likely to be more than a few vulnerable Democrats who'd prefer that he stay as far away from their districts as possible.

But the money he's raising for their campaigns is an entirely different matter.

As former GOP senator from Texas Phil Gramm once said, an American politician's most reliable friend is "ready money." If Obama has anything to do with it, Democrats facing election next November will at least have plenty of help from that reliable friend.

The president has been unstinting in his second term in performing the fundraising role required by his position as leader of Democratic Party.

Just before Thanksgiving, Obama was back in California, raising bounteous political cash, including at fundraisers held at the estates of former basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, where ticket prices ranged from $2,500 to $15,000; and entertainment mogul Haim Saban, where tickets were $16,200 per person. The money will go to the Democratic campaign committees for both House and Senate candidates.

As far as such fundraising trips are concerned, Obama has lapped his two-term predecessors, and not by a little.

The Guardian's Dan Roberts and Kenton Powell compared Obama's fundraising efforts to other recent two-term presidents. They found that since April, Obama has made 30 fundraising trips to close the deal with wealthy donors. They write:

"Although unable to run again for election himself, Obama is estimated to have raised up to $40m for other Democrats since his last inauguration in January as he devotes a growing portion of the second term to financing efforts aimed at winning back control of Congress in next year's midterm elections. ... George W Bush attended just 11 similar events, Bill Clinton managed 18 and Ronald Reagan only 10."

President Obama's Affordable Care Act will be back before the Supreme Court this spring. This time, the issue is whether for-profit corporations citing religious objections may refuse to provide contraceptive services in health insurance plans offered to employees.

In enacting the ACA, Congress required large employers who offer health care services to provide a range of preventive care, including no-copay contraceptive services. Religious nonprofits were exempted from this requirement, but not for-profit corporations.

Some three dozen of these corporate entities challenged this requirement in court, contending the contraception mandate violates their religious rights. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to examine the issue, after lawyers on both sides asked for high court review.

The lead plaintiff before the court is Hobby Lobby, a chain of more than 500 arts and crafts stores with more than 13,000 employees. The owners are conservative Christians who object to some forms of birth control and contend that the mandate thus abridges their religious rights in violation of both the Constitution and federal law.

David Green, founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, appeared in an online video to explain his company's position. "We do everything we possibly can to be a help to our employees of how that they can structure their life based on biblical principles," he says.

Hobby Lobby and the Green family are represented by Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Duncan argues that the contraception coverage requirement coerces the corporate owners to violate their religious beliefs. "That forces them to choose between violating their faith or exposing their businesses to severe consequences including, potentially, severe fines," he said in an interview.

The U.S. Court of Appeals based in Denver agreed. The judges on that court pointed to the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 Citizens United decision, which declared that corporations have the same right as individuals to spend money in political campaigns. In view of that decision, said the appeals court judges, they could see no reason that corporations would not be similarly entitled to exercise religious beliefs, as well.

The government, however, points to a long line of Supreme Court cases that take a contrary view. No court has ever found a for-profit company to be a religious organization for purposes of federal law, the Justice Department said in its briefs. Government would be unable to function, the department suggested, if children could be exempt from child labor laws on religious grounds, for example, or if employers refused to pay taxes because of religious objections to how the money was spent.

Indeed, women's rights advocates see the no-copay birth control provision as a civil rights measure for women, ensuring that women can afford to make reproductive decisions for themselves.

If the court were to allow for-profit corporations to avoid civil rights laws based on their religious beliefs, that would "create a very slippery slope, giving for-profit employers their own right to impose their own medical preferences on their employees," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards on Tuesday. She also emphasized that the choice to use birth control "should be between a woman and her doctor. And no employer should be able to take that right away."

All of these views, and more, will be on full display when the Supreme Court hears arguments in Hobby Lobby and a companion case brought by Conestoga Wood Specialties, a 900-employee woodworking corporation owned by a Mennonite family. A decision is expected by summer.

The historic nuclear deal with Iran marks the first time in three decades that the Persian nation has agreed to slow its work toward a nuclear weapon and allow international monitors in to verify.

It's a significant accomplishment, but the accord is about to become entangled in U.S. politics for months to come, complicating the pact's future on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here are five reasons why:

1. President Obama's Credibility

Obama's domestic political difficulties came into play practically as soon as the deal was announced. It takes public trust for a president to sell an agreement like the one with Iran. Such trust was once among Obama's main strengths. His credibility, however, was damaged by the botched Affordable Care Act rollout and his overselling of some aspects of the law.

Now, judging by recent polling, he faces more skeptical voters. His political opponents and those opposing the deal — frequently the same people — are already using this against him.

Take Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who on Sunday tweeted, "Amazing what the WH will do to distract attention from O-care," and retweeted musician Charlie Daniels: "If you like your nuclear [program], you can keep your nuclear program."

2. Election-Year Politics

While Obama doesn't face a 2014 re-election — or re-election ever again, for that matter — all of the House and a third of Senate seats are on the ballot next year. The timing of the six-month Iranian nuclear deal means it will coincide with party primaries. And a follow-up deal, if there is one, would coincide with the November midterm elections. That timing guarantees the agreement will become part of superheated congressional campaigns.

3. Israel

U.S. Middle East policy involving Israel almost always blurs the normal political battle lines, uniting some Republican and Democratic Israel hawks who seldom agree on anything else.

This deal is no different. The points of agreement are: Iran gets more than it's giving up; the agreement takes pressure off Iran; and Iran is simply playing for time and still intends to get nuclear weapons. Thus, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who seldom parts company with Obama, sounds a lot like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who seldom agrees with the president.

Meanwhile, opposition to the agreement could certainly fire up some voter segments, like Christian evangelicals in the GOP who tend to side with Israeli conservatives. And enforcing the anti-agreement line will be AIPAC, an influential pro-Israel lobby that puts little daylight between itself and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

4. The Prospect Of Additional Sanctions

There's still interest in exploring additional sanctions against the Iranian regime, despite the Obama administration's request for congressional forbearance. Such additional sanctions, rooted in deep skepticism over Iran's intentions, could scuttle the deal.

5. The Legacy Agenda

The agreement is an example of the risks U.S. policymakers can take when they don't have to worry about facing voters again: Obama doesn't have a re-election to think about, and Secretary of State John Kerry's presidential ambitions are behind him. So, in purely political terms, the deal was easier for them to make than it would have been for, say, Hillary Clinton, who's widely thought to be considering another run for president.

Traditional shopping malls took a big hit after the economic collapse. Problems at big retailers Sears and J.C. Penney — two of the biggest mall tenants — could signal even more troubles.

But malls are trying to adapt. As online shopping grows, things are getting more and more competitive out in the real world of brick-and-mortar retail.

