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It has been more than a week since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, and despite a massive search effort, the whereabouts of the plane and the 239 people on board are unknown.

The airline has told the families and friends of those missing to "expect the worst."

But it's tough for families to grieve without knowing the answer to a crucial question: Could my loved one still be alive?

Dr. Pauline Boss works with people in this kind of situation. She's the author of Loss, Trauma and Resilience and a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

She says the families and friends of the missing are experiencing an "ambiguous loss."

The Two-Way

Boeing 777 Pilots: It's Not Easy To Disable Onboard Communications

The men's NCAA college basketball tournament starts next week.

In a twist on the familiar March Madness bracket, a mortgage company and a world-famous investor are offering a billion dollars to anyone who picks the winner of all 63 games in the NCAA college basketball tournament.

It's a contest, and it may also be the perfect publicity stunt.

Let's introduce the players. There's Quicken Loans, the mortgage company that's sponsoring the contest. And there's investor Warren Buffett — he's the insurance man here, willing to pay out the $1 billion if someone wins.

Then there's Yahoo — you need one of its accounts to enter. Finally, there's as many as 15 million people who are expected to sign up to play.

Maybe you've heard the odds of picking a perfect bracket? They're not good: one in 9.2 quintillion.

When it comes to getting ahead in the world, a lack of savings can be a big hurdle, especially for low-income families. Most don't have enough money set aside for emergencies, let alone for college or a house. Some people think the answer is to make savings more fun, like the lottery, with the chance to win big prizes.

It's called prize-linked savings, something that's been available in Great Britain for decades. Now, it's starting to catch on in the United States.

One of the newest programs is called SaveYourRefund, launched recently by a nonprofit group called Doorways to Dreams. It's one of many organizations trying to find ways to encourage low- and moderate-income people to save more, especially at tax time. For some people, their federal tax refund is the biggest check they'll see all year.

So the group is offering one $25,000 grand prize and 10 weekly $100 prizes for those who agree to put some of their tax refund into savings, using Form 8888 on their tax return. The program is being promoted especially at free tax preparation sites that cater to low-income working families.

Joanna Smith-Ramani, of Doorways to Dreams, says for these families, even a little savings can make a big difference.

"At a basic level, people need savings to get them through even the smallest of financial shocks or their life just goes into total chaos and catastrophe," Smith-Ramani says.

Just one unexpected bill, she says, can set things off.

In Britain, 'Savings With A Thrill'

Malaysia's prime minister says he is now certain that someone disabled the communication systems on the passenger jet that disappeared last week with 239 people aboard.

The missing Malaysia Airliner flew more than six and a half hours after its last communication with air traffic control, Malaysia's Prime minister Najib Razak said in a news conference early Saturday.

"These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," Razak said.

As NPR's Frank Langfitt reports, Razak says the plane was either on a path towards the southern Indian Ocean or Central Asia.

MH370's last communication came at 1:30 last Saturday morning, but the plane continued to send signals to satellites until 8:11 a.m., the prime minister said.

Satellite data did not provide a precise location, but Razak said the last signal came along a southern flight corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean or along "a northern corridor stretching from border of Kazakstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand."

Razak would not address reports the plane had been high-jacked, but said investigators are refocusing on the passengers and crew.

Malaysia is now requesting radar data from the various countries the plane may have passed through.

Congress is still searching for money to avoid a 24 percent cut in pay for doctors who treat Medicare patients that kicks in April 1.

Seniors are already paying their share of premiums as if the pay cut won't happen.

Seniors' premiums cover 25 percent of their Medicare Part B outpatient services, including doctor visits, outpatient lab tests and hospital visits, medical equipment and home health care.

The government picks up the rest of the bill. Federal law requires Medicare number crunchers decide on premiums by Oct. 1 for the following year.

On Friday, House Republicans succeeded in passing legislation that would change the formula that Medicare uses to calculate pay for doctors.

The fix would eliminate the problem once and for all. But the legislation would pay for it by delaying penalties for five years for people eligible for subsidies who don't buy insurance required by the Affordable Care Act. The reduction in subsidized insurance would save money.

The Senate is unlikely to pass the bill, and President Obama has said he would veto it, in any event.

To calculate seniors' premiums, Medicare officials assumed that Congress would do what it has done since 2002 – block the cut.

This year's premium of $104.90 a month includes the senior's share of physicians' fees without a pay cut. (Some wealthier seniors pay an additional surcharge and low-income beneficiaries may pay less if they qualify for subsidies.)

"It's reasonable to allow for the likelihood of reaching a doc fix," said AARP spokesman Jim Dau. "And we have heard from our members for years that they are willing to pay their fair share because Medicare is a lifeline for them and a tremendous source of comfort and security."

"What isn't fair, given that we have been dealing with this for more than a decade, is the constant uncertainty and wrangling," Dau said, over whether to repeal the physician payment formula.

Instead of replacing the formula as enacted, Congress is likely to delay the cut until the end of the year, when they will face the same dilemma again.

In addition to the anxiety this annual ritual provokes in many patients and their doctors, a premium subsidy for some low-income Medicare beneficiaries is also in jeopardy. The "qualified individual," or QI subsidy, covers the monthly premium and some other costs for more than 500,000 people in Medicare. Because it is not a permanent subsidy, Congress has to decide every year whether to extend it.

Leslie Fried, senior director for the National Council on Aging, is confident that Congress will act to avoid a doctors' pay cut, but she's still worried about funding for the QI subsidy, now and in the future.

"There will be something, even if it's a nine-month patch, but what's important is that there is no harm done to low-income beneficiaries," she said.

In late February, AARP, NCOA, AFL-CIO and 20 other organizations urged congressional leaders to make the QI subsidy permanent and repeal the "sustainable growth rate" formula that Medicare uses to calculate how much to pay physicians that produced the pay cut.

"Failure to do this would seriously threaten vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries' basic economic security and access to physicians," they said.

UBS, which was fined $1.5 billion in 2012 for what regulators said was "routine and widespread" rigging of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, has been censured for trying to do the same thing with Hong Kong's benchmark rate between 2006 and 2009.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Chinese territory's de facto central bank, says as part of a lengthy investigation, it "found 100 chat messages in which UBS traders made requests to make submissions at a certain level. However, it added that the requests had had no impact on the setting of rates," The Financial Times reports.

The newspaper says:

"Hong Kong launched an investigation into potential rigging of Hibor in 2013 at the height of the scandal over banks' manipulation of the London interbank and other global rates, which govern the returns of more than $350tn of fixed income and derivative products.

"The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it had examined more than 31m messages from nine banks involved in the fixing of Hibor between 2005 and 2012."

"'The HKMA found evidence of misconduct in the submission of Hibor rates by only one bank, and no evidence of collusion between these banks to rig the Hibor fixing,' it said."

Lisa Garzone married John Joyce in 1994. They had four children together, and at one point, says Lisa, they were best friends. But their marriage ended badly.

"John became alcoholic, and things got volatile," she says, "so we had to have him leave."

John wound up living on the streets. "He stopped showing up for visits. I tried to follow where he was, and I knew that he was homeless — that just always worried me. I didn't want him to die on the streets."

Many years later, John met Megan Smith, who worked with the homeless. He was still on the streets then and hadn't been in contact with Lisa for about 12 years.

"But it was a different place and time in his life," Megan tells Lisa during their StoryCorps interview in Pawtucket, R.I. He was sober, and later found an apartment.

Then, says Megan, John found out that he had cancer. He died last year.

"I met you the day before John died," says Megan, who was with John for four years. "The reason I didn't reach out to you sooner was because John didn't want to do more harm."

