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Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written a series of presidential histories — covering Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Her book about Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, helped inspire the movie Lincoln, and her latest book, The Bully Pulpit, is about Teddy Roosevelt.

Since Goodwin is an expert on presidents of the past, we're going to quiz her about presidents of the future — three questions about leaders from science fiction.

If only dropping pants sizes were as easy as switching from Coke to Coke Zero.

Sure, you're cutting out empty calories when you ditch the sugar-sweetened drinks in favor of artificially sweetened ones. But there's growing evidence that suggests this isn't really helping in the battle of the bulge.

The latest ding against diet drinks? Researchers report this week that overweight and obese people who choose diet beverages eat about the same number of total calories as their counterparts guzzling sugary drinks — they're just getting more of their calories from solid food.

In other words, their drinks may be no-calorie, but they're making up for it at meal and snack times.

And that suggests that public health messages urging people to drop the sugar-sweetened drinks in favor of diet ones to combat obesity need to be tweaked, says the study's lead author, Sara Bleich, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

"We need to go beyond telling them, 'You need to drink less sugary soda,' " Bleich tells The Salt. "That's because when people make the switch from regular to diet, they're not making many other changes."

Americans' diet soda habit has exploded in the past 15 years — 1 in 5 of us now consumes one on a daily basis. Overweight and obese adults are about twice as likely as their healthy-weight counterparts to drink diet beverages, according to Bleich's findings, which appear in the American Journal of Public Health. And it makes sense, she says, that this reflects a desire to shed excess weight.

But Bleich and her colleagues wanted to know how Americans' rising diet drink habit relates to overall calorie consumption. So they looked at data for adults 20 and older gathered between 1999 and 2010 by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's an ongoing program that collects details on eating habits and other health-related information from a nationally representative sample of people in the U.S.

And what did they find? It turns out that overweight adults who drank artificially sweetened beverages ate on average 88 more solid-food calories per day than their weight counterparts who drank sugary beverages, while obese diet drinkers ate an extra 194 calories per day.

The Salt

Why Sugar Makes Us Feel So Good

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written a series of presidential histories — covering Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Her book about Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, helped inspire the movie Lincoln, and her latest book, The Bully Pulpit, is about Teddy Roosevelt.

Since Goodwin is an expert on presidents of the past, we're going to quiz her about presidents of the future — three questions about leaders from science fiction.

Here's a snapshot of the Arab world on the third anniversary of its uprisings: Tunisians celebrated in the streets. Egyptians voted on a constitution that highlighted their bitter divisions. Beleaguered Syrians prayed that peace talks will bring an end to their nightmarish civil war.

The revolutionary fervor that gripped Arab nations in early 2011 has long since dissipated. All those that experienced uprisings have struggled to remake themselves and the prevailing mood across much of the region has been disappointment or worse.

Amid this messy process, several Arab Spring countries are working through significant events this month that will define the way ahead.

Here's a look at Tunisia, the most hopeful Arab Spring nation; Egypt, the most populous Arab state; and Syria, the most convulsed.

TUNISIA: Tunisian politicians are poised to approve a new constitution hammered out during protracted negotiations between Islamist and secular parties.

This alone sets Tunisia apart from other Arab states where the battle between Islamists and secularists is still playing out, often with deadly results.

A broad cross-section of cheering Tunisians spilled into the streets on Tuesday to mark the third anniversary of the ouster of Zine el-Abidene Ben Ali, the autocratic president who ruled for nearly a quarter-century before fleeing to Saudi Arabia.

It's been a bumpy road for Tunisia. Protests have turned violent and high-profile assassinations threatened to tear the country apart. The negotiations on a constitution stalled and appeared near collapse at times. The economy is still weak.

But the parties have worked out compromises on tough issues. The constitution acknowledges that Islam is the religion of Tunisia but does not make reference to Islamic law. A section on women's rights has been praised.

Elections are planned for later this year and will test whether all Tunisians have bought into the constitutional compromises.

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A suicide attack at a Kabul restaurant popular with foreign nationals killed at least 21 people, including a senior official with the International Monetary Fund and four United Nations employees.

The attackers exploded a bomb at the restaurant gates, clearing the way for two gunmen to enter and start shooting. Afghan security forces killed the gunmen in a shootout.

Some 13 foreign nationals were among the dead, CNN reported, including Canadians, Lebanese and a British contractor.

The Taliban claimed responsibility in an email, saying the attackers targeted a gathering of foreign diplomats, according to the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ noted that the deadly bombing was likely to drive more foreign nationals and aid workers from the country as the U.S. continues its pullout.

The UN called it a "gross violation of international humanitarian law.'

The restaurant, the Taverna du Liban, is located near many NGO offices. The owner, Kamal Hamade, was killed in the attack, says Lyse Doucet of the BBC.

Doucet credits Hamade, who was Lebanese, with safety measures which saved many lives Friday.

"Kamal Hamade made the best chocolate cake in Kabul, the best Lebanese food and, he thought, the best evacuation plan," Doucet writes. "Kamal did everything possible to make his Taverna restaurant a home away from home for many Kabul residents."

Ruling that "voting laws are designed to assure a free and fair election" and that Pennsylvania's "Voter ID Law does not further this goal," a state judge on Friday struck down that controversial statute.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley's ruling is posted here.

The Associated Press writes that:

"McGinley said the requirement that was the centerpiece of Pennsylvania's embattled 2012 voter identification law places an unreasonable burden on the fundamental right to vote.

"The decision paves the way for an expected appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Republicans approved the law over the protests of Democrats.

"During a 12-day trial this summer, plaintiffs said hundreds of thousands of voters lacked acceptable IDs and the inconvenience of getting a photo ID might discourage some from voting. State officials insisted there were ample opportunities for voters to get a valid ID if they had none.

"The court has barred enforcement of the law since [shortly before] the 2012 general election."

Obama said he's ordered a plan to be drafted that would shift that data to some other entity. The information could then only be "queried ... after a judicial finding or in a true emergency." He's also ordered, the president said, that the NSA narrow the scope of its activities. "We will only pursue phone calls that are two steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization instead of three," Obama said.

Speaking of the months of controversy about the NSA that were sparked by leaks from former agency contractor Edward Snowden, Obama said of the United States that "we are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront in defending personal privacy and human dignity."

"No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs, or Russia to take the privacy concerns of citizens into account," he added.

Along with the changes in how electronic metadata will be stored, Obama said:

— He has approved a new presidential directive that "will strengthen executive branch oversight of our intelligence activities."

— He is "directing the director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the attorney general, to annually review — for the purpose of declassification — any future opinions of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] with broad privacy implications, and to report to me and Congress on these efforts."

— He wants the intelligence community to "institute reforms that place additional restrictions on [the] government's ability to retain, search and use in criminal cases communications between Americans and foreign citizens."

— He has told Attorney General Eric Holder to make "national security letters, which can require companies to provide specific and limited information to the government without disclosing the orders to the subject of the investigation ... terminate within a fixed time unless the government demonstrates a real need for further secrecy."

Our original post and additions we made before 11:40 a.m. ET pick up the story:

"In our rush to respond to very real and novel threats" after the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks, "the risks of government overreach — the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security — became more pronounced," President Obama said Friday.

Obama put a post-Sept. 11 frame around his highly anticipated announcement about the changes he believes need to be made in the way the National Security Agency collects information about millions of people around the world.

Among the changes Obama said he wants to be made: "The establishment of a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice in significant cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." The president said he will call on Congress to create that panel.

While outlying such changes, he also sought to make the case for the work that the NSA and other intelligence agencies do. "In an extraordinarily difficult job, one in which actions are second-guessed, success is unreported, and failure can be catastrophic, the men and women of the intelligence community, including the NSA, consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people," the president said.

He also made the case for the collection of massive amounts of digital data. "We cannot prevent terrorist attacks or cyberthreats without some capability to penetrate digital communications — whether it's to unravel a terrorist plot; to intercept malware that targets a stock exchange; to make sure air traffic control systems are not compromised; or to ensure that hackers do not empty your bank accounts," Obama said.

Speaking of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose leaks about the agency's activities sparked an uproar that has led to demands for changes in NSA's operations, Obama said:

"Given the fact of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or motivations. I will say that our nation's defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it in their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will never be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy."

From our original post:

Our earlier post, "Obama Expected To Say NSA Should Not Hold 'Metadata'," previewed his remarks.

We'll be updating during Obama's address.

For more background and context, see these earlier posts:

— 5 Changes To The NSA You Might Hear In Obama's Speech

— Obama's NSA Speech: Just What Eisenhower Warned About?

The U.S. Supreme Court is delving into the technology versus privacy debate, agreeing to hear two cases that test whether police making an arrest may search cellphones without a warrant.

The court's announcement Friday that it would take the cases came just hours after President Obama outlined his proposals to address government retention of citizen phone data as part of his speech outlining reforms at the National Security Agency.

The court said it would hear arguments, likely in April, in two cases with conflicting decisions from the lower courts.

In one case, from California, David Riley was pulled over for expired tags. When police then discovered loaded guns in his vehicle, they arrested Riley and searched his smartphone. Investigators found photos and contacts linking Riley to gang activity, and prosecutors used the smartphone information at trial to win a conviction. Riley received a prison term of 15 years to life.

The California Supreme Court, which had previously ruled that such searches are legal, left Riley's conviction in place.

Across the country, a federal appeals court in Boston reached the opposite conclusion, barring all warrantless cellphone searches, except in emergency situations. The Obama administration appealed that ruling, contending that immediate searches of cellphones are especially important because the information contained in them can be so easily and quickly erased.

The Supreme Court's eventual decision in these cases could lay the groundwork for future rulings on the NSA's collection of cellphone metadata.

However the Supreme Court rules, its decision will have enormous practical consequences, since 90 percent of all Americans own mobile phones.

If only dropping pant sizes were as easy as switching from Coke to Coke Zero.

Sure, you're cutting out empty calories when you ditch the sugar-sweetened drinks in favor of artificially sweetened ones. But there's growing evidence that suggests this isn't really helping in the battle of the bulge.

The latest ding against diet drinks? Researchers report this week that overweight and obese people who choose diet beverages eat about the same number of total calories as their counterparts guzzling sugary drinks – they're just getting more of their calories from solid food.

In other words, their drinks may be no-calorie, but they're making up for it at meal and snack times.

And that suggests that public health messages urging people to drop the sugar-sweetened drinks in favor of diet ones to combat obesity need to be tweaked, says the study's lead author, Sara Bleich, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

"We need to go beyond telling them, 'You need to drink less sugary soda,' " Bleich tells The Salt. "That's because when people make the switch from regular to diet, they're not making many other changes."

Americans' diet soda habit has exploded in the past 15 years — 1 in 5 of us now consume one on a daily basis. Overweight and obese adults are about twice as likely as their healthy weight counterparts to drink diet beverages, according to Bleich's findings, which appear in the American Journal of Public Health. And it makes sense, she says, that this reflects a desire to shed excess weight.

But Bleich and her colleagues wanted to know how Americans' rising diet drink habit relates to overall calorie consumption. So they looked at data for adults 20 and older gathered between 1999 and 2010 by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's an ongoing program that collects details on eating habits and other health-related information from a nationally representative sample of people in the U.S.

And what did they find? Turns out, overweight adults who drank artificially sweetened beverages ate on average 88 more solid-food calories per day than their weight counterparts who drank sugary beverages, while obese diet drinkers ate an extra 194 calories per day.

The Salt

Why Sugar Makes Us Feel So Good

There's been a steady stream of stories over the past year about the rape of women in India. Now, Indian officials have unveiled a gun they say women can use to protect themselves.

The .32-caliber revolver is named Nirbheek, for the victim of the Dec. 16, 2012, gang rape aboard a bus in New Delhi. Indian law forbids the identification of rape victims, and the Indian media called her "Nirbhaya," which means fearless.

"After the gangrape incident, our researchers were working on a revolver which is very light and can be carried by women in their purses or small handbags," Abdul Hamid, the general manager of the Indian Ordnance Factory in Kanpur, told the semi-official Press Trust of India news agency.

Hamid told media there have already been 20 orders for the lightweight weapon that's made of titanium alloy. He said the gun, which will be delivered in a special ornamental box, will also be sold to men. Here's how The Times of India reported on it:

"Described by arms experts as an Indian hybrid of a Webley & Scott and Smith & Wesson, for its simple mechanism and light frame, it is the smallest revolver made in India — an ideal to fit a purse or a small hand bag."

President Obama is expected to announce Friday morning that he is "ordering a transition that will significantly change the handling of what is known as the telephone 'metadata' " that the National Security Agency collects, officials are telling Reuters and NPR.

The wire service, which broke the story, writes that:

"In a nod to privacy advocates, Obama will say he has decided that the government should not hold the bulk telephone metadata, a decision that could frustrate some intelligence officials. In addition, he will order that effectively immediately, 'we will take steps to modify the program so that a judicial finding is required before we query the database,' said [a] senior official, who revealed details of the speech on condition of anonymity.

"While a presidential advisory panel had recommended that the bulk data be controlled by a third party such as the telephone companies, Obama will not offer a specific proposal for who should store the data in the future."

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

English novelist Hilary Mantel, who has twice won the Booker Prize, is said to be taking a break from writing about Tudors to publish a short-story collection titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. The Guardian notes, "Few clues are forthcoming from her publisher at 4th Estate. According to her editor, Nicholas Pearson, 'Where her last two novels explore how modern England was forged, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shows us the country we have become.' " The Telegraph adds that "Mantel's publishers have not confirmed plotlines, but have said that the book features the late former prime minister as a character in 10 stories with 'contemporary settings.' "

A new study by the Pew Research Center found that "though e-books are rising in popularity, print remains the foundation of Americans' reading habits." It adds, "Most people who read e-books also read print books, and just 4% of readers are 'e-book only.' "

Laura Richardson, daughter of Cold Comfort Farm author Stella Gibbons, is looking to publish two of her mother's unpublished novels, which have been lying in a drawer since her mother's death. Richardson told the Camden New Journal, "The first is called An Alpha and is about a young woman who is from the Far East. She moves to Britain and becomes a successful writer," she is quoted as saying in the newspaper. "The second is called The Yellow Houses and is a bit of a ghost story. It was about a house where spirits flourished. They were finished and I would love to see them published."

Publisher's Weekly speaks to James Frey, the bestselling author who gained notoriety when it turned out that his memoir of addiction was not strictly true. Frey is coming out with a new young-adult novel soon, but tells PW: "I am about to finish another novel, which is a more traditional book for an adult audience. It will be the last one for a while."

Kate Aurthur on Flowers In The Attic author V.C. Andrews: "As eerie as her books were, Andrews' tragic personal life and unlikely rise — which was not even impeded by the small matter of her death — have rendered her equally mysterious. For the first time, members of Andrews' family have agreed to be interviewed about the woman who terrified — and delighted — a generation of readers."

Elias Muhanna contends in The New Yorker that the recent torching of a library in Tripoli, Lebanon, "prompted something that two years of suicide bombings and assassination attempts had not: a public outcry." He writes: "Within hours, civil-society groups set up a barn-raising effort to secure and catalogue the undamaged books, clean up the shop, and build new shelving. Someone launched a fundraising initiative. Book drives were organized around the country. An international courier announced that it would ship books from anywhere in the world to Lebanon to replenish Father Sarrouj's collection."

In the tradition of Portnoy's Complaint, Catcher in the Rye, and Lolita, Andrew's Brain takes the form of a confessional monologue. The listener in this case, called "Doc," may or may not be a psychiatrist. Andrew's life story, as he tells it, is one calamity after another, from clumsy pratfalls to more serious damage for which he feels responsible. He's hapless, highly educated, cerebral and mostly sympathetic. He often speaks of himself in the third person — literally estranged from his emotions. Doc occasionally interrupts, trying to direct the narrative flow with questions we readers would like answered, too.

Doctorow snags us with his opening lines: "I can tell you about my friend Andrew, the cognitive scientist. But it's not pretty. One evening he appeared with an infant in his arms at the door of his ex-wife, Martha. Because Briony, his lovely young wife after Martha, had died." "Of what?" his listener asks. "We'll get to that," Doctorow's narrator answers. A few pages later, Doc asks, "Are you in fact the man you call your friend Andrew, the cognitive scientist who brought an infant child to the home of his ex-wife?" "Yes," Andrew answers succinctly.

We keep reading through bizarre turns and sometimes abstruse discussions of consciousness, hoping for a payoff that never comes. "You are in the depthless dingledom of your own soul," Andrew tells his students. Huh? This grieving widower observes with surprising lyricism that "love is the blunt concussion that renders us insensible to despair ... Something happens in the heart, you know. You recognize life as it should be." Self-knowledge, on the other hand, is elusive because "it is dangerous to stare into yourself. You pass through endless mirrors of self-estrangement. This too is the brain's cunning, that you are not to know yourself."

More On E. L. Doctorow

Books

Doctorow's Fictional Take On Real-Life Eccentricity

American kids have a problem with obesity, according to the most recent studies. In fact, the closest thing we have to good news about childhood obesity is that kids are not gaining weight as rapidly as they were some years ago.

Researchers may have identified one surprising new factor in why kids are overeating.

Compared to kids who use cash in school cafeterias, kids who use debit cards seem to make more unhealthful eating choices, finds behavioral economist Brian Wansink at Cornell University.

The Salt

USDA To Require Healthier Meals In Schools With Updated Nutrition Standards

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, incidents between Jewish settlers and Palestinians happen almost every day. Olive trees and grape vines are destroyed, tires are slashed, mosques are defaced. It's not just property destruction. Violence has cost lives on both sides.

Figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, show that settlers are responsible for the vast majority of incidents, which have nearly quadrupled since 2006, when OCHA began keeping track.

All this keeps on-the-ground tensions at a constant simmer, sometimes boiling over. But last week, a potentially explosive confrontation took an unusual turn. The unexpected resolution also highlights disagreement within the Israeli community over settler actions.

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When relocating to a new country, it's important to establish routines and traditions. My ritual here in London is spending an hour on the phone with the bank every day.

It's a strange thing about 2014 — we've got one collective foot planted squarely in the 21st century, while the other is stuck in back in the 19-something-or-others.

My email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts don't care whether I'm in Dublin or Dubai. I can jog along the Seine in Paris to the same music on Spotify that I listen to when I'm running along the Willamette River in Portland.

On WhatsApp, I send text messages to my friends every day at no cost, no matter where in the world I am. Skype is a snap. But banking is something else altogether. (Phone calls go in the same category as banking, but that's for another blog post.)

This is a universal experience, from what I can gather. Anyone living abroad wrestles with the arcane formulas and fees that go into converting an American salary to a British (or Brazilian, or Burmese) bank account.

Two weeks in London, and I've already found that American expats trade banking horror stories like crusty sailors comparing sharkbite scars.

My story, briefly, is this: In order to avoid a $35 Bank of America fee every time I move my paycheck to the United Kingdom, I devised a hopscotch as follows: Dollars leave Bank of America to an international transfer company. That company hands off the money to a Lloyds Bank International account. Lloyds International plops it into an account with UK Lloyds. Hardly simple, but at least the plan comes with no fees. Guaranteed.

The first transfer took three days longer than planned, and arrived with $600 less than the amount that left the U.S.

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Some Brits Not Ready To Say 'Ta-Ra' To Iconic Telephone Box

An exceptionally rare flower that is virtually extinct has been stolen from London's Kew Gardens, in a crime that experts say could be the work of an obsessed collector. British newspapers say that stealing the precious Nymphaea thermarum water lily "is like an old master theft."

The plant is not currently known to exist in the wild. Britain's Metropolitan Police are investigating the theft, which is believed to have taken place on Jan. 9. The water lily was taken from a small pond in a glass house at the gardens.

From London, NPR's Ari Shapiro filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The flower is no larger than a nickel. Botanists discovered it in Rwanda in 1987, growing in a natural spring. The spring dried up from overuse, and the lily disappeared.

"But in Britain's Kew Gardens just a few years ago, a botanist discovered how to propagate the flower. It needs precise temperatures and specific amounts of carbon dioxide and oxygen.

"Now, one of the lilies has been stolen from the gardens.

"Officials at the Royal Botanic Gardens say it's impossible to put a price on the flower. They suspect the culprit could be a collector eager to own one of the rarest plants in the world."

The U.S. Marine Corps "is attempting to determine the authenticity of photos published by TMZ.com that the entertainment website says show Marines appearing to burn bodies of dead Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah in 2004," The Associated Press reports.

If a small group of Marines did pour gasoline on the bodies of enemy fighters, ignite the remains and then — in at least one image — pose next to a human skull, the images could anger many Iraqis and give Muslim extremists some more fodder for their propaganda files about the U.S.

NPR's Quil Lawrence notes that "in 2012, photos of troops urinating on enemy corpses in Afghanistan sparked outrage" among many in that country.

The photos of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, when it was controlled by U.S. forces, also inflamed anti-U.S. passions.

As for the newly released images, TMZ says it "obtained 41 pictures that we're told were shot in Fallujah in 2004." It posted eight of them. "Many are just too gruesome," to publish, the website says. "There are well over a dozen bodies in the pics and some are covered with flies and one is being eaten by a dog."

TMZ's report begins here. Clicking the link will not automatically open the images. TMZ has put a warning on the page that says "these pictures are horrifically graphic." It takes two more clicks to get to the photos — a process that should prevent visitors to the site from seeing the images if they do not wish to.

According to the AP, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steven Warren, "said the proper handling of war remains is set by U.S. military regulation. He said the actions depicted in the photos 'are not what we expect from our service members.' "

CNN adds that the Defense Department also said in a statement that what is depicted in the photos does not "represent the honorable and professional service of the more than 2.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Islamic custom strictly forbids cremation," CNN notes.

At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, it's not all hybrids and battery-powered cars. Some car companies are making significant investments in a fuel that's not new at all — diesel.

The newest diesel engines are far cleaner than their predecessors and they get many more miles per gallon. The question is, what's holding customers back from switching gas pumps?

When you look around the auto show there's a lot of energy and there's a lot of money being spent again. The one topic that keeps coming up, of course, is fuel economy.

"As you can see around the auto show, it's a major driver," says Scott Yackley, an assistant chief engineer at General Motors.

Yackley should know: For the past seven years or so he's been living and breathing fuel economy. He's one of the engineers who designed an engine for GM's all new midsize trucks, and it's a diesel.

GM is not the only car maker launching diesel trucks. Chrysler announced it is putting diesel into its Ram truck. And while the American car companies are rolling out diesel engines, Volkswagen is expanding its portfolio in the U.S. with second- and third-generation diesel.

"Diesel is our technology for fuel efficiency," says Oliver Schmidt, the head of engineering and environment with Volkswagen Group of America. Schmidt says diesel still has a bad reputation from a terrible try 30 years ago. He says people ask if diesel autos are loud or smelly.

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Ford's New F-150 May Pave The Way For More Aluminum Cars

Virtual money could have very real effects for companies that help people transfer money.

There are now more than 70 virtual currencies, with the largest players being Bitcoin, Ripples and Litecoin. Another group tried to launch Coinye last week, though its backers abandoned their efforts on Tuesday after receiving a cease and desist letter from lawyers representing Kanye West. Some stores accept Bitcoins as payment.

Analysts say not all these currencies will last and very few people actually use them at the moment. But in the long run, virtual currencies could disrupt the market for traditional finance companies like banks, or remittance companies like Western Union, which handle money transfers. For one, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital payment platform, on Monday, the first country entering the game.

A Rush For Virtual Gold

Few of the many virtual currencies will last, says Nick Holland, senior analyst at the research firm Javelin Strategy & Research. In the latest forecast, his group estimated the virtual currency market would have doubled to more than $10 billion by the end of last year. He says they haven't seen signs that suggest otherwise.

"It's something of a gold rush right now; there are a lot of them out there," Holland says. "A lot of them will not make it at all; a lot of them are just science projects that people are playing around with."

However, if the currencies themselves don't stay, the idea driving them will, according to Holland and Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto.

"It's surprisingly difficult to transfer money between banks, and the question is, 'Why should that be?' " Gans says. "Some of these [virtual currencies] are trying to see if they can eliminate that, but of course the banks will come in and say, 'Well, we were charging people for those things in the past; we won't anymore.' "

Banks and companies like Western Union charge a fee for transfers, as much as $45 for international wire transfers, and you need the recipient's name, bank account information and the bank's routing number; with virtual currencies, some claim this could be cheaper and almost instantaneous. Holland and Gans compare it to how Skype disrupted the market for telecommunications companies: Making calls over the Internet made business harder for traditional phone companies charging for long-distance calls.

Actual Use Still 'A Drop In The Ocean'

But just to take Bitcoin as an example, the exchange rate is far from stable. Also, Holland cautions that just as voice-over-IP technology like Skype took years to become mainstream, the same will be true for virtual currencies, even ones that have been making headlines lately.

"Look at Bitcoin as a canary in the mine," Holland says. "The actual usage among the population at large is a drop in the ocean."

But, some significant players have noticed that drop.

On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital money transfer platform, at the National Retail Federation's convention in New York City. Although it is not a virtual currency, Holland and others say this shows that governments are starting to pay attention; a sign that virtual currencies are more than just a fad. Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently released its first assessment of Bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency can become "a major means of payment for e-commerce" that "may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer problems."

It's All Politics

Bitcoin Takes Stage In Texas Senate Campaign

A group of researchers at Oxfam, an anti-poverty nonprofit based in Oxford, England, concocted the ranking scheme to measure the best and worst places to eat around the world.

We're not talking about the density of Michelin-starred restaurants or whether you can get wild salmon versus farmed-raised fish at the grocery store.

Instead, the ranking considers whether families have sufficient access to fresh produce, nutritious proteins and clean water — and whether these options are affordable compared with less healthful options.

The team's conclusion?

"Basically, if you arrive from Mars and design a food system, you probably couldn't design a worse one than what we have today on Earth," Oxfam's Max Lawson tells The Salt. "There is enough food overall in the world to feed everyone. But 900 million people still don't have enough to eat, and 1 billion people are obese. It's a crazy situation."

To compile the rankings, Lawson and his colleagues spent a few months analyzing eight reports from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and the International Labor Organization.

A country's score depends on how much food is available (so richer countries have an advantage), the nutritional value of that food and how diet helps or harms the nation's health.

The team measured that last metric by looking at diabetes and obesity rates in each country. Not surprisingly, that's where the U.S. stumbles: We ranked 120th out of 125 countries in terms of how diet influences health.

The problem is linked to poverty, Lawson says.

"Food is very, very cheap in the U.S. compared to most countries," he explains. "But the fact is you end up with people malnourished in one of the richest countries because they don't have access to fresh vegetables at a cheap enough price to make a balanced diet."

At the other end of the spectrum are countries that struggle just to get enough food on each family's table each day. Chad, Ethiopia and Angola ranked at the overall bottom of Oxfam's list, in large part because of high malnutrition rates and the relatively high cost of foods in these countries.

The Salt

Wasted Food Around The World Takes Heavy Toll On Environment

Hear The Story That Inspired This Illustration

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

Argentine poet Juan Gelman, who denounced the country's "dirty war" of the '70s and '80s, died Tuesday in Mexico City, according to a statement from the Mexican government's arts council. He was 83. The author of more than 20 collections of poetry and a prominent journalist, Gelman won the Cervantes Prize in 2007. It is the highest literary honor in the Spanish-speaking world. He fled Argentina shortly before a military dictatorship took power in a 1976 coup d'tat. His son and daughter-in-law were among tens of thousands of people "disappeared" — kidnapped or killed — during the country's "Dirty War." Gelman's daughter-in-law gave birth shortly before she died, and her daughter was placed with a family in Uruguay, according to the BBC. Gelman was reunited with his granddaughter in 2000, after years of searching. In one poem, "The Deluded," translated by Joan Lindgren, he wrote:

hope fails us often
grief never.
that's why some think
that known grief is better
than unknown grief.
they believe that hope is an illusion.
they are deluded by grief.

Piracy at sea has hit a six-year low, thanks largely to a steep drop in attacks by Somali pirates operating in the Indian Ocean, according to a new report by the International Maritime Bureau.

The maritime watchdog says there were 264 strikes against shipping worldwide last year — a drop of 40 percent since attacks peaked in 2011. And there were just 15 attacks off the coast of Somalia; by comparison, that same area saw 75 attacks in 2012 and 237 the year before.

"The single biggest reason for the drop in worldwide piracy is the decrease in Somali piracy off the coast of East Africa," Pottengal Mukundan, IMB's director, said in a statement.

The report credits "a combination of factors, including the key role of international navies, the hardening of vessels, the use of private armed security teams, and the stabilizing influence of Somalia's central government" for the drop.

In November, the United Nations and World Bank issued a report saying that pirates operating off the Horn of Africa had netted as much as $413 million in ransom payments between 2005 and 2012. The most famous incident there, the seizure of the MV Maersk Alabama, occurred in 2009. The capture of the container ship inspired the film Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks.

According to the IMB report issued Wednesday:

"[More] than 300 people were taken hostage at sea last year and 21 were injured, nearly all with guns or knives. A total of 12 vessels were hijacked, 202 were boarded, 22 were fired upon and a further 28 reported attempted attacks. Nigerian pirates were particularly violent, killing one crewmember, and kidnapping 36 people to hold onshore for ransom."

The headlines tell the story:

— "Hopes Dim For Long-Term Extension To Jobless Benefits." (All Things Considered)

— "Senate Blocks Jobless Aid." (Politico)

— "Extending unemployment benefits stumbles in Senate." (CNN)

— "Jobless Aid Extension Stalls In Senate." (The Hill)

— "Unemployment benefits won't be extended until at least late January as Senate deadlocks." (The Washington Post)

Here's how The Associated Press explains what's happening:

"Compromise talks on a new program of long-term jobless benefits ran aground in the Senate on Tuesday, leaving the fate of the measure in extreme doubt while Republicans and Democrats vied for political advantage in the wreckage. ... At issue was a struggle over the possible resurrection of a program that expired on Dec. 28, immediately cutting off support for more than 1.3 million unemployed workers who have exhausted state-paid benefits that generally run for 26 weeks."

Reports of white smoke from a battery compartment have temporarily grounded a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Japan, nearly a year after all the new airliners were grounded due to a problem with batteries overheating. Today's incident happened on an airliner at Tokyo's Narita Airport that had no passengers aboard.

It was during a preflight checkout that a mechanic saw smoke emerging from the underside of a Japan Airlines Dreamliner, according to Japan's NHK TV News

From the broadcaster:

"The smoke quickly stopped. Airline officials found that an electrolytic solution had leaked from an open safety valve of one of the 8 cells in a battery box at the front.

"The carrier says the battery may have overheated for an unknown reason. It says the safety valve was activated and smoke was generated when the solution evaporated."

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As Egyptians begin voting on a new constitution, the opposition to the huge role that nation's military plays in life there has been pushed to the side, NPR's Leila Fadel reported Tuesday from Cairo.

On Morning Edition, she told host Renee Montagne that the arrests of those who try to oppose the interim government and military authorities have led many critics of the new constitution to boycott the two-day vote. They believe that "human rights are not being respected and the path to democracy is in danger," Leila said.

Even with 10 months to go before the midterm congressional elections, some political and ideological groups are already on the air, attacking incumbents they hope to take down in November.

One race that's attracting early advertisers is in New Hampshire, where Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is seeking a second term, and two tax-exempt social welfare organizations are buying ads against her.

The ads echo the Republican National Committee's strategy of tying Democrats to the Affordable Care Act. RNC chairman Reince Priebus told reporters last week that Obamacare "is going to be the number one issue in 2014."

The RNC has made only small radio buys so far in New Hampshire. But viewers there have been seeing TV ads with messages like this one: "Tell Senator Shaheen, it's time to be honest. Obamacare doesn't work. New Hampshire families deserve better."

It's from Americans For Prosperity. The group's president, Tim Phillips, says the ads aren't election ads, "they're issue ads, designed to work toward the eventual repeal of Obamacare."

That's because Americans For Prosperity, as a social welfare organization, isn't supposed to focus on partisan politics. "We don't have any view at all on the potential candidates who may get into different races," Phillips says.

Knowing The Election Date

So why not advertise in, say, Vermont and Maine?

"We have found that senators and House members who have to face the voters in the near future are more responsive on issues," Phillips says.

He says that with its ads, printed materials and voter contact, Americans For Prosperity is spending several hundred thousand dollars in New Hampshire, a minuscule sum compared to the tens of millions of dollars it spent as a top TV advertiser in the 2012 election cycle.

Social welfare groups, unlike political committees, don't have to release lists of their donors.

It isn't the only social welfare group on the air in New Hampshire. The other one is called Ending Spending. Like AFP, it's based in Northern Virginia.

The Ending Spending ad uses video of Shaheen vowing, "You can keep your insurance if you like it." The ad ends with a kicker: "So next November, if you like your senator, you can keep her. If you don't, you know what to do."

Brian Baker, president of Ending Spending, says the group regards this ad as explicitly political. But that's legally allowed as long as Ending Spending is primarily devoted to social welfare.

The organization's social welfare mission is working for a balanced budget and smaller federal debt, Baker says, "and we think the only way you're going to do that is to elect fiscally responsible leaders. So we know what the election date is and we kind of work back from that."

Many New Hampshire Republicans hope that Shaheen will be challenged by former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who recently moved into the state. National and state Democratic committees have run a few ads sniping at his old Senate record.

Baker says Brown fits the Ending Spending idea of a fiscally responsible politician. "The TV ads against Senator Shaheen are definitely a part of the Draft Scott Brown effort," Baker says.

Benefits For Republicans

And while Ending Spending and Americans For Prosperity say their main missions are social welfare, the New Hampshire GOP is glad to see six-figure ad campaigns that link Shaheen to Obamacare.

"This is going to be a long-term issue that will continue to dog Shaheen until Election Day," says Ryan Williams, an adviser to the state party committee. "It makes sense to bring up this message now, to hammer it home, and to damage her numbers and to continue to make the case that she doesn't deserve to be re-elected in November."

But some outside analysts say ads this early in the season are essentially worthless.

"This happens over and over again. They're after the attention," says Stuart Rothenberg, a longtime analyst of political contests. He says early advertisers have self-serving agendas to "please contributors, appeal to future contributors and overall get a reputation that they're players in the political world."

Now, it's a world where outside groups and their hidden donors can't wait to weigh in on the next election.

A new class of restrictive abortion laws, passed in recent years in a swath of states, hinges on the argument that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks of gestation.

But the fetal pain assertion, viewed skeptically by many scientists, hit a bump Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling striking down an Arizona law that criminalized abortions at 20 weeks.

The state's ban asserted that "unborn children feel pain during an abortion at that gestational age." Federal courts last year also blocked similar "fetal pain" laws in Idaho and Georgia.

Abortion rights advocates hailed the Supreme Court's move as a signal that justices aren't inclined to take on the 40-year precedent of Roe v. Wade, which established viability at around 24 weeks (the point when a fetus is considered "viable" outside the mother's womb) and as the cutoff for most legal abortions.

"It would appear that the court is not ready or willing to deal with moving the viability line at this time," says John Robertson, chairman of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Rights.

"The science is weak, and it would be a major change," Robertson, a University of Texas law professor, said.

But anti-abortion activists assert that while the court's decision, offered without comment, is not the one they'd hoped for, they expect it to fuel efforts to limit abortion based on the fetal pain argument — including a federal bill passed last year by the U.S. House.

"This is a disappointment, but not a major setback," says Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect female candidates who oppose abortion.

She compared efforts to pass fetal pain restrictions to the "crooked path" it took to get the 2003 ban on a specific abortion procedure used late in pregnancy.

"Every single time there was a rejection, it actually built momentum toward the final goal of passage," she said.

The question of how soon fetuses can feel pain has been debated for more than three decades. Scientists, with some exceptions, have consistently argued that fetuses are not developed enough to experience pain until around the third trimester.

A 2005 analysis of numerous studies that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that for a fetus to feel pain its neural connections into the cortex have to be developed — and that doesn't occur until sometime after the 26th week of gestation.

Robertson, the Texas bioethicist, says that the science has not changed in the past decade and there is "overwhelming consensus" around the fetal pain issue.

But Dannenfelser and other anti-abortion activists argue that support for such laws is proved by the fact that challenges have not emerged in most of the states that in recent years have criminalized abortion at 20 weeks — from Alabama and Indiana to Louisiana and Oklahoma.

At the Center for Reproductive Rights, however, Director Nancy Northup has another explanation: "Some places where they've passed [fetal pain laws] there aren't even any providers in those states that do abortions after 20 weeks, so there's no way to challenge them."

You can't challenge a law, she notes, when there's no one with legal standing to mount the effort.

"It's a whole strategy to keep moving the timeline backwards," Northup says.

The fetal pain strategy has changed conversations that doctors are having with their patients, says Dr. Anne Davis, consulting medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Health and an associate professor for obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University.

"Ten years ago, patients never asked about this," says Davis, an abortion provider. "Now we have questions from some very distraught people — it's a very emotional subject, and most people aren't experts on pain physiology."

Her explanation to patients is that the science of fetal development has not changed. "The brain and the rest of the nervous system where the pain is coming from are not connected until the third trimester," she says.

But, as Davis attests, the fetal pain argument has taken root.

And Northup, at the Center for Reproductive Rights, says that there are dozens of abortion-related cases in legal pipeline, including those involving the fetal pain argument.

"The Supreme Court," she says, "is going to have the opportunity again and again and again this year and next year to see if they want to take a look again at their jurisprudence on abortion rights."

Over the past week, two high-profile leaders in the New York metropolitan area found themselves at the center of unfolding political scandals. At least one, it seems, has some plausible deniability.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie's political future is in doubt over the ever-widening "Bridgegate" fiasco, as emails revealed that members of his closest inner circle were involved. But just across that bridge, New York City's newly installed mayor, Bill de Blasio, became embroiled in another kind of drama: "Forkgate."

As our friends over at the Two-Way reported over the weekend, de Blasio ignited a minor media firestorm on Friday after he was spotted eating pizza in Staten Island during a business lunch with — gasp! — a fork and knife. Self-respecting New Yorkers, multiple news stories noted, eat their slices with their hands.

"The mayor of New York City," the New York Daily News lamented, "eats his pizza like a tourist."

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a top ally to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and a veteran of four decades in Congress, announced Monday that he will not seek re-election.

"I'll miss my daily collaboration with Leader Pelosi and so many colleagues whom I respect and admire," Miller said in a statement.

Miller, 68, currently serves as the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee and ranks as the fifth most senior member of the House.

"For me, as Speaker and Democratic Leader, George's patriotism, wisdom and guidance have been especially valued, and he has been a close friend since my first days in the House," Pelosi said in a statement.

Miller served as chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor from 2007-2010 and also as co-chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. During his tenure in Congress, he has focused on legislation related to health and education policy — including the passage of the education reform bill known as "No Child Left Behind" in 2002 — and on labor issues.

First elected in 1974, Miller is one of the last "Watergate babies" — a member of the famed class of lawmakers elected in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

To date, he is the fourth House Democrat and the 13th House member to announce his retirement at the end of the 113th Congress.

Over the past week, two high-profile leaders in the New York metropolitan area found themselves at the center of unfolding political scandals. At least one, it seems, has some plausible deniability.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie's political future is in doubt over the ever-widening "Bridgegate" fiasco, as emails revealed that members of his closest inner circle were involved. But just across that bridge, New York City's newly installed mayor, Bill de Blasio, became embroiled in another kind of drama: "Forkgate."

As our friends over at the Two-Way reported over the weekend, de Blasio ignited a minor media firestorm on Friday after he was spotted eating pizza in Staten Island during a business lunch with — gasp! — a fork and knife. Self-respecting New Yorkers, multiple news stories noted, eat their slices with their hands.

"The mayor of New York City," the New York Daily News lamented, "eats his pizza like a tourist."

For the first time in history, more than half the members of Congress are millionaires, according to a new analysis of financial disclosure reports conducted by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the 534 current members of the House and Senate, 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012 – up from 257 members in 2011. The median net worth for members of the House and Senate was $1,008,767.

The wealthiest member of Congress? That's Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, who had a net worth between $330 and $598 million.

The reports found that there wasn't much distinction between the two parties – congressional Democrats had a median net worth of $1.04 million as compared to about $1 million for Republicans. In both cases, the averages are up from last year, when the numbers were $990,000 and $907,000, respectively.

The release of this analysis comes at a time when officials in both parties are making an effort to address income inequality in the United States.

Over the past week, two high-profile leaders in the New York metropolitan area found themselves at the center of unfolding political scandals. At least one, it seems, has some plausible deniability.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie's political future is in doubt over the ever-widening "Bridgegate" fiasco, as emails revealed that members of his closest inner circle were involved. But just across that bridge, New York City's newly installed mayor, Bill de Blasio, became embroiled in another unfolding drama: "Forkgate."

As our friends over at the Two-Way reported over the weekend, de Blasio ignited a minor media firestorm on Friday after he was spotted eating pizza in Staten Island during a business lunch with – gasp! – a fork and knife. Self-respecting New Yorkers, multiple news stories noted, eat their slices with their hands.

"The mayor of New York City," the New York Daily News lamented, "eats his pizza like a tourist."

We here at The Salt were interested in de Blasio's self-defense: As an Italian-American, he said, he was merely honoring his heritage by eating pizza the way they do back in the homeland — start with the cutlery, then finish off with your hands.

Over the past week, two high-profile leaders in the New York metropolitan area found themselves at the center of unfolding political scandals. At least one, it seems, has some plausible deniability.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie's political future is in doubt over the ever-widening "Bridgegate" fiasco, as emails revealed that members of his closest inner circle were involved. But just across that bridge, New York City's newly installed mayor, Bill de Blasio, became embroiled in another unfolding drama: "Forkgate."

As our friends over at the Two-Way reported over the weekend, de Blasio ignited a minor media firestorm on Friday after he was spotted eating pizza in Staten Island during a business lunch with – gasp! – a fork and knife. Self-respecting New Yorkers, multiple news stories noted, eat their slices with their hands.

"The mayor of New York City," the New York Daily News lamented, "eats his pizza like a tourist."

We here at The Salt were interested in de Blasio's self-defense: As an Italian-American, he said, he was merely honoring his heritage by eating pizza the way they do back in the homeland — start with the cutlery, then finish off with your hands.

For many users and advocates of marijuana, the boom in the West Coast growing industry may be all good and groovy. But in California, critics say the recent explosion of the marijuana industry along the state's North Coast — a region called the "emerald triangle" — could put a permanent buzz kill on struggling salmon populations.

The problem? According to critics, marijuana plantations guzzle enormous amounts of water while also spilling pesticides, fertilizers and stream-clogging sediments into waterways, including the Eel and the Klamath rivers, that have historically produced large numbers of Chinook salmon and related species.

"The whole North Coast is being affected by these pot growers," says Dave Bitts, a Humboldt County commercial fisherman and the president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"I have nothing against people growing dope," he says, "but if you do, we want you to grow your crop in a way that doesn't screw up fish habitat. There is no salmon-bearing watershed at this point that we can afford to sacrifice."

Growers of marijuana often withdraw water directly from small streams and use up to six gallons per day per plant during the summer growing season, says Scott Bauer, a fisheries biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"When you have 20,000 or 30,000 plants in a watershed, that is a lot of water," Bauer says.

But marijuana growers are undeservedly taking the blame for a problem that is caused by all residents of the North Coast, argues Kristin Nevedal, a founding chairperson with the Emerald Growers Association.

"It's just so easy to point a finger at cannabis growers, because it's a federally prohibited substance," she tells The Salt. "The truth is, if you flush a toilet in the hills, you're a part of the problem."

According to Bauer, 24 tributaries of the Eel River — in which once-enormous spawning runs of Chinook salmon have nearly vanished — went completely dry in the summer of 2013. Each, Bauer says, was being used to irrigate pot farms.

As a result, Bauer expects to see poor returns of Chinook and Coho salmon, as well as steelhead, in several years. While 2013 saw record-low precipitation in California, drought, Bauer says, is only part of the problem, and he still blames marijuana farmers.

Taking water from a stream isn't necessarily illegal, though it does usually require applying with the state for permission. Many farmers go this route, Bauer says. But of the estimated 4,000 pot growers in Humboldt County alone, "maybe a couple have applied for" water use permits, Bauer says.

Marijuana plantations along the North Coast are proliferating. Bauer, who has closely studied Google Earth images of the area, estimates that acreage under pot cultivation doubled from 2009 to 2012.

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In this week's podcast, we hear a researcher's objections to hugging, comedian Paul F. Tompkins brings authors back from the dead, and Sharon Jones beats cancer and releases a long-awaited album.

Like all newly elected politicians, the class of mayors being sworn in as the year begins has made many grand promises.

From New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's pledge to provide universal pre-kindergarten classes, financed through taxes on wealthy individuals, to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's push for a $15 minimum hourly wage, their agenda looks decidedly liberal.

New mayors in cities such as Boston, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh have also been talking about the importance of racial inclusion and the need to address income inequality.

De Blasio's election, in particular, along with the near-extinction of Republican mayors of big cities (the largest city with a Republican mayor is Indianapolis), has prompted reams of commentary about a revival of big-city liberalism.

"It's not news that there are Democrats being elected in major American cities," says Dan Bergstrom, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, a progressive social justice organization. "It is news that there's a new brand of progressive Democrats being elected in these cities that are pushing a different agenda than we've seen in the past."

Still, there are reasons to think liberals might end up being disappointed. There have been plenty of progressive mayors elected over the past 20 years, but most of them have been more managerial in approach — concerned primarily with budgets and public safety — than ideological.

The "reality of managing" will inevitably force the new city hall leaders to compromise, says Amy Liu, co-director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

"Most mayors in the country are Democrats who have mostly been governing from a stand that's more pragmatic than ideological, and I think that's going to continue to be the case," Liu says. "For the most part, they're not tackling the more polarizing issues that might be harder to get done."

Being Held Responsible

Members of Congress have to vote on everything, but they can focus on any pet cause of their choice, whether it's hunger, banking regulation or public transportation.

Mayors, by contrast, have to worry about everything. And they can't just talk — they have to deliver basic services such as parks, police and fire protection.

"The very nature of being a mayor requires pragmatism," says Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans. "Mayors have to do more than wax eloquent and wax ideological on issues — they have to deliver."

Even from de Blasio, there has been recognition that delivering on basic services may be a bigger priority than pursuing broad policy change, as signaled by his choice of William Bratton as police chief, explains Vincent Cannato, a University of Massachusetts Boston historian who has studied New York City mayors.

"If crime goes up, if snow isn't plowed, he's going to get blamed and it's going to discredit whatever else he wants to do," says Cannato, the author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York.

Operating Under Limits

There's only so much a mayor can do to bring about societal change. Many of the sweeping social problems these mayors are talking about, such as wealth disparity, can't be cured within the limits of one city's boundaries.

Even on local issues, mayors are having to compromise. In an era of constrained resources, mayors are collaborating with private sector players not just on development projects but basic services such as crime prevention. That means their approaches have to be more pragmatic and market-oriented than ideological, says Liu, the Brookings senior fellow.

"By virtue of needing a whole bunch of partners, which is what most of these mayors need, they're going to be somewhat constrained by having to find common ground," says James Brooks, a program director with the National League of Cities.

In de Blasio's case, his hopes for funding universal pre-k depends on agreement from state officials in Albany on raising taxes, which they appear to have little appetite to do.

Still, education is an area where de Blasio can make good on his rhetoric about addressing poverty and inequity, suggests Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the liberal Century Foundation.

The mayor's skepticism about charter schools has already drawn criticism from Republicans, notably House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

"For the past decade or so, school reform has been defined essentially as being an effort that challenges the unions," Kahlenberg says. "Someone like de Blasio has a chance to really redefine what it means to be an education reformer."

A Voice For Change

Mayors in recent years have not shied away from lending their voices to liberal causes such as gun control and same-sex marriage. Morial, the National Urban League president, says the new group can do a lot more.

De Blasio not only won control of the nation's largest city and media capital, Morial points out, but "won big."

"That is an affirmation to him that the public wants to see this generation of mayors address and be part of the debate about this issue of income inequality," Morial says, suggesting the mayors can add their voices to a chorus that includes President Obama and Pope Francis.

"This issue is now being discussed much more openly and by more people than I've seen in many generations," he says.

Not every mayor just coming to office ran on a platform of progressive change. Among those who did, some won more due to the weakness of their opponents or quirks of their campaigns than popular demands for liberal action.

But the fact that many of the most high-profile mayors are talking about income disparities and minimum wage hikes shows that their deepest impulses are progressive in nature.

All mayors have to collaborate, says Bergstrom, the TakeAction Minnesota director. The question is whom they choose to collaborate with.

He notes that Betsy Hodges, the new mayor of Minneapolis, has made a point to engage with people of color and immigrants who are "not considered traditional power players in City Hall.

"I'm absolutely heartened by the fact that there's a lot more talk about the problem of wealth inequality in our world," Bergstrom says. "I'm even more heartened that there are elected leaders like Betsy not just paying it lip service but creating and aligning grassroots movements to make change."