The South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif., shows just how competitive the mall business can be. The Orange County shopping center is one of the most successful high-end malls in the U.S., and it offers all kinds of amenities to lure customers: There's a VIP lounge for frequent shoppers, translators for 60 different languages and a meditation room.

There's even a "gentleman's room," with a TV showing sports all the time, says Debra Gunn Downing, executive director of marketing at the mall. Men can sit there and have a glass of wine or a beer.

"I can't walk through here without a million things on my mind about what could be done better, what we need to do next," she says. "I hope they dusted the top of the ornaments, because that's something that has to be done. The poinsettias, if there's one leaf wilting or one flower wilting, it has to be pulled out and replaced."

Howard Davidowitz, a retail analyst and consultant, says these kinds of high-end malls — with stores like Nordstrom and Bloomingdales — are winning.

"The other malls, which typically are two anchors, lower-end malls, smaller stores — they're doing terrible, because those customers are shopping at Family Dollar, Dollar General, Dollar Tree," he says.

All Tech Considered

To Keep Customers, Brick-And-Mortar Stores Look To Smartphones

There's an old joke that if Moses had turned right when he led Jewish tribes out of Egypt, Israel might be where Saudi Arabia is today — and be rich from oil. Consultant Amit Mor of Eco Energy says that joke is out of date.

"Israel has more oil than Saudi Arabia," he claims. "And it's not a joke."

But that oil will be difficult to reach, if it can be recovered at all. The oil he's talking about is not yet liquid, but trapped in rocks underground.

"Maybe, if technology will be proved viable, Israel can meet all of its needs from domestic production of oil," Mor says.

That is precisely the dream of Israel Energy Initiatives, an Israeli company backed by major U.S. investors.

"The motivation of our investors starts with the energy independence for Israel," says Ralik Shafir, its CEO.

He explains that getting to the oil will be a long, slow process. The technology involves placing electric heaters down into an 8-inch pipe about 1,000 feet below the ground.

"Through a slow heating process that may take 2 to 3 years, it turns the organic part of the rock into gases and liquids," Shafir says.

Commercial production is at least a decade away, and the hurdles aren't just technical, they are also political.

Surrounded By History

A windy perch in a nature park south of Jerusalem gives a good view of the spot a pilot project would go. It's next to farmland and a two-lane road. The road crosses the dry riverbed where David, in the biblical story, is said to have found the stone he used to kill the giant Goliath.

Religious pilgrims are regular visitors here. On this day, a busload of Christians from Africa and another from the U.S. stop by. Local resident Sigal Sprukt worries that even a slow-paced oil industry would change the nature of this place.

"The area is one of the last areas that are not ruined by cities," Sprukt says. "The history of the Jewish people is all around here."

She says the gas discoveries off Israel's coast have already made Israelis feel more secure meeting the country's energy needs.

"Right now, we don't need this oil," she says. "When we finish the gas, and you have the technology, a good technology, come back and do it here."

In theory, there is enough oil trapped in rocks here to cover Israel's current oil consumption for centuries. Meanwhile, a much smaller field of conventional oil is ramping up production.

Workers recently moved gigantic steel pipes in place for Givot Olam's sixth well. CEO Tovia Luskin expects to drill 40, plus build a pipeline to a refinery on the coast. He chose where to drill based on a passage from the Bible.

"After the first well, we had signs we could not walk away from," Luskin says. "We had a liter of oil, then we had a few barrels of oil, then we had a bit more barrels of oil. Now we're in production."

But Luskin is facing local opposition, too: Palestinian opposition. The land he's drilling is right up against the Israeli-built security barrier in and around the West Bank. Israeli officials don't want to discuss whether the field continues to the Palestinian side. Luskin says flatly it is Jewish land.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority says it is preparing tenders for oil exploration in the West Bank.

Should President Obama be as unpopular once the 2014 midterm campaign is in full swing as he is now, there are likely to be more than a few vulnerable Democrats who'd prefer that he stay as far away from their districts as possible.

But the money he's raising for their campaigns is an entirely different matter.

As former GOP senator from Texas Phil Gramm once said, an American politician's most reliable friend is "ready money." If Obama has anything to do with it, Democrats facing election next November will at least have plenty of help from that reliable friend.

The president has been unstinting in his second term in performing the fundraising role required by his position as leader of Democratic Party.

Just before Thanksgiving, Obama was back in California, raising bounteous political cash, including at fundraisers held at the estates of former basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, where ticket prices ranged from $2,500 to $15,000; and entertainment mogul Haim Saban, where tickets were $16,200 per person. The money will go to the Democratic campaign committees for both House and Senate candidates.

As far as such fundraising trips are concerned, Obama has lapped his two-term predecessors, and not by a little.

The Guardian's Dan Roberts and Kenton Powell compared Obama's fundraising efforts to other recent two-term presidents. They found that since April, Obama has made 30 fundraising trips to close the deal with wealthy donors. They write:

"Although unable to run again for election himself, Obama is estimated to have raised up to $40m for other Democrats since his last inauguration in January as he devotes a growing portion of the second term to financing efforts aimed at winning back control of Congress in next year's midterm elections. ... George W Bush attended just 11 similar events, Bill Clinton managed 18 and Ronald Reagan only 10."

While home prices rose in major cities across the nation during the third quarter, data suggest that the housing market is beginning to shift to a slower rate of growth, according to the economists who put together the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.

Their statistics show prices rose 3.2 percent in the quarter and were up 11.2 percent from a year earlier.

But economist David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, says in Tuesday's release that "existing home sales weakened in the most recent report, home construction remains far below the boom levels of six or seven years ago and interest rates are expected to be higher a year from now." Those all point to a market that's cooling or soon will be, he says.

Another such sign: The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the number of building permits issued for single-family homes in October was up just 0.8 percent from the month before.

There's one more closely watched economic indicator due Tuesday morning. The private Conference Board is due to release its November consumer confidence index at 10 a.m. ET. We'll update with that news.

Update at 10:05 a.m. ET. Confidence Dips:

After a sharp drop in October, consumer confidence slipped again in November, the Conference Board says. Its index fell to 70.4 from 72.4 the month before. When the economy's growing quickly, the index often tops 100.

Economists watch the index because consumers buy about 70 percent of all the goods and services companies produce. If their confidence is high, in theory their spending will also be strong — and that, in turn, should prop up hiring.

Subscribers to Oprah's O magazine wait all year for the "Oprah's Favorite Things" issue, in which Oprah lists a bunch of things you need to buy if you want any chance of becoming Oprah. It's just out, and in it Oprah mentions that she makes for Stedman something she calls a "Love Sandwich." If you don't know who Stedman is, I'm not even going to put a link here to help you, because really, you should already know.

Pastoral, here in Chicago, created its own "Love Sandwich" in tribute, and we ate it in tribute. And because they gave us some free ones. It's turkey breast, lemon-artichoke pesto, arugula and truffle cheese on a baguette.

Ian: This is very different than the "Love Sandwich" I found on Urban Dictionary.

Eva: My mouth is living its best life right now.

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Lactobacillus and yeast are all around us. They hang out on plants, inside animals' guts and on our skin. So Agapakis and Tolaas thought, why not collect some these personal microcritters and use them to curdle milk?

The microbiologist used swabs from her mouth and skin, as well as from Pollan's belly button, Eliasson's tears and another scientist's feet. She grew the bacteria and yeast in Petri dishes in the lab and then, once she had enough, she added them to fresh milk. The result was a cheese designed to make you rethink the sometimes fine line between stinky and appetizing.

The bacteria and yeast that inhabit our feet or skin aren't too different from those that grow in cheese, Agapakis tells The Salt. "So a lot of the smells on cheese are very similar to body odors."

Agapakis says she understands why the project might make some people uncomfortable — even grossed out. But she insists that's not the point. Instead, she and Tolaas want to challenge us to think more about our emotional response to odors and how the context can influence our impressions.

The Salt

How 17th Century Fraud Gave Rise To Bright Orange Cheese

During a visit to a store last holiday season, Jewish dad Neal Hoffman felt bad telling his son Jake that he couldn't have an Elf on the Shelf. The widely popular Christmas toy is intended to watch children's behavior for Santa. Hoffman kept thinking, maybe there could be something similar, but rooted in Jewish tradition.

Hoffman, a former Hasbro employee, decided Mensch on a Bench was the answer. "A mensch means a really good person. It's a person that you strive to be," he says.

He raised more than $20,000 using the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, last spring. Since then, the interest has been tremendous. After the product arrived "we sold out in two weeks," Hoffman tells Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More.

Hoffman decided early on that Mensch on a Bench wasn't just toy. An accompanying book is inspired by the story of Hannukah. In it, a fictional character called Moshe tells Judah and the Maccabees he will watch over the oil while they sleep in the Temple. "They say, oh Moshe, thank you so much. You're such a mensch sitting on that bench, watching over the oil!"

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CBS has asked Lara Logan, the 60 Minutes correspondent whose recent story on a deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was found to have multiple flaws, to take a leave of absence, along with her producer on the story. An internal report also found wider problems at the network; a summary of that report's findings was obtained by NPR Tuesday.

News of Logan's leave of absence was relayed to staff in a memo from CBS News chairman Jeff Fager, who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes. In it, he also cited the "distinguished" work Logan and her colleague have done for CBS over the years.

Logan's report on the attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans was retracted within weeks of its airing on Oct. 27. It featured Dylan Davies, a security contractor who reportedly told a different version of events to 60 Minutes than he did to his employer and to the FBI.

In early November, Logan delivered an apology to viewers, saying, "The truth is that we made a mistake."

As NPR TV critic Eric Deggans wrote earlier this month, "There has also been criticism of 60 Minutes for not disclosing in its report that Davies' book is being published by a unit of Simon and Schuster — a part of the CBS media empire. Logan did not address that point."

In the summary of findings from Al Ortiz, CBS News' executive director of standards and practices, the network echoes that criticism.

Update at 2:50 p.m. ET: Details From The CBS News Summary

NPR's David Folkenflik, who has seen the full summary, delivers this rundown of Ortiz's findings:

Logan and her producers sought a "different angle" to the Benghazi story from the outset and "believed they had found it in the story of Dylan Davies." But the fact that Davies had by his own account lied to his boss in saying initially that he was not present at the mission on the night of the attack should have raised a "red flag" about his credibility.

Contradictory information uncovered by The Washington Post and The New York Times could have been found before the broadcast.

60 Minutes failed to draw upon the journalistic resources of other reporters and journalists at the network with deep sources within law enforcement, military services, and the diplomatic corps to confirm the story it was about to tell.

Lara Logan's public speech a month before the broadcast condemning the U.S. government's response to first warnings of the attack represented a "conflict" with CBS standards.

Logan had multiple sources and reason to believe them for her assertion tying Al Qaida to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack, but failed to sufficiently attribute that contention. Many critics, such as McClatchy's Nancy Youssef, have strongly questioned that characterization.

CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, who also serves as executive producer of 60 Minutes, defended the story to the media on the basis of Davies' repeated insistence that he had no knowledge of the version of events relayed in the "after action report" or by the FBI and that Fager also relied on the "strong conviction" expressed by the 60 Minutes team – presumably Logan and producer Max McClellan.

60 Minutes also erred by not disclosing that Davies' account was pegged to a book published by a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS. (The publisher has since withdrawn Davies' book.)

David also notes, "Among CBS's strongest critics has been the liberal press watchdog Media Matters. Today, its CEO, David Brock, said that CBS had taken "appropriate action."

The length of the hiatus for Logan and her producer, Max McClellan, wasn't mentioned in the CBS News memo.

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

The poet Wanda Coleman, often called "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles," died on Friday, her husband told the Los Angeles Times. She was 67. A finalist for the National Book Award and the author of a dozen poetry collections, Coleman was a believer in "the power of creative writing to change, heal and transform," and much of her writing dealt with social and political issues. In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, she lamented seeing "Black Los Angeles ... smothered slowly under the kudzu of a persistent and prolific racism." Coleman hoped that one day social change would make her work irrelevant. She wrote in a blog post, "In Y3K, I hope that the readers of my poetry will look back and find it dreadfully pass and that the emotional, social and oft political issues I confront are things of the savage past." She added, "To Hell and Damnation with timelessness. I want my poems to go out of date as fast as possible." Tom Lutz, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, wrote in an email to NPR, "Her performance of her own poetry was already legendary when I met her, almost a decade ago, but it was her improvisational oratory that really floored me, her ability to read her audience and speak to them, off the cuff, with power and humor and eloquence, to hit them, to make them, to a person, feel their culpability, to feel identified, to see themselves. And she could do this with compassion and rigor, fire wielded with a Zen calm. She was wise."

Daniel Mendelsohn writes on the echoes of Greek tragedy in the death of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963: "Athenian drama returns obsessively — as we do, every November 22nd — to the shocking and yet seemingly inevitable spectacle of the fallen king, of power and beauty and privilege violently laid low."

The winners of the American Book Awards, which honors "excellence in American literature without restriction or bias with regard to race, sex, creed, cultural origin, size of press or ad budget, or even genre," include Louise Erdrich, Amanda Coplin and D. G. Nanouk Okpik. Unlike many other literary prizes, the American Book Awards doesn't offer a cash prize and doesn't rank the winners or split them into categories.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez tells The Washington Post's David Montgomery how he learned to write about Colombia, his home country: "I realized that the fact that I didn't understand my country was the best reason to write about it — that fiction, for me, is a way of asking questions. I think of it as the Joseph Conrad approach: You write because there's a dark corner, and you believe that fiction is a way to shed some light."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

Sun-mi Hwang's The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has already sold millions of copies in Hwang's native South Korea and worldwide. In the novel, a hen named Sprout wants to raise a chick, but all her eggs are taken from her as soon as she lays them. She decides she wants "to do something with her life" and escapes. Ostensibly a story for children, it has the plain language of a folktale but also its power of dark suggestion.

In Nevada, there is no income tax. And if you've ever been to Las Vegas then you know why — they don't need one.

More than 30 million tourists a year stumble down the Las Vegas Strip, and many of those tourists come to gamble, leaving behind a ridiculous amount of money. For decades, business boomed.

But the financial collapse hit Las Vegas hard. Despite what people had been saying for years, the gaming industry is not recession-proof. According to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, casino revenues on the Vegas strip dropped for 22 straight months during the last recession, and the city became the unofficial foreclosure capital of the U.S.

The city is now taking steps to claw its way back. In doing so, it may emerge as more than a one-economy town.

The New Nightlife

To be clear, gambling is not going anywhere. It is still what drives Las Vegas. But 2008 was a wake-up call.

Rick Lax, a writer who lives and breathes Las Vegas, tells NPR's Arun Rath that the city discovered that it was, in fact, not immune from the economic downturn.

"It turns out, when people don't have money, in fact they do not have money to come out to Las Vegas and gamble," he says. "And it really sunk in once President Obama ... used as an example of fiscal irresponsibility coming to Vegas on a bender, and that's when we knew we were in bad shape."

Las Vegas has remade itself before, becoming a bit more family-friendly in the '90s. But a more recent trend is the trading in of billboards for penny slots and buffets in exchange for ones advertising the latest nightclubs — and there are a lot of them.

"The club scene has boomed in the past five years," Lax says. "We have just been opening up mega-club after mega-club. And now if you look at the list of the highest money-making clubs in the United States, if you look at that Top 10 list, seven of them are right here in Las Vegas."

One of the newest clubs is called Light, which opened at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in May. Its $25 million cost can be seen in the massive walls of LED screens that illuminate the room, lasers, strobes and fog cannons. And if that wasn't enough of a spectacle, Light is a partnership with Cirque du Soleil, a company that has taken Las Vegas by storm since its first show there in 1993.

In Light, the Cirque du Soleil acrobats and performers swing from the rafters above club-goers.

"So all this is happening while the club's going on," says Andy Masi, CEO of Las Vegas hospitality company The Light Group. "You're part of the experience."

Masi says party-goers pay anything from $30 to get in the door to $10,000 to get a prime table and hear the world-famous DJs these clubs attract, like Kaskade and Tiesto.

"It's part of the culture right now," Masi says. "This is a movement, and these DJs who are creating this music ... they're composers, they are creating music. And it's really something that has inspired a massive generation."

The clubs in Las Vegas are getting bigger and bigger, and making huge amounts of money that isn't gambling. Masi says that it is all part of the market shift in the city.

"Gen X and Gen Y are really more into entertainment and dining and seeing shows and staying in great hotels than they are into gaming," he says. "[But] gaming is still a big part of Las Vegas ... I don't think you can have one without the other."

Counting On Collision

A couple of miles away, one entrepreneur is trying to bring the spirit of a party to a corporation. Tony Hsieh, CEO of online retailer Zappos, wants to transform Las Vegas.

Zappos has its headquarters in downtown Vegas (away from the Strip), but Hsieh's goals are broader. In 2009, he sold the company to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and with some of that money he started the Downtown Project.

In one way, it's a venture capital firm, trying to attract new industries. But in other ways, it's much more ambitious. Hsieh wants to rethink city planning and imagines how a well-designed city can breed innovation.

The secret, he says, is forcing more collaboration. It's something he likes to call "collisions." One example, Hsieh says, is at Zappos' new headquarters housed in what used to be Las Vegas City Hall. The company shut down a skybridge in order to force employees out into the street and into the community when coming to work.

"Research has shown that most innovation actually comes from something outside your industry or outside your area of expertise being combined with your own," he says. "So on the city level, it's really important for people from all different backgrounds and industries to collide and talk to each other. That's where a lot of the great ideas come from."

Hsieh has already started forcing a few collisions by funding companies like CrowdHall — a site that hosts Q&A sessions where visitors vote on the best questions — and Fluencr, a site that rethinks the celebrity endorsement and gets companies to offer everyday people endorsements instead.

Hsieh's Downtown Project, which is separate from Zappos, divides its $350 million budget between investing in small business, tech companies, education, arts, music and real estate.

"In the past year, we've relocated about 60 companies from other states or even countries actually to downtown Vegas," he says.

Hsieh says there are a few different goals of the project. One is to have everything people need to live, work and play within walking distance; another is to make downtown Vegas the most community-focused large city in the world — in probably the place most people would least expect it.

A third goal is to make Las Vegas the co-working and co-learning capital of the world. Co-working is where small companies, especially tech startups, share the same physical space. The idea started with some startups in San Francisco.

"What they found was they would start overhearing each other's conversations, and that would result in these serendipitous interactions and they'd start collaborating," he says. "And it actually drove a lot of innovation and productivity."

Dollar Signs In The Sky

For other new sources of revenue, Las Vegas is looking to the skies. Next month, the Federal Aviation Administration will decide on a new test site for unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones. Nevada is vying for that honor.

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

Amazon's labor practices have come under fresh scrutiny after BBC reporter Adam Littler went undercover as a worker at an Amazon warehouse in the U.K. Wearing a hidden camera, Littler worked at a warehouse in Swansea, Wales, for seven weeks as a "picker" and was given 33 seconds to collect orders from 800,000 square feet of storage, according to the BBC report. A handset timed him and beeped if he made a mistake. Describing one 10.5-hour night shift, Littler said, "I managed to walk or hobble nearly 11 miles, just short of 11 miles last night. I'm absolutely shattered." The BBC showed the video footage to Michael Marmot, an expert on stress and mental health, who said the work involves "all the bad stuff at once," and could lead to "increased risk of mental illness and physical illness." In a statement, Amazon wrote, "We strongly refute the charge that Amazon exploits its employees in any way. The safety of our associates is our number one priority, and we adhere to all regulations and employment law."

Romesh Gunesekera has a new short story in The New Yorker. In "Roadkill," set in the time after Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, Gunesekera writes: "She nodded, as though small killings were a natural part of politics as well as of hotel management. She pulled out one of the two paper serviettes from the chrome clip on the table and smoothed it like a mini funeral shroud. 'You have to bury the dead and move on.' "

James McBride, whose novel The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for fiction, told The New York Times that he was so sure he wouldn't win that he didn't bother to stop eating during the announcement: "I was so stunned that I walked up there with my napkin in my hand."

Patricia Cornwell says that if she hadn't become a mystery novelist, she would've been an archeologist: "As a child, my dream was to be an archaeologist when I grew up, and in a way, my fascination with forensics makes total sense. It's all about taking a shard or splinter or bit of bone and reconstructing how someone died and lived, and who they were. An archaeological site is really one big crime scene."

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have known each other for years — they were both actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the '60s and '70s, and both achieved broader fame through movies and television. Both were knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for their work onstage and off. And then, of course, they were cast as mortal enemies in the first X-Men film 14 years ago, and have come back to the roles of Magneto and Professor X several times since.

"We became good friends as a result of shooting multimillion-dollar adventure movies," Stewart says.

Such good friends, in fact, that McKellen officiated at Stewart's wedding this past September. Now they're on Broadway in repertory productions of two 20th-century masterpieces: Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land.

A Chock-Full Fall

NPR's Trey Graham did a five-show, three-day weekend in New York. He talks to Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon about what's shaping up to be a heck of a season so far.

Comedian Bill Cosby has been in show business for 50 years, and he celebrated on Comedy Central over the weekend with a stand-up special — his first in 30 years — called Far From Finished.

That earlier special, called Bill Cosby Himself, inspired one of the most popular sitcoms in TV history: The Cosby Show, starring Cosby as paterfamilias Cliff Huxtable. It was a show that was really the first of its kind, capturing life in a highly educated upper-middle-class African-American family.

Cosby is 76 now, and he has a room full of awards. But he shows no sign of letting up — and with his 50th-anniversary special, we thought it would be a good time to check in.

But I've got to tell you, I immediately lost control of the interview. He wrong-footed me at the outset, asking what I had to say for myself that morning. And when I hesitated, he — well, he kind of took me to school.

"Mr. Greene," he said in that inimitable paternal baritone, "I think this is your program. And I'm sure that whatever professor you had said, 'For God's sake, don't say, 'Lemme [stutter mumble squeak...]' "

But when I'd gotten my act together, and asked what moment he points to as the launching point of his long career, his answer took us back to the 1960s. Cosby was a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, and it was in class there that he noticed something that would become central to his comedy: the way his mind has a tendency to wander.

"I'm drifting!" he says. "I'm drifting ADD [attention deficit disorder] off of Professor Barrett."

And "the ability to drift," as he puts it, is key to his free-associative comedy.

"ADD people, they are the real — and this is my humor, but it's true — they are the real multitaskers," he says.

Jokes About Marriage, And Sober Truths At Home

Cosby's comedy, old and new, has always involved a heavy dose of domestic-affairs humor — jokes about the plight of the husband and the iron rule of the wife. He says his own wife, Camille Cosby, honestly loves his marriage jokes — actually edits some of them.

The two have been through a lot in their 49 years together: Cosby has admitted to a secret affair. He settled a lawsuit with another woman who claimed he had drugged and sexually assaulted her.

And the Cosbys lost their son, Ennis, in 1997. The 27-year-old was shot and killed on a California roadside while changing a tire. His murder rocked the family, along with a public that, in a way, felt it had watched Ennis grow up on TV, in the character of Theo Huxtable.

In talking to Cosby about losing his son, something becomes clear: His wife is indeed the one who manages the family.

"I was told about Ennis," Cosby remembers. "And immediately, immediately after opening the front door and going into the house, the children were there, the daughters, and it was quiet. And I went to her, and she was warm, she was loving. And she mothered, she wifed. She human-ed — and helped me an awful lot."

Man work, woman cook? Not in Bill Cosby's world view.

"It's wonderful, and it's hilarious," he says. "It's hilarious because you and I, and our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers, are told, 'You will toil in the fields, and you will pick up the oxen and carry them and do all of this and that,' and she's supposed to be there in an apron boiling a pot of something.

"And we forget, the males: You. Are. Her oldest child."

Nicholas Dawidoff's Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football may be the best book I've ever read about football. It is certainly the most detailed account of the players inside the helmets and the coaches obscured from an enthralled public by large, laminated playsheets.

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

The poet Wanda Coleman, often called "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles," died on Friday, her husband told the Los Angeles Times. She was 67. A finalist for the National Book Award and the author of a dozen poetry collections, Coleman was a believer in "the power of creative writing to change, heal and transform," and much of her writing dealt with social and political issues. In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, she lamented seeing "Black Los Angeles ... smothered slowly under the kudzu of a persistent and prolific racism." Coleman hoped that one day social change would make her work irrelevant. She wrote in a blog post, "In Y3K, I hope that the readers of my poetry will look back and find it dreadfully pass and that the emotional, social and oft political issues I confront are things of the savage past." She added, "To Hell and Damnation with timelessness. I want my poems to go out of date as fast as possible." Tom Lutz, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, wrote in an email to NPR, "Her performance of her own poetry was already legendary when I met her, almost a decade ago, but it was her improvisational oratory that really floored me, her ability to read her audience and speak to them, off the cuff, with power and humor and eloquence, to hit them, to make them, to a person, feel their culpability, to feel identified, to see themselves. And she could do this with compassion and rigor, fire wielded with a Zen calm. She was wise."

Daniel Mendelsohn writes on the echoes of Greek tragedy in the death of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963: "Athenian drama returns obsessively — as we do, every November 22nd — to the shocking and yet seemingly inevitable spectacle of the fallen king, of power and beauty and privilege violently laid low."

The winners of the American Book Awards, which honors "excellence in American literature without restriction or bias with regard to race, sex, creed, cultural origin, size of press or ad budget, or even genre," include Louise Erdrich, Amanda Coplin and D. G. Nanouk Okpik. Unlike many other literary prizes, the American Book Awards doesn't offer a cash prize and doesn't rank the winners or split them into categories.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez tells The Washington Post's David Montgomery how he learned to write about Colombia, his home country: "I realized that the fact that I didn't understand my country was the best reason to write about it — that fiction, for me, is a way of asking questions. I think of it as the Joseph Conrad approach: You write because there's a dark corner, and you believe that fiction is a way to shed some light."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

Sun-mi Hwang's The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has already sold millions of copies in Hwang's native South Korea and worldwide. In the novel, a hen named Sprout wants to raise a chick, but all her eggs are taken from her as soon as she lays them. She decides she wants "to do something with her life" and escapes. Ostensibly a story for children, it has the plain language of a folktale but also its power of dark suggestion.

A new film about Nelson Mandela's public rise in South Africa also takes a close look at the personal side of his life with former wife, Winnie.

In Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, British actor Idris Elba portrays the young lawyer who devoted his life to the struggle against apartheid. The film, which took 16 years to make, and spans seven decades, also tries to tell the story of the man behind the icon

Fellow Brit, Naomie Harris, plays the iconic statesman's wife. She tells NPR's Michel Martin that "by delving into the human side of Mandela and of Winnie, and showing them warts and all, flaws and all, it actually makes it easier for the audience to connect."

Coming in to the role, Harris admits that she knew quite a bit about Nelson Mandela, but very little about his wife. "I really thought Winnie Mandela was just the woman who stood by his side, and I thought that's the kind of role I would be playing."

But Harris' research taught her about the "extraordinarily rough time" that Winnie went through. The film shows harrowing scenes of the 18 months she spent in solitary confinement, as well as the determination of the apartheid government to break her physically, morally and emotionally. It helped Harris to understand why Winnie later became such a polarizing and controversial figure in South Africa. For example, she was later investigated and tried for connections to political violence carried out by her supporters. "My job is not to justify Winnie," she says. "That was never my aim in taking on this role. But my aim is to really document and show her arc, her journey, the truth of that, as faithfully as I possibly can."

Interview Highlights

On meeting Winnie Mandela

What I really wanted to find out when I sat down with Winnie was, how do you want people to see you? How do you want to be portrayed? And I thought she'd have a long laundry list of suggestions about, she wants to be represented in this way, and she doesn't want this area dealt with, and so on. And in fact, she was incredibly open and she just said, 'look, you're the right person for this role, you've done your research, and all I ask is that you portray me honestly.' And that was so liberating for me.

Nicholas Dawidoff's Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football may be the best book I've ever read about football. It is certainly the most detailed account of the players inside the helmets and the coaches obscured from an enthralled public by large, laminated playsheets.

Commerce has returned to the storm-savaged streets of Tacloban in the past week. People sell bananas along the roads, and a bustling market has sprung up across several blocks downtown.

Jimbo Tampol, who works for a local Coca-Cola distributor, drives across Tacloban selling ice-cold sodas from coolers. In a city where there is no electricity and little refrigeration, a cold soda is a big deal, a symbol of normalcy.

Children crowd around Tampol's flat-bed truck to pay their 50 cents, as if buying ice cream on a hot summer day. They run their hands along the cool, wet bottles.

"It's just now that they've been able to taste cold soft drinks since Typhoon Haiyan," says Tampol, 39, as he hauls bottles out of the water.

To cool the drinks, workers drove 16 hours round-trip to pick up the ice from a factory on the neighboring island of Samar. Because nearly all of the stores here are damaged, Tampol decided to sell the drinks himself and at only a small markup.

"You feel bad for the people," explains Tampol, who wears a Philippines national basketball team jersey. "Some of them, they're even just asking us for it when they don't have money. We just go ahead and give it to them."

Florentino Duero, 67, is a cobbler whose tools were washed away in the storm surge. He gazes at the bottles longingly with his rheumy eyes. A young aid worker hands him a 20 peso note to buy a Coke. But Duero, who wears flip-flops and a plaid shirt, decides to put the cash to something more essential.

"I'll buy rice," he says. "Before I drink, rice first."

That won't be easy; rice has been in short supply.

Enlarge image i

This week on the podcast edition of All Things Considered, host Arun Rath goes inside the double lives of "fake" ATF hitmen, explores the new — and reformed — Sin City, and traces the money paid by banks for their roles in the financial crisis.

If you've seen the 2012 science fiction movie Looper, you might remember a telling exchange when a time-traveling hitman (Bruce Willis) sits down with a young version of himself (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and offers some advice.

"You should go to China," Willis says firmly.

Gordon-Levitt resists: "I'm going to France."

"I'm from the future," Willis insists. "You should go to China."

It's almost as if Hollywood is giving advice to itself. Like every other gigantic business, Hollywood wants to sell its products in China. But selling movies in China is different from selling bubble gum or Coke. The country's official gatekeeper, the China Film Group, allows in only 34 foreign films per year, a number recently raised from only 20.

Many millions of dollars of ticket sales come along with snagging one of those coveted spots. So Hollywood's been trying — and trying and trying — to appeal to Chinese audiences while appeasing Chinese censors.

Working Together, Officially

As an "official co-production," Looper cast a certain number of Chinese actors, a certain number of Chinese crew, set a certain number of scenes in China and made other concessions, in exchange for a bigger cut of the box office than other U.S. movies and a preferential release date. (Movies released during major Chinese holidays perform significantly better at the box office.)

[General Hunger Games/Catching Fire information below; no huge surprises revealed.]

This weekend, Catching Fire, the second chapter of the Hunger Games film adaptations, raked in enormous piles of dough — with over $160 million in one weekend, it's the biggest November opening ever. Ever. (Take that, Twilight sequels.) Much has been said, and rightly so, about Katniss Everdeen and the way she challenges a lot of traditional narratives about girls. She carries a bow, she fights, she kills, she survives, she's emotionally unavailable, she's rather act than talk, and ... did we mention she kills?

But one of the most unusual things about Katniss isn't the way she defies typical gender roles for heroines, but the way Peeta, her arena partner and one of her two love interests, defies typical Hollywood versions of gender roles for boyfriends.

Consider the evidence: Peeta's family runs a bakery. He can literally bake a cherry pie, as the old song says.

He is physically tough, but markedly less so than she is. He's got a good firm spine, but he lacks her disconnected approach to killing. Over and over, she finds herself screaming "PEETA!", not calling for help but going to help, and then running, because he's gone and done some damn fool thing like gotten himself electrocuted.

Her larger mission — her war against the Capitol — often drifts out of focus behind her smaller, more immediate mission: saving Peeta. She lets others know that if it's down to the two of them, he should be saved because of his goodness. She is unsurprised when she's told she doesn't deserve him.

He encourages her to talk about her feelings. He encourages her to share herself with others. He promises her, falsely but selflessly, that her indifference doesn't hurt him and she owes him nothing. If she ever wants to come to her senses, come down from those fences, he'll be there.

He's better than she is, but softer. He's less knowing than she is. He's less cynical than she is. He's just as tough and as brave as he can possibly be with the skill set he has, and she's responsible for mopping up when that's not enough. To fail to protect him is to betray her, because that may well be the only job she gives you.

She kisses him sometimes, but she keeps him on a need-to-know basis, and she decides what he needs to know.

He loves her as she is, while knowing he'll never change her and parts of her will always be mysterious and out of reach.

Don't get me wrong: In real life, we all know couples of all gender alignments who operate in this way and in lots of other ways, whether they're male-female or two guys or two women or whatever; there's absolutely nothing about baking, physical strength, or emotional accessibility that is inherently gendered in real life for real humans with any consistency. But the movies, or at least the big movies, are different. Going by the traditional Hollywood rules, make no mistake: Peeta is a Movie Girlfriend.

Peeta is Pepper Potts and Gwen Stacy, helping and helping and helping until the very end, when it's time for the stakes, and the stakes are: NEEDS RESCUE. Peeta is Annie in Speed, who drives that bus like a champ right up until she winds up handcuffed to a pole covered with explosives. Peeta is Holly in Die Hard, who holds down the fort against the terrorists until John McClane can come and find her (and she can give back her maiden name).

In fact, you could argue that Katniss' conflict between Peeta and Gale is effectively a choice between a traditional Movie Girlfriend and a traditional Movie Boyfriend. Gale, after all, is the one whose bed she winds up steadfastly sitting beside after she helps bind his wounds. Gale explains the revolution to her. She puts up a plan to run; Gale rebuffs it because he presumes himself to know better. Gale is jealous and brooding about his standing with her; Peeta is just sad and contemplative.

Gale works in the mines, not in a bakery. He's a hunter. He grabs her and kisses her because he simply must. He's taller. (Real talk: HE'S THOR'S BROTHER.)

There's more to the unusual gender dynamics in these stories, in other words — particularly, I think, in the films — than the idea of a girl who fights. There's also a rather delightful mishing and mashing of the ideas of what's expected from young men in movies where everybody is running around shooting and bleeding.

This week, JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over the sale of faulty mortgage securities that led to the financial crisis. It's the largest settlement with a single company in U.S. history.

From that settlement, $4 billion must go to help the millions of families who saw the values of their homes plummet and who still struggle to keep up with mortgage payments.

Your Money

When You Hear $13 Billion, Don't See Dollar Signs

As often as we can, your tech team is focusing our reporting into themes over the course of a week, and this week, we're all about the sharing economy, or collaborative consumption. (Check out the series page where we'll archive all the stories from the week.)

The sharing economy can encompass a lot. There's tool sharing — whether that's bike-sharing, car-sharing or actual sharing-sharing. It also includes a subset called the peer economy, which describes peer-to-peer platforms in which people sell things to one another. There's also a subset called the "gift economy," which is stuff like couch-surfing through platforms like Airbnb. Speaking of which, the Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia described this movement this way, to New York Magazine:

"Social media is about sharing online. We've extended that behavior into the offline world. In the wake of the recession, there's a slightly different mentality beginning to emerge, which is that access is more powerful than ownership. The last century was predicated around ownership as status. There's an opportunity for this century to be defined by access as status. You see this across all industries. Zipcar is a great example. You don't need to own a car; having access to Zipcar actually gets you status. Suddenly, you can be the guy with the car when it's needed. For Airbnb, you don't need a vacation home anymore. You have access to 500,000 of them when you want them."

State and federal regulators have hailed Tuesday's $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co. over faulty mortgage assets it sold in the years leading up to the financial crisis as a big victory for the judicial system.

But like other big settlements to emerge from the financial crisis, the deal leaves unclear just what the bank did wrong.

The government alleged that the bank and two other financial institutions it later acquired were repeatedly warned about the quality of the mortgage assets that were sold — but never did anything about it.

"The conduct JPMorgan has acknowledged, which is packaging risky home loans into securities, then selling them without disclosing their low quality to investors, that is behavior that we believe contributed to the wreckage of the financial crisis," Tony West, associate U.S. attorney general, said this week.

The government spelled out its case in a statement of facts that JPMorgan agreed to sign. But even as the bank was acknowledging its conduct, it was also proclaiming its innocence.

"The firm has not admitted to any violations of the law," Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's chief financial officer, said in a conference call Tuesday.

Lake and CEO Jamie Dimon repeated that several times: No violations of the law. At the same time, the bank signed an agreement that U.S. officials say suggests a pattern of misleading investors.

So who's right?

"We're in an age of spin, and I think the answer is, everybody is right," says securities lawyer Jacob Frenkel. He says the statement of facts at the heart of the case is artfully worded so that both sides can walk away claiming a victory of sorts.

JPMorgan Chase, for instance, gets to settle the case and move on. But it doesn't admit anything that might come back to haunt it later on — like in one of the private lawsuits it faces, for example.

The Two-Way

JPMorgan Chase Will Pay $13 Billion In Record Settlement

Nicholas Dawidoff's Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football may be the best book I've ever read about football. It is certainly the most detailed account of the players inside the helmets and the coaches obscured from an enthralled public by large, laminated playsheets.

From the start, airline analysts had been predicting that an antitrust lawsuit would not stop the $11 billion deal to combine US Airways and American Airlines.

They saw the suit, filed in August, as a government negotiating tactic, not a deal-breaker.

Turns out, they were right: On Tuesday, the Justice Department said that rather than go to trial, it has settled the case. The two carriers are now free to combine and create the world's largest airline, but they must make room for low-cost competitors at seven airports.

Both the airline executives and many antitrust experts agreed that all's well that ends well.

"We couldn't be happier with the settlement," US Airways CEO Doug Parker said on a conference call with journalists.

"It's a win for consumers," Boston College Associate Law Professor Brian Quinn said. "The government identified a number of markets where the merger would have eliminated all competition" on many routes once American and US Airways combined.

"Freeing up those slots creates an opportunity for competitors," he said.

In a conference call, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer said forcing carriers to surrender slots can help consumers. He pointed to Southwest Airlines' entry into Newark Liberty International Airport in 2010. Because United and Continental divested themselves of some prime airport real estate when they merged, Southwest was able to acquire 36 divested slots at Newark. Air fares subsequently fell more than 10 percent on nonstop flights alone, he said.

Under the agreement, consumers will find new travel options at Boston Logan International, Chicago O'Hare International, Dallas Love Field, Los Angeles International, Miami International, New York's LaGuardia and Ronald Reagan Washington National.

"This settlement ensures airline passengers will see more competition on nonstop and connecting routes throughout the country," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

The settlement puts the merger back on track, pending final approval from the bankruptcy court overseeing the financial reorganization of AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines.

The Two-Way

Justice Reaches Deal To Allow American, US Airways Merger

This is the first in a three-part report on Philadelphia schools in crisis.

Sharron Snyder and Othella Stanback, both seniors at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High, will be the first in their families to graduate from high school. This, their final year, was supposed to be memorable. Instead, these teenagers say they feel cheated.

"We're fed up with the budget cuts and everything. Like, this year, my school is like really overcrowded. We don't even have lockers because it's, like, too many students," Sharron says.

Parts 2 and 3

Education

Unrelenting Poverty Leads To 'Desperation' In Philly Schools

University of Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw has led her team to five NCAA Final Fours, is the reigning Naismith College Coach of the Year, and has a spot in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. On top of all that, she could almost certainly beat most NPR listeners at a game of H-O-R-S-E.

The only other Muffet we've ever met is the Little Miss, so we've invited McGraw to play a game called "So what exactly is a tuffet anyway?" Three questions about nursery rhymes and children's songs.

If you've seen the 2012 science fiction movie Looper, you might remember a telling exchange when a time-traveling hitman (Bruce Willis) sits down with a young version of himself (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and offers some advice.

"You should go to China," Willis says firmly.

Gordon-Levitt resists: "I'm going to France."

"I'm from the future," Willis insists. "You should go to China."

It's almost as if Hollywood is giving advice to itself. Like every other gigantic business, Hollywood wants to sell its products in China. But selling movies in China is different from selling bubble gum or Coke. The country's official gatekeeper, the China Film Group, allows in only 34 foreign films per year, a number recently raised from only 20.

Many millions of dollars of ticket sales come along with snagging one of those coveted spots. So Hollywood's been trying — and trying and trying — to appeal to Chinese audiences while appeasing Chinese censors.

Working Together, Officially

As an "official co-production," Looper cast a certain number of Chinese actors, a certain number of Chinese crew, set a certain number of scenes in China and made other concessions, in exchange for a bigger cut of the box office than other U.S. movies and a preferential release date. (Movies released during major Chinese holidays perform significantly better at the box office.)

In Nevada, there is no income tax. And if you've ever been to Las Vegas then you know why — they don't need one.

More than 30 million tourists a year stumble down the Las Vegas Strip, and those tourists mostly come to gamble, leaving behind a ridiculous amount of money. For decades business boomed.

But the financial collapse hit Las Vegas hard, despite what people had been saying for years, the gaming industry is not recession proof. According to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, casino revenues on the Vegas strip dropped for 22 straight months during the last recession, and the city became the unofficial foreclosure capital of the U.S.

The city is now taking steps to claw its way back. In doing so, it may emerge as more than a one-economy town.

The New Nightlife

To be clear, gambling is not going anywhere. It is still what drives Las Vegas. But 2008 was a wake-up call.

Rick Lax, a writer who lives and breathes Las Vegas, tells NPR's Arun Rath that the city discovered that it was, in fact, not immune from the economic downturn.

"It turns out, when people don't have money, in fact they do not have money to come out to Las Vegas and gamble," he says. "And it really sunk in once President Obama ... used as an example of fiscal irresponsibility coming to Vegas on a bender, and that's when we knew we were in bad shape."

Las Vegas has remade itself before, becoming a bit more family-friendly in the '90s. But a more recent trend is the trading in of billboards for penny slots and buffets in exchange for ones advertising the latest nightclubs — and there are a lot of them.

"The club scene has boomed in the past five years," Lax says. "We have just been opening up mega-club after mega-club. And now if you look at the list of the highest money-making clubs in the United States, if you look at that top-10 list, seven of them are right here in Las Vegas."

One of the newest clubs is called Light, which opened at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in May. Its $25 million cost can be seen in the massive walls of LED screens that illuminate the room, lasers, strobes and fog cannons. And if that wasn't enough of a spectacle, Light is a partnership with Cirque du Soleil, a company that has taken Las Vegas by storm since its first show in 1993.

In Light, the Cirque du Soleil acrobats and performers swing from the rafters above club-goers.

"So all this is happening while the club's going on," says Andy Masi, CEO of Las Vegas hospitality company The Light Group. "You're part of the experience."

Masi says party-goers pay from $30 to get in the door to $10,000 to get a prime table and hear the world-famous DJs these clubs attract, like Kaskade and Tiesto.

"It's part of the culture right now," Masi says. "This is a movement, and these DJs who are creating this music ... they're composers, they are creating music. And it's really something that has inspired a massive generation."

The clubs in Las Vegas are getting bigger and bigger, and making huge amounts of money that isn't gambling. Masi says that it is all part of the market shift in the city.

"Gen X and Gen Y are really more into entertainment and dining and seeing shows and staying in great hotels than they are into gaming," he says. "[But] gaming is still a big part of Las Vegas ... I don't think you can have one without the other."

Counting On Collision

A couple of miles away, one entrepreneur is trying to bring the spirit of a party to a corporation. Tony Hsieh, CEO of online retailer Zappos, wants to transform Las Vegas.

Zappos has its headquarters in downtown Vegas (away from the Strip), but Hsieh's goals are broader. In 2009, he sold the company to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and with some of that money he started the Downtown Project.

In one way, it's a venture capital firm, trying to attract new industries. But in other ways, it's much more ambitious. Hsieh wants to rethink city planning and imagines how a well-designed city can breed innovation.

The secret, he says, is forcing more collaboration. It's something he likes to call "collisions." One example, Hsieh says, is at their new headquarters housed in what used to be Las Vegas City Hall. They shut down a skybridge in order to force employees out into the street and into the community when coming to work.

"Research has shown that most innovation actually comes from something outside your industry or outside your area of expertise being combined with your own," he says. "So on the city level, it's really important for people from all different backgrounds and industries to collide and talk to each other. That's where a lot of the great ideas come from."

Hsieh has already started forcing a few collisions by funding companies like CrowdHall, a site that hosts Q&A sessions where visitors vote on the best questions and Fluencr, a site that rethinks the celebrity endorsement and gets companies to offer everyday people endorsements instead.

Hsieh's Downtown Project, which is separate from Zappos, divides its $350 million budget between investing in small business, tech companies, education, arts, music and real estate.

"In the past year, we've relocated about 60 companies from other states or even countries actually to downtown Vegas," he says.

Hsieh says there are a few different goals of the project. One is to have everything you need to live, work and play within walking distance; while another is to make downtown Vegas the most community-focused large city in the world — in probably the place most people would least expect it.

A third goal is to make Las Vegas the co-working and co-learning capital of the world. Co-working is where small companies, especially tech startups, share the same physical space. The idea started with some startups in San Francisco.

"What they found was they would start overhearing each other's conversations, and that would result in these serendipitous interactions and they'd start collaborating," he says. "And it actually drove a lot of innovation and productivity."

Dollar Signs In The Sky

For other new sources of revenue, Las Vegas is looking to the skies. Next month, the Federal Aviation Administration will decide on a new test site for unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones. Nevada is vying for that honor.

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