"I can remember just looking at him and having great sadness," says Lisa. "And I kissed him on the forehead, told him that I loved him, and I whispered in his ear that I forgave him."

After the memorial service, Lisa and Megan decided to get together. The two had dinner one night, "then we sat in the car and talked for like another three hours or something," Megan recalls.

"It was pouring rain out," Lisa adds, "we got out of the car so I could have a cigarette, and then in the pouring rain we just hugged. And I just said, 'I hope that you'll be a part of our lives.' And you have been ever since."

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud Esty-Kendall.

At the National Theater in downtown Tehran, "Waiting for Godot" seems to have captured the mood of a country.

The Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett dramatized endless waiting in vain for someone named Godot. The play, translated into Farsi, got a standing ovation on the night I attended. The characters, in classic white suits, black top hats and black shoes, took endless bows as the audience whistled and clapped.

Iran is also waiting. It is waiting for the outcome of negotiations with six world powers over the country's nuclear program. Iranians are waiting for an end to punishing international sanctions that sent prices skyrocketing. The country is waiting to open for business again after the punitive measures that have isolated Iranian banks, frozen oil assets and shut down most official international trade.

Some in the audience worried that Iran — like Beckett's characters — will wait in vain.

"'Waiting for Godot' is our hope for future, and we never reach it," says Sheyda Mejani, 22, a finance major who was standing outside the theater with her friends after the final curtain.

But Nadar Safari, another college student from the group, was more upbeat. She said parallels to "Waiting for Godot" are not quite right because she's convinced Iran will reach a long-term nuclear deal.

Businessmen Are More Upbeat

Her opinion was also shared at the grand bazaar, the capital's chaotic market of small shops and crowded walk ways. For many merchants, hope has made a comeback.

Amir Farhat sells carpets mainly to international clients. He served tea at his showroom as he explained that his business dwindled to a halt because sanctions blocked international banking transactions.

More On Iran

Parallels

My (Brief) Detention By Iran's Morality Police

Flanked by a cadre of salaried workers, President Obama signed a memo directing his labor secretary to rewrite the rules governing overtime in the country.

"Americans have spent too much time working more and making less," Obama said during comments preceding the signing ceremony.

Obama's proposal would rewrite a commonly used exemption in which a salaried worker designated as "executive, administrative and professional" is denied overtime if he or she is making more than $455 a week.

NPR's Marilyn Geewax reported earlier today:

"As a result, a 'supervisor' could earn as little as $24,000 a year, while working well beyond 40 hours. In some cases, such a worker might put in enough hours to end up getting paid — in effect — less than the minimum wage.

"The administration points out that the $455 level set in 2004 would be worth $553 today, after adjusting for inflation.

"Supporters say an update of that $455 pay level and a rewrite of the exemption rules could have a fairly large stimulative effect by giving workers more money to spend."

On Thursday, President Obama rolled out his plan for strengthening overtime pay protections for millions of workers. In his view, if more workers got fatter paychecks, they could spend more and stimulate the economy.

But if his critics are right, then employers would end up laying off workers to make up for the higher wage costs. And that would hurt the already painfully slow recovery.

Which scenario is right?

Economists are divided. Some say the proposed changes would give the economy just what it needs: more consumer demand. Others say it would lead to exactly what the economy doesn't need: fewer jobs.

Sound familiar? This is very similar to the intense debate over the president's other proposal. He wants to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. That matter is stalled in Congress, but the White House does have the power to rewrite the wording of the overtime rules.

As Obama lays out his case for changes, the two sides are squaring off — each accusing the other of not understanding how today's economy really works.

Let's consider the arguments one at a time. The president gets the floor first.

Why More Overtime Pay Would Help

Obama is asking the Labor Department to revise overtime pay rules to cover many more salaried workers, such as shift supervisors at fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.

The most commonly used exemption to avoid overtime pay involves designating people as "executive, administrative and professional" employees. Under existing rules, these exempt employees can be denied overtime if they are paid more than $455 a week.

It's All Politics

Obama's Overtime Move Designed To Excite Base, Swing Voters

On Thursday, Newsweek's Leah McGrath Goodman reported that she had found the founder of the crypto-currency Bitcoin — the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or group of people whose true identity has been unknown.

As we discussed Thursday ('Newsweek' Says It Found Bitcoin's Founder: 4 Things To Know), this isn't the first time journalists have tried to pinpoint the real Satoshi Nakamoto. But this certainly has garnered the most attention.

It sparked a good, old-fashioned media frenzy — reporters swarmed the Los Angeles area home of Dorian n Satoshi Nakamoto, chased him in their cars as he drove to lunch with Associated Press reporter Ryan Nakashima, and reported on his statement to the AP denying that he was the brilliant enigma who created Bitcoin — "I got nothing to do with it," Dorian Nakamoto said.

But Goodman told Jeremy Hobson on NPR's Here And Now Friday that she stands by her reporting.

His family told me that he would deny it. In fact, I was very surprised when he acknowledged it to me when I met with him. ... I said, "People think that you are the founder of Bitcoin," ... and he said, "I cannot talk about that, I'm not connected with it anymore."

And I reasserted, "We are talking about Bitcoin here, correct?" and he said "Yes!" ... and in addition, my last question to him was: "If you are in any way not connected, you need to tell me. You need to tell me now." And he said, "I cannot do that."

This is the conclusion to an All Things Considered series that imagines a counterfactual history of World War I.

This year marks the centennial of the outbreak of World War I. What started as a beef between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia unleashed a clash that brought in Russia, Italy, France, Germany, England and eventually the United States.

All Things Considered has been underlining the war's historical importance by imagining the world if it had never happened — how would politics, science, literature, music have been different without that conflict?

We asked listeners to carry this idea of a counterfactual history and received over 1,500 thoughtful — and often hilarious — stories.

We've included a small selection below; some have been edited for length.

World Leaders

Josef Stalin would never have been more than a hairy, disaffected Georgian coffee shop habitue. He might have owned a shop in Tbilisi, and helped to care for his aging parents. He would have married a village girl and possibly become a drunken lout. At best, he would have become a town alderman.
Marcy Troy

Without a revolutionary cause, Fidel Castro focuses on improving his fastball and becomes a journeyman pitcher for the Chicago White Sox of the American League, helping pave the way for more Cubans to play in the United States.
Rich

There is no Harding "return to normalcy," and Governor James M. Cox of Ohio is elected president in 1920 and Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected Vice President. As Vice President, Franklin Roosevelt does not vacation in Campobello and does not contract polio, or, if he does, he receives treatment and does not become paralyzed. Cox is remembered as a better-than-average president, and Franklin D. Roosevelt is forgotten as someone who was vice president in the 1920s.
James Norquist

Benito Mussolini eschews teaching and politics, choosing instead to open up a small coffee/pastry shop in Switzerland called "Bene, Bene!" He goes on to write several dessert cookbooks, which become very popular in Spain and Italy. While on a book signing tour he is given the nickname "Il dolce" by his fans.
Charles Foerster

Woodrow Wilson's nativism policies destroying all hyphenated Americans' culture never happens. He loses mid-term elections and falls into obscurity. German-Americans continue to help create and build 20th Century America, resulting in a dual language nation with strong ties to more European homelands other than England.
Roland Kerner

President Obama's planned move to expand the pool of the nation's employees covered by overtime pay laws was hailed Wednesday by Democrats as key to their midterm election strategy.

And it was just as predictably criticized by conservatives as an overreach by a president who recently characterized income inequality as the "defining challenge of our time."

The president plans to exercise his executive authority on Thursday, leapfrogging Congress to direct the Labor Department to come up with guidelines that would set a new, higher income threshold at which employers are required to pay overtime.

Under current law, only workers earning $455 per week or less are eligible for overtime pay, though two states — California and New York — have independently raised their overtime minimums.

"Working- and middle-class people are not just feeling pressed, but really squeezed," says Mike Lux, a co-founder of Progressive Strategies, a Washington-based political consulting firm. "In that environment, populism tends to rise."

"In terms of the fall campaign, we are building a whole message around helping middle-class folks raise their wages, raise their incomes and make their lives a little better," Lux says. "This executive order, as well as the president's executive order on minimum wages paid by federal contractors, makes a huge difference politically."

Marc Freedman, who heads the labor law policy shop for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, predicted dire consequences blooming from the wage and overtime changes — and linked the problems to the president's health care legislation.

"Changing the rules for overtime eligibility will, just like increasing the minimum wage, make employees more expensive, and will force employers to look for ways to cover these increased costs," he said in a statement.

"Similar to minimum wage, these changes in overtime rules will fall most harshly on small and medium-sized businesses already trying to figure out the impact of Obamacare on them," he said.

Obama in early February bypassed Congress and signed an executive order increasing to $10.10 per hour minimum wages government contractors are required to pay as of 2015.

He has also called for an increase in the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over three years, and for indexing future increases to inflation. His executive moves are seen as part of his State of the Union promise of a "year of action" that would include vigorous use of his presidential authority.

"Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do," he said in that January speech.

A White House official speaking on background Wednesday said the president is making his move on overtime pay at a time when "one of the linchpins of the middle class, the overtime rules that establish the 40-hour workweek, have been eroded."

The administration estimates that millions of salaried workers in lower-paying jobs, ranging from office assistants to fast-food workers, can be expected to work up to 50 or 60 hours a week without seeing any overtime pay.

A $250 per week threshold for overtime pay eligibility was originally established in 1975 by the Labor Department, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, for "white collar" employees; it was increased by the Bush administration in 2004 to its current $455 level. The White House argues that, adjusted for inflation, that threshold for workers today, overwhelmingly not white collar workers, would be $553.

"This should be the central focus of the fall campaign for Democrats," Lux says, characterizing the president's action on income as appealing to swing voters and the party base.

"These issues play directly to the pocketbooks of white working-class voters," he said, "and really helps us excite the base, turn out the base."

Prominent Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who counts among his clients Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, says "playing around the edges" with wage policy "is not going to address the problem of anemic upward mobility."

"The ticket to upward mobility is expanded middle-class jobs, expanded training for those middle-class jobs," Ayres says, "and making changes in government policy to allow those jobs to be created and to flourish."

At the progressive National Partnership for Women and Families, president Debra Ness hailed Obama's move as a big step for "women and working families."

"Coercive overtime is a huge problem in this country," Ness said in a statement. "When this happens, workers, families, communities and, ultimately, our economy suffer."

A new Bloomberg National Poll suggests that while Americans have decidedly mixed feelings about the president, 69 percent of those polled last week support proposals that would raise the minimum wage.

But there's a caveat, says pollster Ann Selzer, who conducted the survey: The minimum wage is not a wedge issue for voters surveyed, at least "not at this point in the game."

"It's still a theoretical thing," says the Des Moines, Iowa-based Selzer. "The middle class may start feeling that the Democrats are paying attention to them and doing something if it shows up in their paycheck."

With national minimum wage changes requiring an act of Congress, the administration, as Selzer says, is looking for "arrows in the quiver to bolster the middle class."

The administration looks to be using the executive move on overtime as an arrow designed to potentially create a paycheck effect that will actually move voters when they head to the polls in November.

"This is consistent with the economic populist stance the Democrats are driving in a pretty unfavorable environment for them," says Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic writer and commentator. "They realize they not only have to motivate their base but also mitigate the damage of white, non-college voters who are going to be their weakness."

"Whether it works or not, we'll see," he says.

A new study by a UC-Berkeley graduate student has surprised a number of experts in the criminology field. Its main finding: Private prisons are packed with young people of color.

The concept of racial disparities behind bars is not exactly a new one. Study after report after working group has found a version of the same conclusion. The Sentencing Project estimates 1 in 3 black men will spend time behind bars during their lifetime, compared with 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 white men. Arrest rates for marijuana possession are four times as high for black Americans as for white. Black men spend an average of 20 percent longer behind bars in federal prisons than their white peers for the same crimes.

These reports and thousands of others have the cumulative effect of portraying a criminal justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black Americans and people of color in general.

Sociology Ph.D. student Christopher Petrella's finding in "The Color of Corporate Corrections," however, tackles a different beast.

Beyond the historical overrepresentation of people of color in county jails and federal and state prisons, Petrella found, people of color "are further overrepresented in private prisons contracted by departments of correction in Arizona, California and Texas."

This would mean that the racial disparities in private prisons housing state inmates are even greater than in publicly run prisons. His paper sets out to explain why — a question that starts with race but that takes him down a surprising path.

Age, Race And Money

First, a bit of background. Private prisons house 128,195 inmates on behalf of the federal government and state governments (or at least they did as of 2010). There's a continual debate among legislators and administrators as to which is more cost-effective: running a government-operated prison, with its government workers (and unions); or hiring a private company (like GEO or Corrections Corp. of America) to house your prisoners for you. States like California, Arizona and Texas use a combination of both.

In the nine states Petrella examined, private facilities housed higher percentages of people of color than public facilities did. Looking back at the contracts the private companies signed with the states, Petrella figured out the reason behind the racial disparity: private prisons deliberately exclude people with high medical care costs from their contracts.

Younger, healthier inmates, he found — who've come into the system since the war on drugs went into effect — are disproportionately people of color. Older inmates, who generally come with a slew of health problems, skew more white.

Steve Owens, senior director of public affairs for Corrections Corp. of America, one of the largest private prison companies in the nation, calls the study "deeply flawed."

In an email, Owens says, "CCA's government partners determine which inmates are sent to our facilities; our company has no role in their selection."

Furthermore, he says, "the contracts we have with our government partners are mutually agreed upon, and as the customer, our government partners have significant leverage regarding provisions." It's up to the contracting agency, he says, to decide how it wants to distribute inmates and manage health care costs.

Owens does not, however, dispute Petrella's numbers.

Gloria Browne-Marshall, an associate professor of constitutional law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former civil rights attorney, says it's a "very interesting" study.

“ "Public prisons are devoting a lot of resources to the age-specific needs of their prisoners. ... What about the specific needs of the private prison population?"

With members of the House and Senate scrapping over a Ukraine aid bill, Republicans say a magic bullet could break the logjam.

It has nothing to do with the former Soviet republic, its ability to withstand Russia's military intervention in Crimea, or this weekend's referendum in the Ukrainian territory.

It has everything to do with conservatives' fury at the IRS, which they say has waged a partisan, and unconstitutional, war against President Obama's opponents.

First, there was the grindingly slow, intrusive scrutiny the agency gave to Tea Party and other groups seeking tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations. The IRS gave similar treatment to liberal groups, though not nearly as many of them. And then, last year, the IRS proposed new rules that would make it harder for groups to veer from their social welfare missions into electoral politics. Conservatives call it a vendetta targeting them. Then again, liberal 501(c)(4)s are against the proposed rules, too.

This matters — to American politicians if not beleaguered Ukrainians — because social welfare groups are the hot item in campaign finance; they get to raise unlimited contributions from donors they don't have to disclose. So far, conservatives have a big advantage in this realm of secretly funded politics.

But back to Ukraine. The financial package for Ukraine itself has strong support in Congress. But Democrats want to add another element, boosting the lending power of the International Monetary Fund. Many Republicans never liked the IMF, but they might be persuaded to go along on the bill if it also includes a provision forcing the IRS to stop work on its new regulations.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday, "To get it passed on the floor, the (c)(4) issue is going to have to be dealt with."

He said House Speaker John Boehner is "not going to bring it up on the House floor unless the (c)(4) issue is dealt with. But then maybe those tied together is what pulls through the IMF piece."

It may also be what pulls through the Ukraine aid, which was the original point.

Among the latest developments related to the crisis in Ukraine:

— "The United States and the European Union will respond on Monday with a 'serious series of steps' against Russia if a referendum on Ukraine's Crimea region goes ahead on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday. Kerry told a congressional hearing he hoped to avoid such steps, which include sanctions, through discussions with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in London on Friday." (Voice of America)

— "Russia has begun military exercises, involving more than 8,000 troops, close to the border with Ukraine. The defense ministry in Moscow confirmed that artillery such as rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons would also be involved in the exercises. They come at a time of high tension ahead of Crimea's referendum on Sunday on whether to join Russia." (BBC News)

— "In an unusually robust and emotionally worded speech, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of 'catastrophe' unless Russia changes course. 'We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia,' she said in a speech in parliament. 'No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically.' " (Reuters)

Less ominous news: In what he said might be a "big step forward," the chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe announced that Russia now supports the idea of an OSCE mission in Ukraine, including Crimea, to monitor the situation. But, as Reuters also reported, an OSCE team that tried to enter Crimea on Thursday said it was turned away by armed men.

Need a refresher on what this crisis is all about?

As we've previously said, Crimea has been the focus of attention as the ripple effects of the protests that led to last month's ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych have spread.

Summing up the history and importance of Crimea to Russia and Ukraine isn't possible in just a few sentences, of course. The Parallels blog, though, has published several posts that contain considerable context:

— Crimea: 3 Things To Know About Ukraine's Latest Hot Spot

— Crimea: A Gift To Ukraine Becomes A Political Flash Point

— Why Ukraine Is Such A Big Deal For Russia

We've recapped what set off months of protest in Kiev and ultimately led to Yanukovych's dismissal by his nation's parliament last month this way:

"The protests were sparked in part by the president's rejection of a pending trade treaty with the European Union and his embrace of more aid from Russia. Protesters were also drawn into the streets to demonstrate against government corruption."

JuJu Harris didn't set out to write a cookbook, but then again, she didn't set out to raise seven children or accept public assistance to feed them, either. Harris always wanted to work with nature.

"My dream job was, I was going to grow up and be a national park ranger," she says. It didn't quite work out that way. She drifted from job to job in Oakland, Calif., where she was born. At 32, she joined the Peace Corps, traveling to Paraguay to help local farmers improve their crops.

While she was supposed to be helping the men – the ones who held the farming jobs and the money – she found herself drawn to the women and children. She encouraged the families to put their money into both their agricultural businesses and their children.

"I learned the importance of nutrition for women and how it impacts her family," Harris says. When the women improved their diets, they had "more mental energy" to deal with their children, too, she says.

Years later, back in the states, Harris found herself in a similar situation — with small children, post-partum depression, and little money. She knew she needed to take better care of herself, so she began experimenting with a garden, baking bread, doing whatever she could to supplement the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food program staples she was receiving. She taught herself to cook with kale, collards, cabbage and other inexpensive and nutritionally dense produce. Neighbors came over. She taught them to cook, too.

“ You can bring the food to people's doorstep and make it affordable. But if they don't know how to cook what's available, in the end, you haven't changed anything.

On Thursday, President Obama will roll out his plan for strengthening overtime pay protections for millions of workers. In his view, if more workers got fatter paychecks, they could spend more and stimulate the economy.

But if his critics are right, then employers would end up laying off workers to make up for the higher wage costs. And that would hurt the already painfully slow recovery.

Which scenario is right?

Economists are divided. Some say the proposed changes would give the economy just what it needs: more consumer demand. Others say it would lead to exactly what the economy doesn't need: fewer jobs.

Sound familiar? This is very similar to the intense debate over the president's other proposal. He wants to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. That matter is stalled in Congress, but the White House does have the power to rewrite the wording of the overtime rules.

As Obama lays out his case for changes, the two sides are squaring off — each accusing the other of not understanding how today's economy really works.

Let's consider the arguments one at a time. The president gets the floor first.

Why More Overtime Pay Would Help

Obama is asking the Labor Department to revise overtime pay rules to cover many more salaried workers, such as shift supervisors at fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.

The most commonly used exemption to avoid overtime pay involves designating people as "executive, administrative and professional" employees. Under existing rules, these exempt employees can be denied overtime if they are paid more than $455 a week.

It's All Politics

Obama's Overtime Move Designed To Excite Base, Swing Voters

This series on first novels continues with a look at the book auction: what triggers one, how one is organized, and what running one is like. Previous posts covered how agents fall in love with books and how editors acquire them.

Book auctions are not all that uncommon. As Karen Dionne writes in dailyfinance.com: "For a book to go to auction, all that's required is for two or more publishers to want to purchase it."

There are three basic models for book auctions. Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management – who sold Tara Conklin's first novel, The House Girl – explains them:

The most basic and most frequent is a round robin auction, where publishers submit offers and keep besting each other until there is only the highest bidder left. There is also a best bids auction, where publishers know how many other people are bidding, but they only have one chance to make an offer and the highest wins the auction. Then there's the two-round best bid auction, which is like the best bid but the top two or three publishers get another chance to improve their offer.

I started my journey at the famed Gdansk shipyard, home of Poland's solidarity movement in the 1980s. It was nearly midnight when I arrived and saw for the first time the Maersk McKinney Moller, the world's largest container ship.

I simply wasn't prepared for just how massive it is. The whole ship really can't be taken in even standing at a distance, so I gave my neck a good stretch by scanning this behemoth end to end, and up and down.

That sense of scale was reinforced when I walked up the ship's steep gangway with Mikkel Linnet, a communications officer with Maersk. The ship's third officer, Siddhesh Naik, joked that most visitors ask where the elevator is because you need to climb two floors just to get to the main deck.

Everything about this ship is big.

Each link, or lug, in its anchor chain weighs about 500 pounds. It can carry more than 2 million bicycles or more than 100 million pairs of shoes.

It sits more than 20 stories high and is four football fields long. It can hold more than 18,000 of the standard 20-foot containers — about double what many other megaships can carry. If you put each container end-to-end, the line would stretch for about 70 miles.

And that's why we were already delayed by 12 hours. It was taking longer than expected for Polish longshoremen to finish loading and lashing down the thousands of containers carrying anything from electronic goods to furniture. Throughout the night I could hear the gigantic cranes hoist up containers — many weighing up to 25 tons — and stack them on this massive vessel.

The size of the Maersk McKinney Moller can also present challenges getting in and out of port. As we left Gdansk, the Danish captain, Jes Meinertz, sipped coffee and watched a Polish pilot deftly maneuver the ship around three nearby piers and into the open waters of the Baltic Sea.

i i

A year ago today, the world's 1.2 billion Catholics got their first Jesuit pope and the first from the global south. Taking the name Francis, he soon became one of the world's most popular newsmakers.

Following two doctrinally conservative leaders, the Argentine-born pope's pastoral approach has given the Catholic Church a new glow — less judgmental, more merciful.

Like many others in the big Sunday crowd in St Peter's square, Sally Wilson is not Catholic, but she came all the way from Beaumont, Texas to see the pope.

"I think his serving humanity and his love of people have an effect that makes him feel like he's a pope for all, not just for Catholics," Wilson says.

As soon as he was elected, Pope Francis asked the crowd to pray for him, revealing a humble streak that has won him global popularity. And he opted to live in a simple residence with other prelates, rather than isolate himself in the palatial papal apartment.

“ He seems to be talking to a more pastoral church rather than a political church.

This week, All Things Considered is exploring a counterfactual history of World War I, and we invite you to participate. Use the form below to imagine how one aspect of the past 100 years would be different if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been killed in 1914. We will share some of the responses in a future segment.

This summer marks 100 years since the start of World War I. Many argue that the conflict was inevitable — but what if it wasn't?

Earlier we imagined a world in which Austria-Hungary evolved in a Central European Union, the German and Russian empires became modern nation states and German remained Europe's language of scholarship.

Now we're taking a look at how it would have affected life across the Atlantic, in the U.S.

All Things Considered host Robert Siegel put the hypothetical question to historians and other experts: Ned Lebow, author of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!, Margaret MacMillan, author of The War That Ended Peace, Kim Kowalke, a musicologist at the Eastman School of Music, Phil Atteberry of the Univeristy of Pittsburgh, and Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War.

History

QUIZ: What Came Out Of World War I?

James, founder of wine companies Lot18 and Snooth, teamed up with Kevin Boyer, who founded Napa Valley winery Boyanci. The two are chairman and president, respectively, of Customvine, a winemaking and marketing company. Customvine has been a supporter of Wine to Water for a while. Last year, James rode his motorcycle 17,000 miles to raise money for the charity.

"If by lending our reputations, we could bring a broader reach [to Wine to Water] and save one life, we'd do it 10 times over again," Boyer tells The Salt.

Wine to Water claims to have provided 250,000 people in 17 countries with clean water since 2004. However, because its revenues amount to less than $1 million, it doesn't warrant an official review or rating from watchdog sites like Charity Navigator.

Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, tells us that these are some ways an individual can check out the credibility of a smaller charity:

Examine their financial accountability and transparency. Look for an organization's 990 tax form, which they're required to file, for information about financial performance and how much of the budget is spent on programs versus overhead. Miniutti says that on average, an acceptable breakdown is 75 percent programmatic spending, 25 percent overhead. (Here's the 990 form for Water to Wine, if you want to check it out yourself.)

Make sure the charity has at least five independent voting members on its board of directors. This information is also available in the 990 form. "You want to make sure there's independent oversight, not just a CEO reporting to a brother, sister and pal," she says.

Make sure the charity has information readily available on its website about programs and results.

If it's a local charity, pay them a visit. You can also give them a call on the phone to get a handle on whether they're measuring and reporting results.

So the moral of this story? Always ask questions, folks. (You know, like doubting Thomas.)

President Obama's planned move to expand the pool of the nation's employees covered by overtime pay laws was hailed Wednesday by Democrats as key to their mid-term election strategy.

And it was just as predictably criticized by conservatives as an overreach by a president who recently characterized income inequality as the "defining challenge of our time."

The president plans to exercise his executive authority on Thursday, leapfrogging Congress to direct the Labor Department to come up with guidelines that would set a new, higher income threshold at which employers are required to pay overtime.

Under current law, only workers earning $455 per week or less are eligible for overtime pay, though two states – California and New York – have independently raised their overtime minimums.

"Working and middle class people are not just feeling pressed, but really squeezed," says Mike Lux, a co-founder of Progressive Strategies. "In that environment, populism tends to rise."

"In terms of the fall campaign, we are building a whole message around helping middle class folks raise their wages, raise their incomes, and make their lives a little better," Lux says. "This executive order, as well as the president's executive order on minimum wages paid by federal contractors, makes a huge difference politically."

Marc Freedman, who heads the labor law policy shop for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, predicted dire consequences blooming from the wage and overtime changes — and linked the problems to the president's health care legislation.

"Changing the rules for overtime eligibility will, just like increasing the minimum wage, make employees more expensive and will force employers to look for ways to cover these increased costs," he said in a statement.

"Similar to minimum wage, these changes in overtime rules will fall most harshly on small and medium-sized businesses already trying to figure out the impact of Obamacare on them," he said.

Obama in early February bypassed Congress and signed an executive order increasing to $10.10 per hour minimum wages government contractors are required to pay as of 2015.

He's also called for an increase in the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over three years, and for indexing future increases to inflation. His executive moves are seen as part of his State of the Union promise of a "year of action" that would include vigorous use of his presidential authority.

"Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do," he said in that January speech.

A White House official speaking on background Wednesday said that the president is making his move on overtime pay at a time when "one of the linchpins of the middle class, the overtime rules that establish the 40-hour work week, have been eroded."

The administration estimates that millions of salaried workers in lower-paying jobs, ranging from office assistants to fast food workers, can be expected to work up to 50 or 60 hours a week without seeing any overtime pay.

A $250 per week threshold for overtime pay eligibility was originally established in 1975 by the Labor Department, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, for "white collar" employees; it was increased by the Bush administration in 2004 to its current $455 level. The White House argues that, adjusted for inflation, that threshold for workers today, overwhelmingly not white collar workers, would be $553.

"This should be the central focus of the fall campaign for Democrats," Lux says, characterizing the president's action on income as appealing to swing voters and the party base.

"These issues play directly to the pocketbooks of white working class voters," he said, "and really helps us excite the base, turn out the base."

At the progressive National Partnership for Women and Families, president Debra Ness hailed Obama's move as a big step for "women and working families."

"Coercive overtime is a huge problem in this country," Ness said in a statement. "When this happens, workers, families, communities and, ultimately, our economy suffer."

A new Bloomberg National Poll suggests that while Americans have decidedly mixed feelings about the president, 69 percent of those polled last week support proposals that would raise the minimum wage.

But there's a caveat, says pollster Ann Selzer, who conducted the survey: the minimum wage is not a wedge issue for voters surveyed, at least "not at this point in the game."

"It's still a theoretical thing," says the Des Moines-based Selzer. "The middle class may start feeling that the Democrats are paying attention to them and doing something if it shows up in their pay check."

With national minimum wage changes requiring an act of Congress, the administration, as Selzer says, is looking for "arrows in the quiver to bolster the middle class."

The administration looks to be using the executive move on overtime as an arrow designed to potentially create a pay check effect that will actually move voters when they head to the polls in November.

Israeli lawmakers have voted to end the practice of exemptions from national service for ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredi, a move that opens them up to military conscription for the first time in the country's 65-year history.

The Knesset passed the measure 67-1 with the opposition boycotting it in the 120-member legislature.

Haredi Judaism is a branch of the religion that shuns modern secular culture, which includes Hasidics. Adherents are distinguished partly by their conservative and uniform attire.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

"The law has been heavily criticized by leading experts on haredi society. Last week, a group of 30 leading experts and analysts of the haredi community said that the law, which will provides for the imprisonment of any yeshiva student refusing to serve, would lead to a halt in the integration of the haredi community into national service.

"They warned that the possibility exists that the arrest of yeshiva students could lead to civil rebellion against enlistment, violent protests and a decree from the leading haredi rabbis banning enlistment."

Wes Anderson's new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, begins with an author looking back on his work, explaining how he came to write a book about a hotel. The film has a story within a story within a story — but most of it is set in the late 1930s in the fictional central European country of Zobrowka on the eve of war.

Ralph Fiennes stars as the concierge of the elegant resort. He makes sure everything is just so, but as the movie progresses and the plot thickens, his confectionary world is violated by fascism, by police who think he committed a murder and by a greedy family looking to cut him out of a will. Along the way, Anderson pays tribute to war films, prison break movies and screwball comedies.

More On The Film:

Movie Reviews

'Grand Budapest Hotel': Kitsch, Cameos And A Gloriously Stylized Europe

2014 is the first year most Americans will have to either have health insurance or face a tax penalty.

But most people who are aware of the penalty think it's pretty small, at least for this first year. And that could turn into an expensive mistake.

"I'd say the vast majority of people I've dealt with really believe that the penalty is only $95, if they know about it at all," says Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service. "And when people find out, they're stunned. It's much, much higher than they would expect."

In fact, "the penalty is the maximum of either $95 or 1 percent of taxable income in 2014," according to Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center. "For people with higher incomes, it can be much more sizable than $95."

Shots - Health News

Young People Lag Behind In Health Insurance Enrollment

The Obama administration's push to put income inequality atop the domestic political agenda has another battlefront.

According to The New York Times, the president "this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated."

The Wall Street Journal says that Obama "is expected to order a rule change this week that would require employers to pay overtime to a larger number of salaried workers, two people familiar with the matter said."

The announcement is expected to be made on Thursday. Obama would direct the Labor Department to make the rules changes.

"The directive is meant to help salaried workers, such as fast-food shift supervisors or convenience store managers, who may be expected to work more than 40 hours a week without receiving overtime pay," The Associated Press writes. "For example, the Labor Department could raise the pay threshold for workers covered by overtime rules. Currently, salaried workers who make more than $455 per week are exempt from overtime."

As the Times adds:

"Obama's decision to use his executive authority to change the nation's overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president's economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25. ...

"Obama's authority to act comes from his ability as president to revise the rules that carry out the Fair Labor Standards Act, which Congress originally passed in 1938. [President George W.] Bush and previous presidents used similar tactics at times to work around opponents in Congress."

On a cold, blustery day at Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, one of several massive cranes whirs along a rail high above the pier, picks up a heavy container from a ship's deck and loads it on a waiting truck back on land. The truck drives away, another arrives and the whole process starts again.

It's a scene played out every day along America's coasts as massive container ships from across the globe pull into deep-water seaports, waiting to be unloaded. The ships are enormous — some 10 stories high and several football fields long.

Mark Hanafee, director for safety at the terminal, says no one on the pier knows for sure what's inside them.

"We know the contents of anything that's hazardous, but general cargo we don't know. It could be chicken, clothes, auto parts, anything, computers, televisions," Hanafee says. "We're an import society. We import everything."

Chris Koch, president of the World Shipping Council, says demand for cheaper goods over the past couple of decades has driven the shipping industry. He points to Walmart, which he says brings in more than 360,000 of the 40-foot cargo containers each year.

"If you add all that up, that's probably a line of trucks that is somewhere close to 4,000 miles long. That's a lot of cargo," he says.

“ We're an import society. We import everything.

On a cold, blustery day at Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, one of several massive cranes whirs along a rail high above the pier, picks up a heavy container from a ship's deck and loads it on a waiting truck back on land. The truck drives away, another arrives and the whole process starts again.

It's a scene played out every day along America's coasts as massive container ships from across the globe pull into deep-water seaports, waiting to be unloaded. The ships are enormous — some 10 stories high and several football fields long.

Mark Hanafee, director for safety at the terminal, says no one on the pier knows for sure what's inside them.

"We know the contents of anything that's hazardous, but general cargo we don't know. It could be chicken, clothes, auto parts, anything, computers, televisions," Hanafee says. "We're an import society. We import everything."

Chris Koch, president of the World Shipping Council, says demand for cheaper goods over the past couple of decades has driven the shipping industry. He points to Walmart, which he says brings in more than 360,000 of the 40-foot cargo containers each year.

"If you add all that up, that's probably a line of trucks that is somewhere close to 4,000 miles long. That's a lot of cargo," he says.

“ We're an import society. We import everything.

Surely, "hustle" is the single most beloved word associated with sport. As color is to rainbows, as chocolate to the palate, as sweet nothings to love, hustle is to sport.

Hear it now:

Hustle up!
Hustle down the line!
Show us more hustle!

And oh, my, how often are you gonna hear this in the weeks ahead during March Madness: They gotta hustle back on defense. That, apparently, is the only way human beings can properly get back on defense.

You can never hustle too much — except perhaps for Pete Rose, who hustled with such ostentation in his salad days that he was derisively tagged "Charlie Hustle." But that soon became a badge of honor.

Just don't mess with hustle. Recently, Alabama coach Nick Saban, who has a very disciplined bunch of fat Southern boys who often win national titles, playing deliberately, tried to get a rule into college football that teams on offense shouldn't be allowed to hustle up the next play in less than 10 seconds. But the NCAA wouldn't even consider it. You can bet a chastened Nick Saban won't ever again be anti-hustle.

Click on the audio link above to hear more of Deford's take on the hustle.

General Motors is coming under mounting criticism for its handling of a serious defect. Last month, the company recalled 1.6 million vehicles because of faulty ignition switches linked to 13 deaths. The cars, made from 2003-2007, could stall or fail to deploy their airbags.

The Two-Way

GM Says New CEO Will Earn 60 Percent More Than Male Predecessor

This week, All Things Considered will be exploring a counterfactual history of World War I and we invite you to participate. Use the form below to imagine how one aspect of the past 100 years would be different if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been killed in 1914. We will share some of the responses in a future segment.

This summer marks 100 years since the start of World War I. Many argue that the conflict was inevitable — but what if it wasn't?

Some highlights from their counterfactual history:

A multi-national successor to Austria-Hungary would have developed in Central Europe. (Maybe not the happiest country in Europe, but not a fratricidal one, either.)

Czarist Russia doesn't become completely undone, so the Bolshevik party's October Revolution fails. Vladimir Lenin moves to the United States where he becomes a professor of Russian history at Columbia University. Having maintained his left-wing connections, he comes in contact with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and helps write the pro-union musical, Pins and Needles.

The Germany of the 1920s is not bled by the victorious and vindictive allies so the Nazis never come power. Europe would have been a more German-speaking continent.

Adolf Hitler — an aspiring artist and vegetarian — never goes to war and never enters politics. Instead, he becomes the manager of a company that produces alternative medicine.

Jews continue to thrive, and there is no Holocaust. The small Jewish settlement in Palestine continues, but without a flood of refuges it remains a minority community there.

Without World War I, there is no World War II and no Cold War. Science develops much slower — the U.S. doesn't put a man on the moon, there is no atomic bomb, and penicillin and antibiotics are slower to hit the market.

Writer Andrew Solomon delves deep into topics most wouldn't touch. His book Far From The Tree is a thoughtful look into parents raising children who are different from themselves: children with Down's syndrome, autism, or a complete loss of hearing and others. His TED Talk based on the book has been seen almost two million times.

Solomon was featured on the TED Radio Hour episode Identities and answered listener's questions about his work.

What part of you, if any, was the driving force behind writing Far From the Tree? Was it being a writer, being a psychologist, being an LGBT advocate, personal experiences?

All of those characteristics informed my writing of the book. I'd say the leading factor, however, was the revelation of how much I, as a gay person, had in common with others who are outside the mainstream in various way. People have asked me why I didn't include a chapter on gay people, and I have explained repeatedly that the whole book is informed by my experience as a gay person, and that everything in it is relevant to gay identity. I have always been drawn to outsiders, and that interest, predicated on my own sense of outsiderness, has determined much of my research. Though I didn't know it, even the work for my first book, which was on Soviet artists, was informed by my interest in how people find dignity in the face of adversity—how they forge meaning and build identity. And Far from the Tree is the epitome of that concern. And that concern originated for me in being gay.

How did you learn to be such an eloquent speaker, especially regarding difficult topics? Any tips?

I don't know that I have tips per se. For my TED talks, I came up with the ideas and spent a long time organizing them, then practiced talking about them with a broad range of people. I wasn't reading from a script, and I hadn't memorized what I said, but I did have the carefully considered structures of my talks in mind before I went out there. I think the best thing to do before a talk is to organize and practice. As for difficult topics: I have always been drawn to difficulty, and most of all to how people manage to find strength in difficulty. I sometimes find it easier to talk about difficult topics than about easy ones; I have a sense of merit in the difficulty that inspires me onwards.

More TED Radio Hour

TED Radio Hour

Can Your Child's Identity Shape Yours?

Elections for governor could provide some good news for Democrats this fall, giving them the chance to regain ground in a few states where the party has had good fortune recently.

At this early stage, Republicans are expected to hold control of the House and pick up seats in the Senate — maybe even win a majority in the Senate.

But the GOP has fewer opportunities when it comes to statehouses. Republicans dominated state elections back in 2010, leaving them few openings this year. (Governors serve four-year terms everywhere but Vermont and New Hampshire.)

Republicans gained six governorships in 2010. They have a 29 to 21 edge over Democrats overall.

There are 36 governorships up for grabs this year. Over the coming weeks, NPR will be looking at the most competitive and compelling races among them.

"You had a lot of Republicans win governorships in 2010 and some of them are going to be vulnerable, particularly in those blueish-leaning states," says Justin Phillips, co-author of The Power of American Governors.

But Phillips says there might not be as many vulnerable Republicans as some observers had expected a couple of years ago.

There are governors who pushed controversial programs early in their terms, but have since moderated their message. They may also benefit from President Obama's current unpopularity, Phillips says.

"Democrats will probably hold maybe one or two more governorships next year than they do now, but I wouldn't expect there to be a huge turnover, or for the Democrats to hold more governorships than Republicans next year," says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the University of Virginia's political website Crystal Ball.

A Lot Like 1986

Kondik compares this year to 1986. Then as now, many senators of the president's party were vulnerable. In fact, Democrats took control of the Senate that year, ousting a number of Republicans who had been elected along with President Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But Republicans gained governorships that year. And something similar might happen this fall.

Several Democratic senators elected from red states such as Alaska and Arkansas during Obama's big win in 2008 are looking vulnerable. But there are Republicans serving as governor in no fewer than 10 states that Obama carried in both his presidential elections.

Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe prevailed in one such state last year, breaking the commonwealth's longstanding practice of electing governors from the party that doesn't control the White House.

Several Republicans swept in with the GOP tide in 2010 might be washed away this year; the list of most vulnerable governors includes Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Paul LePage of Maine and Rick Scott of Florida.

Rick Snyder of Michigan is also a Democratic target, but he appears to be in better shape. In fact, not all the blue and purple state Republicans are looking particularly vulnerable.

Some who pushed controversial programs early in their terms, such as John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have had time to recover their footing and now look like favorites.

Able To Appear Moderate

Today's governors may be more partisan than their predecessors, but they still have the chance to craft a moderate image, focusing on big-picture issues such as the budget and jobs while leaving contentious social issues to legislators.

"We've seen just as many cases of governors making moderate turns," says Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. "Part of why [Democratic Gov.] Jerry Brown is not facing a major challenge is that he's really governed from the center in California."

Next door in Nevada, Republican Brian Sandoval's focus on education and health — including his embrace of the Affordable Care Act — has kept his approval ratings high in a state that twice voted for Obama. In fact, Democrats have yet to field an opponent against him.

Incumbent governors in general are tough to beat. Even as they made their gains in 2010, Republicans defeated only two incumbent Democrats (Chet Culver of Iowa and Ted Strickland of Ohio).

Not every governor has announced his or her plans yet, but more than 25 of them will be running for re-election this year.

Personally Unpopular

A few sitting governors could run into difficulty, either because the economy remains weak in their states or because their own policies have proven to be unpopular.

Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, for instance, has managed to alienate even many members of his own party with his strongly conservative agenda. Several blue state Democratic incumbents could also be at risk, including Pat Quinn of Illinois, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Dannel Malloy of Connecticut.

"Of the six states where there's likeliest to be turnover, three are Republicans and three are Democrats," Kondik says.

Republicans have their eye on Arkansas, where popular incumbent Democrat Mike Beebe is prevented from running again by term limits. The state has been trending Republican — not only strongly opposing Obama, but giving control of the legislature to the GOP two years ago for the first time since the 19th century.

Arkansas is a place where an anti-Obama tide isn't the only Democratic worry — the attention and resources being devoted to a Senate race also could have a spillover effect on the governor's race.

But in most places, the governorship is a prominent enough position that candidates should be able to stand, or fall, on their own.

That's led some political observers to think this year's elections will end up reflecting the 50-50 divide in the country.

The conventional wisdom at this point is that Republicans will gain seats in Congress — as the party not controlling the White House nearly always does in mid-term elections.

But Democrats can cut against this grain by taking back a few governorships — which would be especially satisfying in big states like Pennsylvania and Florida.

The United States has threatened economic sanctions against Moscow, but America is light on financial leverage in Russia: The country represents less than 1 percent of U.S. trade, and few major U.S. companies have significant investments there.

But one company with a long history in Russia is Pepsi.

Pepsi In Russia

1972: A deal is stuck: PepsiCo will manufacture Pepsi in Russia, in exchange for marketing and importing vodka, and other Soviet liquors, to the U.S.

1974: Pepsi becomes the first American consumer product to be produced, marketed and sold in the former Soviet Union.

1990: PepsiCo signs the largest commercial trade agreement in history with the Soviet Union.

Source: PepsiCo

World War I shook up the world in a dramatic way — and from that chaos emerged inventions, words and other things we still use today.

What If World War l Had Never Happened?

When it comes to getting ahead in the world, a lack of savings can be a big hurdle, especially for low-income families. Most don't have enough money set aside for emergencies, let alone for college or a house. Some people think the answer is to make savings more fun, like the lottery, with the chance to win big prizes.

It's called prize-linked savings, something that's been available in Great Britain for decades. Now, it's starting to catch on in the United States.

One of the newest programs is called SaveYourRefund, launched recently by a nonprofit group called Doorways to Dreams. It's one of many organizations trying to find ways to encourage low- and moderate-income people to save more, especially at tax time. For some people, their federal tax refund is the biggest check they'll see all year.

So the group is offering one $25,000 grand prize and 10 weekly $100 prizes for those who agree to put some of their tax refund into savings, using Form 8888 on their tax return. The program is being promoted especially at free tax preparation sites that cater to low-income working families.

Joanna Smith-Ramani, of Doorways to Dreams, says for these families, even a little savings can make a big difference.

"At a basic level, people need savings to get them through even the smallest of financial shocks or their life just goes into total chaos and catastrophe," Smith-Ramani says.

Just one unexpected bill, she says, can set things off.

In Britain, 'Savings With A Thrill'

Ukraine appears rather helpless in the face of the Russian intervention in Crimea. But what if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons? The confrontation might look rather different, and perhaps much scarier.

When Ukraine gained independence in the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, it inherited a nuclear arsenal that included some 1,800 warheads, making it the third largest in the world, trailing only Russia and the U.S.

Ukraine could have clung to those weapons at a time when it and many other former Soviet states faced varying degrees of turmoil. But in 1994, Ukraine agreed to relinquish them and eventually sent the warheads by train to Russia. In return, Ukraine got assurances its sovereignty would be respected.

At the time, the Budapest Memorandums on Security Assurances seemed like a win for everyone.

The agreement symbolized the new possibilities of cooperation in a post-Cold War world. A major nuclear arsenal was being destroyed. The newly independent Ukraine received promises that the signatories would "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine."

Related NPR Stories

Parallels

Russia's Goal In Ukraine: Three Scenarios

Elections for governor could provide some good news for Democrats this fall, giving them the chance to regain ground in a few states where the party has had good fortune recently.

It's not hard to imagine that even as Democrats suffer losses at the congressional level, they could gain some ground in the states.

At this early stage, Republicans are expected to hold control of the House and pick up seats in the Senate — maybe even win a majority in the Senate.

But the GOP has fewer opportunities when it comes to statehouses. Republicans dominated state elections back in 2010, leaving them few openings this year. (Governors serve four-year terms everywhere but Vermont and New Hampshire.)

Republicans gained six governorships in 2010. They have a 29 to 21 edge over Democrats overall.

There are 36 governorships up for grabs this year. Over the coming weeks, NPR will be looking at the most competitive and compelling races among them.

"You had a lot of Republicans win governorships in 2010 and some of them are going to be vulnerable, particularly in those blueish-leaning states," says Justin Phillips, co-author of The Power of American Governors.

But Phillips says there might not be as many vulnerable Republicans as some observers had expected a couple of years ago.

There are governors who pushed controversial programs early in their terms, but have since moderated their message. They may also benefit from President Obama's current unpopularity, Phillips says.

"Democrats will probably hold maybe one or two more governorships next year than they do now, but I wouldn't expect there to be a huge turnover, or for the Democrats to hold more governorships than Republicans next year," says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the University of Virginia's political website Crystal Ball.

A Lot Like 1986

Kondik compares this year to 1986. Then as now, many senators of the president's party were vulnerable. In fact, Democrats took control of the Senate that year, ousting a number of Republicans who had been elected along with President Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But Republicans gained governorships that year. And something similar might happen this fall.

Several Democratic senators elected from red states such as Alaska and Arkansas during Obama's big win in 2008 are looking vulnerable. But there are Republicans serving as governor in no fewer than 10 states that Obama carried in both his presidential elections.

Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe prevailed in one such state last year, breaking the commonwealth's longstanding practice of electing governors from the party that doesn't control the White House.

Several Republicans swept in with the GOP tide in 2010 might be washed away this year; the list of most vulnerable governors includes Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Paul LePage of Maine and Rick Scott of Florida.

Rick Snyder of Michigan is also a Democratic target, but he appears to be in better shape. In fact, not all the blue and purple state Republicans are looking particularly vulnerable.

Some who pushed controversial programs early in their terms, such as John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have had time to recover their footing and now look like favorites.

Able To Appear Moderate

Today's governors may be more partisan than their predecessors, but they still have the chance to craft a moderate image, focusing on big-picture issues such as the budget and jobs while leaving contentious social issues to legislators.

"We've seen just as many cases of governors making moderate turns," says Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. "Part of why [Democratic Gov.] Jerry Brown is not facing a major challenge is that he's really governed from the center in California."

Next door in Nevada, Republican Brian Sandoval's focus on education and health — including his embrace of the Affordable Care Act — has kept his approval ratings high in a state that twice voted for Obama. In fact, Democrats have yet to field an opponent against him.

Incumbent governors in general are tough to beat. Even as they made their gains in 2010, Republicans defeated only two incumbent Democrats (Chet Culver of Iowa and Ted Strickland of Ohio).

Not every governor has announced his or her plans yet, but more than 25 of them will be running for re-election this year.

Personally Unpopular

A few sitting governors could run into difficulty, either because the economy remains weak in their states or because their own policies have proven to be unpopular.

Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, for instance, has managed to alienate even many members of his own party with his strongly conservative agenda. Several blue state Democratic incumbents could also be at risk, including Pat Quinn of Illinois, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Dannel Malloy of Connecticut.

"Of the six states where there's likeliest to be turnover, three are Republicans and three are Democrats," Kondik says.

Republicans have their eye on Arkansas, where popular incumbent Democrat Mike Beebe is prevented from running again by term limits. The state has been trending Republican — not only strongly opposing Obama, but giving control of the legislature to the GOP two years ago for the first time since the 19th century.

Arkansas is a place where an anti-Obama tide isn't the only Democratic worry — the attention and resources being devoted to a Senate race also could have a spillover effect on the governor's race.

But in most places, the governorship is a prominent enough position that candidates should be able to stand, or fall, on their own.

That's led some political observers to think this year's elections will end up reflecting the 50-50 divide in the country.

The conventional wisdom at this point is that Republicans will gain seats in Congress — as the party not controlling the White House nearly always does in mid-term elections.

But Democrats can cut against this grain by taking back a few governorships — which would be especially satisfying in big states like Pennsylvania and Florida.

If there's anything most of us are tired of this winter, it's bone-chilling cold.
It's enough to drive you to drink.

Literally. Because frigid weather is just what some enterprising artisans need to make a dessert wine that has been showing up on trendy tables and menus. Ice cider was invented in Quebec in the 1990s. This time of year, it's fermenting on the other side of the border as well, as a few snowy states try to tap into the locavore market and turn perishables into profits.

The first American maker to have a federally approved label is Eden Ice Cider, which got its start about eight years ago in a rural corner of Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom. That's when Eleanor Leger, a Vermonter, and her husband, Albert, a Canadian, were sipping apple liqueur in Montreal, and wondering, "Why doesn't anybody make this stuff on our side of the border?" Vermont usually has more than enough ice and apples of its own, plus long cold spells needed to concentrate flavor.

Eleanor says this has been the best winter ever. At the end of each fall, she and her husband press cider from their 1,000 apple trees (and from a few other orchards) and stick the plastic vats in cold storage. After the first frost, they drag them outdoors. This crazy year, the stuff has frozen, almost thawed, and frozen several times. That makes for a rich, concentrated apple elixir — and lots of it. Yield is important, because about 75 percent of the original cider is left behind in an icy block after the concentrate drizzles out, ready for fermentation.

Now the amber liquid is bubbling away in steel vats along the walls of a big cellar. Albert — sometimes with his Canadian enologist — tastes it just about every day to decide when to stop the fermentation. Ice cider makers aim for a subtle balance of apple, sugar, and acidity. Each variety of late-season apple creates a different flavor. Honey Crisp apples, for example, have a hint of honey, though no bees were involved.

A lot of people who don't love sweet dessert wines like ice cider. Apples are naturally more tart than grapes, so they leave a crisper, fresher aftertaste. And apples may be New England's true terroir. Though Calvinists might have frowned on turning a Northern Spy into a thimbleful of booze, hard apple cider was a popular alcoholic drink in Colonial America. Now that it's making a comeback with brands like Woodchuck, ice cider wine seems to be riding on its coattails.

Eden, Vermont's largest producer, is filling about 40,000 bottles a year, and it's available in at least 20 states. Vermont has sprouted at least five other ice cider makers, with more likely to venture into the orchard as the trend takes off.

So what else can you do with this alcoholic ambrosia, besides sip it? At 30 bucks a bottle, most thrifty New Englanders serve it in slender stemmed goblets on special occasions.

Martha Stewart gave it a thumbs up for Thanksgiving fare. You can also shake it up in cocktails. