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When oil supplies ran short and gasoline prices spiked four decades ago, angry drivers demanded relief. Congress responded in 1975 by banning most exports of U.S. crude oil.

Today, domestic oil production is booming, prompting U.S. energy companies to call for a resumption of exporting. Many economists agree.

But would that bring back the bad old days of shortages? Would you end up paying more at the pump?

Supporters of exports say Americans should not allow 40-year-old images of an energy crisis to distort how we see the world today. They argue that in the 1970s, a particular vision of oil markets got embedded into our national psyche, and now it's time to update our worldview to more clearly see what's happening.

To appreciate their argument, let your mind wander back. Pretend it's the fall of 1973:

War is raging in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, are looking for ways to hit back at supporters of Israel. They launch an embargo that blocks oil deliveries to the United States.

News reports label the embargo a "political weapon," intended to push America into an energy crisis. Soon, oil prices are quadrupling and lines of cars are snaking around gas stations with empty pumps.

The Great Plains Oil Rush

On The Plains, The Rush For Oil Has Changed Everything

Ben Bernanke hands over the reins at the Federal Reserve to Janet Yellen on Friday. The Fed's vice chair will be the first woman ever to lead the nation's central bank. It's a position many view as the second most powerful in the country.

The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Yellen has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Charlie Saydah, a former classmate, says she was probably the smartest kid in the class. Yellen was "clearly smart, and she was smart among a lot of smart kids," he says.

But she couldn't attend Stuyvesant, the competitive public school for Brooklyn's best and brightest.

"She didn't go because, you know, she was a girl," Saydah says. And back then, in the early 1960s, Stuyvesant only admitted boys. Saydah, a retired journalist, said that meant girls dominated the regular public schools, like Fort Hamilton High in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

Saydah says he graduated 26th out of that class. "Everyone ahead of me was a girl," he says.

Janet Yellen graduated first.

"I would have expected her to not only succeed but excel in anything she did," Saydah says.

Economy

Bernanke's Fed Legacy: A Tenure Full Of Tough Decisions

As the Syrian government and opposition forces try to make peace in Geneva, the group Human Rights Watch has issued a new report that accuses the regime of demolishing entire neighborhoods that were considered opposition strongholds.

The report, "Razed to the Ground," was issued Thursday and said it found seven cases of "large scale demolitions" in neighborhoods in Damascus and Hama. The first one took place in July 2012 and the most recent was last November.

The demolition of the Masha' al-Arb'een neighborhood in Hama. (Drag the slider or tap on the image to see the before and after.)

Makes 40 dumplings

Every region in China has its own local specialties, yet no matter where you go, you can always find delicious dumplings like these. Traditionally, the steamer is greased with oil to prevent the food from sticking. I've come up with a simple, healthy method that achieves the same result, placing each one on a disk of thinly sliced carrot. Once cooked, the carrots make a sweet, tender accompaniment to the green tea–infused dumplings.

If your steamer is not large enough to steam all the dumplings at one time, you can either use stackable steamer baskets or steam the dumplings in batches.

For the filling:

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 small leek, minced (about 1 cup)

3/4 pound large shrimp, shelled, deveined, and cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 tablespoon rice wine

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Dash of salt

For the dumplings:

40 wonton wrappers

2 large, thick carrots, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds

4 green tea bags

Chili-garlic sauce, available in the Asian section of most grocery stores

1. To make the filling: Heat the oil in a wok or nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add the ginger and leeks and saut for about 2 minutes, or until soft.

The Salt

Chinese New Year: Dumplings, Rice Cakes And Long Life

At the conclusion Friday of the first round of talks between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition, the United Nations mediator reported that he "observed a little bit of common ground, perhaps more than the two sides themselves realize or recognize."

Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters in Geneva that "there have been moments when one side has even acknowledged the concerns and difficulties of the other side," the BBC reports.

But Brahimi also said a "wide" gap remains between the two sides.

What's more, NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Geneva that Brahimi "stated more than once his wish that a second round [of talks] can be more structured and focused."

And as for that second round, there's word that the delegation from President Bashar Assad's government said it can't confirm it will return to Geneva for them on Feb. 10 until it consults with officials in Damascus.

Also, as Reuters writes, round one of the talks ended "with both sides in entrenched positions and [Brahimi] expressing frustration that he had not even produced agreement for an aid convoy to rescue trapped civilians in a besieged city. ... He was 'very, very disappointed' that a U.N. aid convoy was still waiting fruitlessly to enter the rebel-held Old City of Homs, where the United States says civilians are starving."

In the nearly three years since protests against the Assad regime developed into a war involving forces from the government, the opposition and terrorist networks, more than 100,000 people have been killed.

The nearly six-month-long search for Microsoft's next CEO is nearing an end and news reports indicate it's likely the technology giant will turn to Satya Nadella, executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise group, to lead the company.

Widely followed tech writer Kara Swisher posted on the Re/code news site Thursday that Nadella is "the likeliest internal candidate" to be named to succeed CEO Steve Ballmer, who announced last summer that he would be retiring.

On Friday, Bloomberg News followed with word that Microsoft's board is preparing to make Nadella the CEO "and is discussing replacing Bill Gates as chairman, according to people with knowledge of the process." An announcement could come within the next week.

Bloomberg adds that "in turning to Nadella, the company would get an enterprise-technology veteran who joined Microsoft in 1992 and has had leadership roles in cloud services, server software, Internet search and business applications."

Also, Bloomberg says that "if he is named CEO, the 46-year-old Nadella will "need to win over skeptics concerned that an insider can't move fast enough to make Microsoft a contender again in markets led by Apple Inc., Google Inc. and others, said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets & Co."

Microsoft has had no official comment on the reports. According to CNet, Ballmer also might end up having his ties to the company severed because "insiders ... say a new CEO might be uncomfortable taking steps that reversed decisions carried out under the Gates-Ballmer regime if the duo still sat on the board."

Bloomberg says, however, that "even if Gates steps down as chairman, he may be more involved in the company, said two people familiar with the matter, particularly in areas like product development."

Well, it's safe to say we're shocked — shocked — to find that Oscar campaigning was going on in here.

Tuesday night, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences — the Oscars people — rescinded the Best Original Song nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone," from the movie Alone Yet Not Alone.

If you don't know what Alone Yet Not Alone is, you are alone yet not alone, because nobody was talking about this movie before the Oscar nominations came out, but a lot of people have been talking about it since then, asking a single searching question: "A what yet a what?"

Alone Yet Not Alone was the 314th biggest domestic earner of 2013, making $133,546 over three weeks in 11 theaters. It's a story about faith in God, and it boasts endorsements from Rick Santorum, Focus On The Family founder James Dobson, and Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council.

But the association that resulted in the yanking of the nomination was with Bruce Broughton, once an Academy Governor and still a member of the executive committee of the music branch. Broughton wrote the music for the song "Alone Yet Not Alone," and the Academy found that during the voting on nominations, he'd reached out to members of the music branch (which he helps govern) to tell them about his song that could maybe be nominated.

Now, it's not that the Oscars never nominate little movies that few people have heard of — and it's certainly not that they shouldn't nominate little movies that few people have heard of. But when the song you wrote that few people have ever heard from the little movie that few people have heard of bags a major Oscar nomination, and you're on the executive committee of the relevant branch, and it turns out that you campaigned via e-mail for your own song? Well, the Academy decided to draw the line there, saying through President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, "Using one's position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one's own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage."

On the one hand, this seems an utterly reasonable thing to do — it does indeed seem like having a member of the governing committee of a group of people reach out to them to remind them that perhaps they'd like to consider his work creates at the very least the appearance of an unfair advantage.

But on the other hand, it is a bit of a fig leaf on a process that is well-understood to involve plenty of nudging, needling, calling, advertising, wheedling, and any number of other approaches that do not amount to looking solemnly to one's peers and saying, "Do what you think is right."

Just yesterday, Vulture ran a history of what it called the "Oscar campaign shenanigans" of super-producer Harvey Weinstein. It cited reports that Weinstein spent $5 million just trying (successfully) to get a Best Picture win for Shakespeare In Love, and detailed persistent accusations that Weinstein has participated in various "whisper campaigns" against other Best Picture contenders.

Whether or not all of those accusations are true, the Academy is certainly dogged by an increasing sense that they are true. It's possible to have a very successful awards show even if people sort of suspect that your entire process contains very much wining as well as a great deal of dining — just ask the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the Golden Globes.

But every awards show has its little niche, the thing it tries to be good at. The Globes are sometimes edgy and usually boozy — a fun show in support of a pretty goofy process. The Grammys focus on performances and have essentially given up on matching any critical sense of what music is actually best.

For the Oscars, the thin layer of alleged dignity and respectability that has survived even the years of highly publicized campaigning is, among other things, what the show is selling. The Oscars, while gentle comedy is encouraged, should feel like a grown-up evening, so the popular understanding goes. The Oscars are supposed to be about champagne sipped demurely, not white wine in barrels brought directly to your seat. You still can't wear what people deem too va-voomy a dress to the Oscars, or people will talk. (Sometimes in weird, uncomfortably coded language.) The Academy is not looking to become a less boozy Golden Globes.

So without actually drilling down into the ugly business of everything other than quality that affects who takes home which little naked statue, pulling a nomination that's been raising eyebrows since it was announced is as good a way as any to make the point that while it might not seem like it, some things are too detrimental to the appearance of a meritocracy, even for the Oscars.

As the Syrian government and opposition forces try to make peace in Geneva, the group Human Rights Watch has issued a new report that accuses the regime of demolishing entire neighborhoods that were considered opposition strongholds.

The report, "Razed to the Ground," was issued Thursday and said it found seven cases of "large scale demolitions" in neighborhoods in Damascus and Hama. The first one took place in July 2012 and the most recent was last November.

The demolition of the Masha' al-Arb'een neighborhood in Hama. (Drag the slider or tap on the image to see the before and after.)

The space company SpaceX has identified a remote spot on the southern tip of Texas as its finalist for construction of the world's newest commercial orbital launch site.

The 50-acre site really is at the end of the road. Texas Highway 4 abruptly ends at the warm waves of the Gulf surrounded by cactus, Spanish dagger and sand dunes.

"Welcome to Boca Chica beach, Brownsville, Texas. It's where the U.S. really begins," says Gilberto Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council. He's spent three years toiling to get SpaceX to build its first launch facility out here. The complex would include a hangar, fuel storage, payload processing facility, and launch control center.

"Right there," Salinas continues, gesturing to open coastal prairie, "you would have the actual launchpad itself where [they would erect the rocket] — and then off into space it goes."

SpaceX has been sending up its rockets at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida. Now they want a place to call their own, and it turns out that this lonely patch of coastland only three miles north of Mexico is a sweet spot for orbital spacecraft launches.

"We need to be able to launch eastward, and we want to be close to the equator," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told South by Southwest in Austin last year. "If things go as expected, it's likely we'll have a launch site in Texas, which would be really cool."

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

VIDEO: 'Sideways Rocket Hop' By SpaceX Prototype

In Sochi, Russia, Hubertus Von Hohenlohe will compete in his sixth Winter Olympics. The 55-year-old downhill skier and German prince won't be skiing under the flag of his royal heritage, however. He'll be with the team of his birthplace, Mexico.

In honor of his Querido Mexico (beloved homeland), Hohenlohe says he will race down the Russian slopes decked out in a state-of-the-art mariachi ski suit.

Mexico's Olympic Committee gave him a proper sendoff Wednesday, full of pomp, ceremony and lots of trumpets — but with a much more solemn beat than the self-proclaimed Mariachi Olympic Prince usually enjoys.

Hohenlohe was born in Mexico. He spent his first four years here before his parents moved him to Europe. He learned to ski in Austria, which he says saved him from the tedium of boarding school. But he says he never forgot his homeland, and came back in the 1980s to launch the Mexican Ski Federation.

Membership is quite low in this mainly temperate country. Add on the high cost of the sport, and it's no surprise Hohenlohe is soloing it in Sochi.

"Lonely, lonely. It's going to be lonely out there," he says.

A photographer, documentarian and one of the oldest athletes to be competing in the Winter Olympics, Hohenlohe says he doesn't expect to win any medals. He only qualified for one race. But he does hope people will notice his flair for fashion.

"It's a big stage, and you need to wear something special on stage. I mean, I could also come with a T-shirt and jeans," he says.

His skin-tight suit is anything but. It sports a black bolero jacket over a ruffly white tuxedo shirt, a bright red tie and thick matching cummerbund.

Italian designer Alex Jorio of Kappa sports apparel says this isn't the first ski suit he's made for Hohenlohe. In the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Jorio made him a custom Mexican desperado suit, complete with bandolier.

Cinema owners who don't have a digital projector in their movie house can't show Paramount Pictures' latest release: The Wolf of Wall Street. This year Paramount became the first big studio to distribute a major release in the U.S. entirely in a digital format, and other studios are likely to follow.

Most big theaters around the country are ready for the change, but it may threaten many of the nation's smaller cinemas which are struggling to raise money for the transition.

'We Either Had To Convert Or Close The Doors'

Dozens of small cinemas have taken to Kickstarter. The Tampa Pitcher Show has been trying to raise $30,000. It's got a video up that includes a group of regulars who dress up and perform at screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They're dancing until the lights go dark. "We've got to start showing our movies digitally otherwise we're not going to be able to show them at all," one of the performers says.

So far, the Kickstarter campaign for the Tampa Pitcher Show isn't going well.

Still, fans of neighborhood cinemas like it are pitching in because they say small local movie houses offer more to the community than a multiplex — they are social centers where people can act out The Rocky Horror Picture Show and see locally made films and live events.

But, first-run movies pay the bills and Tampa Pitcher Show owner Wayne Valenti says he was taken by surprise when he got a letter in early December from Paramount announcing it would cease distributing most movies on film by Dec. 31.

"They just really gave a short straw notice on the thing," he says, "and we either had to convert or close the doors basically."

It's not as if Valenti didn't know this day would come — the movie studios have been giving warnings for years that the end of film is nigh, according to Isabel Fondevila, director of the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. "[Distributors] keep sending us letters," she says, "like, 'Heads up. We're not going to have anything else but DCP so get ready.'"

DCP stands for Digital Cinema Package, which is what the studios are calling the new digital equipment and distribution system. The Roxie is the oldest continuously running theater in the country, according to Fondevila.

An Inevitable Switch To Digital

To see its legendary projection booth, I climb a narrow flight of wood stairs. The Roxie has two big, hulky 35-millimeter projectors screwed to the floor. Jim Lung, who's been a projectionist at the Roxie for over 30 years, threads the film, lights the lamps and finally flips the switch. Then, I hear that familiar slapping-like sound of film making its way through the projector — a sound that will soon vanish. Lung is not looking forward to the change because he doesn't like the look of digital.

"When you can actually sit there and you can see pores on people's skin, it's like, 'What happened here?' " Lung says. "You can actually see some makeup on them .... In the old days you would never see that."

Related NPR Stories

Business

Drive-Ins Soon Face Hollywood's Digital Switch

"That's more flaring than we would like, and we are working very, very hard to get the percentage of flaring down," Dalrymple says. He points out that an industry task force is working on the issue. "The gas processing companies are building plants really as fast as they can."

Now, another interest group is weighing in on the issue: royalty owners. These are the people who own the rights to the underground oil and gas. When gas is wasted, they lose money. Some of them have filed class-action lawsuits against oil companies. NPR contacted four of those companies, but all declined interview requests.

Sarah Vogel is one of the plaintiffs and also a former North Dakota agriculture commissioner. She owns a farm on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. "It is fabulously beautiful and windswept. ... We just got electricity last year, and running water," she says.

It used to be quiet and dark at night, Vogel says. "We'd just see the stars. Now, at night, we see flares."

Derrick Braaten, an attorney in Bismarck, N.D., who is representing Vogel, says the lawsuit is essentially "requesting that the royalty owners be paid their royalties on the gas that has been flared."

He says that could amount to tens of millions of dollars in gas — gas now being wasted instead amid North Dakota's rush for oil.

If you haven't seen the video by now, it's on the website of NY1.com, which has also posted a transcript of the exchange between its reporter — Michael Scotto — and the Republican congressman from Staten Island. We'll embed the version that CNN posted Wednesday morning with its report about the incident.

After talking to the congressman about the president's address, Scotto started to ask another question. Viewers wouldn't have known what the subject was because Grimm cut the reporter off. What Scotto wanted to ask about, as the congressman knew, was an ongoing investigation into possible fundraising violations by a donor to Grimm's 2010 campaign.

"I'm not speaking about anything's that off-topic — this is only about the president," Grimm told Scotto before walking away.

Then, while the camera was still recording, Grimm returned to say:

"Let me be clear to you: You ever do that to me again, I'll throw you off this f- - - - -g balcony."

Scotto asked: "Why? Why? This is a valid question."

To which Grimm said: "No, no, you're not man enough. You're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy."

Later, Grimm issued a statement that says, in part, "I was extremely annoyed because I was doing NY1 a favor by rushing to do their interview first in lieu of several other requests." He also accused the reporter of "taking a disrespectful and cheap shot at the end of the interview."

NY1's political director, Bob Hardt, says in a statement that the news outlet is "certainly alarmed and disappointed by the behavior of Representative Grimm and demands a full apology from him. This behavior is unacceptable."

Scotto tells CNN that "I'm a New York City reporter. I'm used to pushback, but I never encountered anything like that." He also says "I'm not taking it personal."

NY1 adds that:

"The FBI earlier this month charged 47-year-old Diana Durand with using straw donors to exceed the maximum allowable contribution to Grimm's campaign committee. After contributing $4,800, the maximum amount allowed under federal law, Durand allegedly offered to reimburse four friends if they contributed to the campaign.

"Grimm is not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the probe."

It took four years in a prison cell for Palestinian Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub to decide to work as an Israeli informant. Not that he ever planned it that way. Rajoub is in his 60s now. He grew up in a Palestinian village near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He says he was 19, an emotional young man, when he got involved in fighting Israel.

"It was my right," he says, "to fight Israel and the occupation."

Rajoub looked up to an older brother, who he says was part of the military branch of the Palestinian political group Fatah and was killed by Israeli soldiers. Rajoub joined Fatah's fighting wing too, and says he took part in an attack on Israelis in the mid-1970s that landed him in Israeli prison.

Life inside was oppressive, Rajoub says, but the worst part of it came from fellow Palestinians. Fatah members, he says, wrongly accused him of passing information to Israeli intelligence.

It is a charge that is difficult to disprove, particularly inside a prison community where suspicions run deep and risks are high. Being accused of working as an informant was potentially so dangerous that Israel moved Rajoub from the general prison population into a solitary cell.

"I was in the Israeli cell alone for four years, waiting for Fatah to realize I was not an informant," Rajoub says. "But an apology never came. I thought a lot during those four years. I realized that my problem was with Fatah, not with Israel."

A Key Role That's Often Invisible

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, informants have long played a key role. Palestinians pass information to Israeli security agents for a variety of reasons, including personal gain or needing something from Israel, such as a work permit. In Rajoub's case, the motive was revenge. He wanted to hit back at Fatah, feeling it had betrayed him.

Still, it hurt.

"It was a painful decision," Rajoub says, choking up. "Whenever I remember that moment, I cry."

Rajoub stayed in prison, but in special cells full of other informants like him. Their job was to put on a show of being real prisoners, to fool other Palestinians into revealing information Israeli intelligence couldn't get.

Former Israeli intelligence officer Chaim Nativ calls it theater - and a useful part of interrogation. Nativ worked in the Arab section of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service for 30 years.

i i

Even the famed German automaker concedes that it "may resemble an old horse-drawn carriage."

But the recently rediscovered "first Porsche in the world" — dubbed the P1 — was a technological marvel for its time. It "included a compact electric drive weighing 286 pounds," writes the automotive news site Jalopnik, and could chug along at 22 mph.

The car was found, according to Porsche, in an Austrian warehouse where it had apparently been left untouched since 1902.

As for the car's history, according to Porsche:

"The owner of 'K.K. Hofwagenfabrik Jacob Lohner & Comp.' had a wide range of interests, and in the face of declining sales of his luxurious carriages had come to the logical conclusion that the age of the horse and carriage was coming to an end. ... He came to the decision that he needed to start manufacturing petrol and electric vehicles. ...

"The result of Ferdinand Porsche's vision, the 'Egger-Lohner C.2 electric vehicle,' rolled onto the streets of Vienna for the first time on June 26, 1898, and Ferdinand Porsche made sure that he would take credit for the vehicle's design in a most unusual manner: He engraved the code 'P1' (P for Porsche, number 1) onto all of the key components, thus giving the vehicle its unofficial name."

Even the famed German automaker concedes that it "may resemble an old horse-drawn carriage."

But the recently rediscovered "first Porsche in the world" — dubbed the P1 — was a technological marvel for its time. It "included a compact electric drive weighing 286 pounds," writes the automotive newssite Jalopnik, and could chug along at 22 mph.

The car was found, according to Porsche, in an Austrian warehouse where it had apparently been left untouched since 1902.

As for the car's history, according Porsche:

"The owner of 'K.K. Hofwagenfabrik Jacob Lohner & Comp.' had a wide range of interests, and in the face of declining sales of his luxurious carriages had come to the logical conclusion that the age of the horse and carriage was coming to an end. ... He came to the decision that he needed to start manufacturing petrol and electric vehicles. ...

"The result of Ferdinand Porsche's vision, the 'Egger-Lohner C.2 electric vehicle,' rolled onto the streets of Vienna for the first time on June 26, 1898, and Ferdinand Porsche made sure that he would take credit for the vehicle's design in a most unusual manner: He engraved the code 'P1' (P for Porsche, number 1) onto all of the key components, thus giving the vehicle its unofficial name."

Rebecca, "a woman who rarely wept although she knew she would have been better for it," is a quiet, interior character who eschews color in both her photography and her wardrobe. Serendipity plays a huge role in her art and life. She rambles in the woods, often in the company of a neglected runaway dog, who adopts her, and gradually begins seeing things differently. Photographing birds, "it occurred to her that she had known much of life in two dimensions: raccoon, eagle. She had learned to know what things looked like but not what they really amounted to." When she stumbles upon a series of mysterious tiny handmade crosses planted in the woods, surrounded by what appear to be a child's mementos, she knows she's hit on a subject that will resonate. She gives little thought to the provenance of these makeshift memorials, though readers are likely to guess at their significance long before Quindlen spells it out.

The predictability, along with the fact that Quindlen's characters are either enormously sympathetic or just awful, are part of the easy gratification of this tidily constructed, resolutely uplifting romance. Like her bestselling inspirational chapbook, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen's novel makes a case for seizing control of your life. "People froze you in place ... More important, you froze yourself, often into a person in whom you truly had no interest," she writes. "So you had a choice: you could continue a masquerade, or you could give up on it."

The annual State of the Union speech isn't just stagecraft: the message is mandated by the U.S. Constitution (trivia alert: Article II, Section 3). It's intended to give Congress a status update on the country and make recommendations where needed, but the tradition has evolved over time.

The history of the address is rich, even if the individual speeches sometimes seem fleeting and forgettable.

"The era of big government is over."

Significance: As much as anything else, the State of the Union speeches are political tools. In a re-election year, with a failed health care proposal and the disastrous 1994 election behind him, Clinton's rhetoric crept towards the middle in an attempt to signal he was a different kind of Democrat. Video / Transcript

As the enrollment period continues for health coverage on the state health insurance marketplaces, people continue to have many questions about buying a plan there.

What happens with premium tax credits if a couple gets divorced? If the premium tax credit is based on the previous year's income when the couple filed taxes jointly, many wouldn't qualify. But once someone is divorced, one individual might have little income. What is the subsidy based on in that situation?

If a couple divorces, each person's eligibility for premium tax credits will generally be based on his or her own annual income. The former spouse's income won't be counted, even if the couple filed taxes jointly the previous year.

Premium tax credits are available to people with incomes up to 400 percent of the 2013 federal poverty level ($45,960 for an individual).

During the application process, people are asked to project their income for the year. If someone estimates income that's more than 10 percent lower than the previous year's taxes or wage information or Social Security data would suggest, the system will flag it.

At tax time next year, the Internal Revenue Service will reconcile an individual or family's actual income against the amount that was projected. People who received too much in tax credits may have to repay some or all of it.

The situation may be different for couples that are separated but not yet divorced, however. If each files taxes as "married filing separately" neither will be eligible for premium tax credits on the exchange.

We live in Texas because my husband is going to college. But our home is in Arkansas and we aren't changing our driver's licenses to Texas because we're going back to Arkansas after he graduates. Should we apply for insurance in Texas or Arkansas?

Since you're living in Texas, you'll probably have better access to the local medical care you need if you buy a plan on the Texas exchange. In addition, a number of state exchanges offer multi-state plans with national networks of doctors and hospitals. That may be an option if you want access to providers in both states.

To be eligible for coverage on a state marketplace, you have to be a resident there. But marketplaces are generally being pretty lenient about requiring proof.

An exchange may ask you for documentation that your husband is enrolled at the college or for an apartment lease, says Stephen Beckley, a consultant on student health care.

I live in a state that has not expanded its Medicaid program under the health law. I am concerned that if I get a premium tax credit (because I expect that my income will be somewhere within the 100 to 400 percent of poverty range) and it turns out that I have an income of less than 100 percent of poverty, I will be stuck paying back a very large subsidy! Is there any leeway in the law so that I would not have to pay this back?

The law protects people in your situation. As you note, the health law limits eligibility for premium tax credits to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the 2013 federal poverty level ($11,490 to $45,960 for an individual).

The health law originally expanded Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, so it was thought that people with incomes below the poverty level wouldn't need access to premium tax credits. Therefore subsidies were limited to people earning from 100 to 400 percent of poverty. But those provisions were challenged in court, and, in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion was optional for states. So far, 25 states and the District of Columbia have expanded coverage.

However, a Treasury Department special rule addresses the potential financial repercussions for people like you. The rule says that if your state exchange determines that you're eligible for a tax credit, but your actual income at year end puts you below the poverty level, you won't have to repay any tax credit amounts that you received.

"In this situation by definition the annual income is less than the original estimate, so there won't be any obligation to repay [the premium tax credit]," Judith Solomon, a vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an email.

"I am the legitimate president of the country, and this trial is not legal."

Demonstrators in Kiev's main square are welcoming the news that Ukraine's "widely despised" prime minister is stepping down, that anti-protest laws have been repealed and that protesters may get amnesty, NPR's Corey Flintoff reports.

The Washington Post says those are among "growing signs" that the opposition is "gaining ground in its efforts to remake the country."

Still, the BBC adds, the anti-government demonstrators "say they are in no hurry to leave" the streets. They continue to press for new elections and aren't satisfied with the amnesty offer — which is contingent on the end of demonstrations.

The news that Prime Minister Mykola Azarov is stepping aside was not unexpected. President Viktor Yanukovych had, after all, offered Azarov's job to one of the opposition leaders earlier this week. That offer was rejected, as we've reported, because the opposition viewed it as a trick to draw them into a relatively meaningless position.

But while not suprising, the news about Azarov is being welcomed because he has long been unpopular with many Ukrainians.

"Azarov, who hails from Yanukovych's heartland in the Russian-speaking east of the country, and does not speak Ukrainian," has been the object of ridicule in the past, The Guardian says. In parliament last December, for example, he addressed the lawmakers in Russian "but was drowned out by chants of 'Speak Ukrainian!' and 'Resign!' by nationalist MPs."

The 66-year-old Azarov, a geologist by training who graduated from Mikhail Lomonosov Moscow State University, has been prime minister since 2010.

As we've previously written, the protesters want:

"An end to government corruption, freedom for political prisoners and for Ukraine to be aligned with the European Union, not Russia. That means Yanukovych needs to go, they insist."

While much of official Washington will be present in the House chamber during the State of the Union address Tuesday evening, one member of President Obama's inner circle will be noticeably absent.

Each year one Cabinet secretary is chosen to be the "designated survivor," the official who skips the president's speech to ensure the continuity of government in the case of a catastrophe where the nation's senior leaders — including the president, vice president, Supreme Court justices and the remaining 14 Cabinet secretaries — are wiped out by an attack on the Capitol.

According to the Senate Historical Office, the practice dates back at least to the early 1960s, if not earlier.

It's a solemn burden — and a little intimidating at first, according to those who have served in the role. The name of the official who is selected as the designated survivor is not announced in advance.

So where exactly do these chosen Cabinet secretaries go during the speech? And how do they occupy their time?

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who acted as designated survivor during President Clinton's 1996 address, said she and her staff ordered pizza and watched the speech from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

"At first I was a little disconcerted when the chief of staff told me I was the designated survivor but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I was happy to do it," Shalala said. "We had fun in the Roosevelt Room."

Shalala recalled being briefed by Secret Service members about her responsibilities in the Situation Room leading up to the speech, although she declined to disclose details of the briefing.

Likewise, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was reticent to discuss his location during President George W. Bush's 2007 address, citing concerns about his ability to disclose specific information — he served in the role less than six years after the 9/11 attacks.

"There was more appreciation for the necessity of the government procedure because we knew that at any moment someone could try to do something," Gonzales said.

Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture, said he was told to leave Washington for Clinton's 1997 address so he decided to visit his daughter in New York City.

He flew out of Andrews Air Force Base accompanied by a military aide, a physician and Secret service members to watch the speech at his daughter's apartment in lower Manhattan.

After the speech, Glickman said he went out to dinner with his daughter rather than return to Washington with the Secret Service. He recalled having to walk ten blocks in rain and sleet to get back to his daughter's apartment.

"It didn't escape me that three hours earlier I was the most powerful man in the world and now I couldn't even get a cab," Glickman said "It was a reminder of how fleeting power is."

At tonight's State of the Union address, Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin will be doing the same thing he's done for decades — he'll be sitting with his older brother Sandy, who's a House Democrat from Michigan.

No two siblings in the nation's history have served longer than the 32 years the brothers Levin have been together in Congress. Both have held powerful committee chairmanships.

But this will be their last State of the Union together. Carl, who was first elected to Congress four years before his brother, has decided to retire at the end of the year.

When Sandy Levin shows up at his younger brother Carl's Senate office — a suite of high-ceilinged rooms next to Harry Truman's old Senate digs — Carl protectively steers him toward a cozy alcove at the end of a long meeting room.

"I think we're going to go in here," he says, "because it's too cold in my office."

Carl is the 79-year-old brother with the gold rimmed reading glasses permanently perched at the end of his nose. It's an image Comedy Central's Jon Stewart once described as "this kindly old shoemaker."

Sandy, who's 82, sports a halo of snowy white hair. Being in Congress with his brother, he says, has been a good thing.

"People like brothers, when they do their own thing, together," he says

Which is, adds Carl, what they've always done.

"We spent most of our lives together, including as kids, in the same bedroom together, including law school and about 30,000 games of squash that we've played together," Carl says. "Both of us will tell you we don't have any idea who won more of those games, we have the same line."

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As part of a new series called "My Big Break," All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click and people leap forward into their careers.

For about a decade, Bobby Moynihan lived a double life. By day, Moynihan says, he tended bar at a Pizzeria Uno in New York. By night, he performed improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

But he says he always had one dream: to join the cast of Saturday Night Live.

After years of performing at the UCB Theatre, Moynihan caught the attention of producers at SNL, who invited him to audition.

"I was absolutely terrified," he tells All Things Considered, "but elated, because that's all that I've ever wanted to do."

Moynihan is now a cast member, known for his characters such as "Drunk Uncle" and his impressions of people like celebrity restaurateur Guy Fieri.

But Moynihan says the call to audition for SNL prompted a mix of emotions.

"It's like the equivalent of, 'Hey, you're gonna go to space,' " he says. "It's like, 'Yeah that's a great idea, I would love to go to space, but it's really dangerous and terrifying up there.' "

But the road to his big break involved a lot of waiting.

First, there was the four-hour wait in the dressing room ahead of the audition.

Then, after the audition, there was the nine-hour wait outside the office of Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of SNL.

But after that promising meeting, in which Moynihan thought he had a good shot at the job, came the hardest wait of all.

In November 2007, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for several months, which put SNL production on hold, and left Moynihan on the hook.

When the strike finally ended in early 2008, Moynihan got a call from SNL. But it wasn't with good news.

"They told me that [then-cast member] Maya Rudolph had had a baby during the break, so they had to hire a woman instead [as a replacement]," says Moynihan.

"I was devastated."

Eventually, after a few movie roles, Moynihan had an opportunity to audition for a second time.

"When it was all over," he says, "I was more relieved, because it had been like a 14-month process."

During the long interim period, Moynihan says he had moved back to his hometown, into an apartment across the street from his mother's office. He was sleeping when he got the call he was waiting for from Lorne Michaels.

He would become a cast member on SNL.

Moynihan says he couldn't wait to tell his mom about his big break.

"I ran across the street [to his mother's office] in boxers and a T-shirt — didn't even think to put pants on — and ran across the street to my mom and told her that my life's dream had come true."

Along with hundreds of other cities across the country, Dubuque, Iowa, has been able to cut back on its utility bills, thanks to energy efficiency grants from the federal government.

But that money was part of the 2009 stimulus package. It's all dried up, and no more is forthcoming.

"We can't seem to get any traction in Congress to get it reinstated," says Dubuque Mayor Roy Buol.

Energy efficiency money isn't the only area where mayors have been frustrated in their dealings with Washington.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has been meeting at a hotel a couple of blocks from the White House this week. Those attending say they're getting a lot more value out of interacting with their peers than trying to persuade Congress to do anything.

"What I find most useful is just the chance to sit down with other mayors to see what they're doing right now and just trading stories about what's working and what's not working," says Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. "It's a very pragmatic approach to things, and that's the difference — it's not particularly ideological."

Lots of his peers feel the same way. With Congress practically paralyzed, mayors — like any other group looking for action — end up frustrated, whether the issue is education or public safety.

"While Washington bickers, the world is passing them by," says Joy Cooper, the mayor of Hallandale Beach, Fla. "We have to produce on a day-to-day basis."

Things could be worse. Mayors are able to get more out of Washington than interest groups working in stymied policy areas, such as agriculture or immigration. They have an ongoing fiscal relationship with the federal government that will continue as long as there are programs that are paid for by federal dollars.

In fact, the $1.1 trillion appropriations package enacted earlier this month restored funding for a number of local programs, such as transit and water grants and housing vouchers.

The mayors were treated like visiting royalty by the Obama administration, which dispatched several Cabinet secretaries to meet with them both publicly and in private.

Since the earliest days of Barack Obama's presidency, mayors — who are predominantly Democratic — have enjoyed easy access to the executive branch, with Obama creating a White House Office of Urban Affairs.

But while that office has been a helpful liaison, it hasn't been able to help mayors push their priorities through Congress.

Local governments have lobbied for years to force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes, for instance, to level the playing field with brick-and-mortar stores and replenish treasuries at city hall. Such a bill passed the Senate last year, but has yet to find momentum in the House.

Such frustration is common, says St. Paul, Minn., Mayor Chris Coleman. Mayors now have an extreme case of the ambivalence that many voters experience — they hate Congress, but love their individual members of Congress.

While mayors mostly find their local delegations sympathetic — and sometimes even vigorous advocates — Congress as a whole, they complain, leaves them wanting. Federal largesse toward cities is not what it was pre-recession, and changes in policy that could be helpful in any number of areas have stalled out.

The result, Coleman says, is that "a lot of us are talking about strategies we can implement on our own, without depending on the federal government."

Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife pleaded not guilty to corruption charges in front of a federal judge on Friday.

As we've reported, McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, have been charged with 14 counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud over allegations they took gifts from the CEO of a pharmaceutical company and in exchange provided Star Scientific with the "prestige of the governorship."

USA Today says the McDonnells were released on their own recognizance but were ordered not to leave the country. The paper adds:

"The former governor's lawyer told Novak the defendants already have surrendered their passports.

"Clearly exasperated by months of news stories about the case based on anonymous sources, [U.S. Magistrate Judge David Novak] sternly lectured lawyers from both sides not to discuss the case with the media. He warned that such conduct violates a local court rule and could result in contempt of court charges.

" 'This case is going to be tried in the courtroom; it is not going to be tried in the media,' Novak said. 'The gamesmanship with the media ends now.' "

In the debate over income inequality, the right and left seem to agree on one point: The U.S. is the land more of equal opportunity than equal outcomes.

President Obama last month called income inequality and economic mobility "the defining challenge of our time." The president, who is set to deliver his State of The Union message on Tuesday, also promised to keep those issues front and center for the remainder of his presidency.

"While we don't promise equal outcomes, we've strived to provide equal opportunity," he said.

Historically, however, the country's policies have sought to address both. President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty created early childhood education programs and investments in poorer schools. But it also tried to address the income gap by creating social safety net programs like Medicare and food stamps.

Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, a progressive think tank, says in the decades that followed, that approach worked. Wages rose for everyone. The economy bounced back quickly from brief recessions.

The Two-Way

Income Inequality Is The 'Challenge Of Our Time,' Obama Says

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

William Wiley has made a career out of international criminal law, working on cases in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Iraq. He now oversees a nonprofit called the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA).

The group's men and women are charged with collecting evidence of atrocities in the Syrian war, evidence they hope will be used to prosecute war crimes carried out by both sides.

"There's no international body with jurisdiction over the crimes being perpetrated in Syria at the current time," he tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The one advantage we have is that we can operate in the midst of the conflict, which a public body couldn't really do, for the simple reason that we have a much higher level of risk tolerance."

The SCJA uses different methods to suss out regime offenses and armed opposition offenses. At the regime level, "we're interested in quite high-level offenders," he says, "because criminal justice is a highly symbolic exercise."

“ It's a very committed group, it's very high-risk. I don't want to get all emotional, but certainly the courage of these men and women is to be applauded. There's no question about it.

Arizona Sen. John McCain has gone soft when it comes to conservative principles. That's according to his state's Republican Party, who sent the former presidential candidate a message on Saturday by voting to censure him for his 'liberal' voting record.

The Associated Press says the resolution was approved on a voice vote during a meeting of state committee members in Tempe. It said McCain "has campaigned as a conservative but has lent his support to issues 'associated with liberal Democrats,' such as immigration reform and to funding the law sometimes known as Obamacare."

The five-term senator's bleeding-heart tendencies are "disastrous and harmful" to the state and the nation, the resolution said.

"[We] would gladly embrace Sen. McCain if he stood behind us and represented us," Timothy Schwartz, the Legislative District 30 Republican chairman was quoted by the AP as saying.

As if to reinforce the message, a prominent Democrat, Fred DuVal, who plans to run for governor, came to McCain's defense. He called the censure an "outrageous response to the good work Sen. McCain did crafting a reasonable solution to fix our broken immigration system."

The Arizona Republic says: "Saturday's censure came two weeks after the Maricopa County Republican Party passed a resolution to censure the senator on a 1,150-to-351 vote. The state GOP party's censure ... has no practical effect, but serves as an attempt to embarrass the senator."

McCain's office has declined to comment.

Writers are a curious bunch, known for holding court at parties, charming their readers publicly, yet also famously — stereotypically — cranky in the daylight hours. They prefer their own quiet shuffling to any other human noise. I, too, admit a certain tendency toward this peculiar, self-inflicted isolation.

But solitude in characters can be tedious, dull and, worst of all, pretentious. Interiority alone never makes for a compelling novel. In these three books, the characters live not simply alone but forcefully isolated, until a single moment propels them from their places of comfort and silence. And when it does, they must confront a place they've successfully avoided for many years — that is, the world where others reside.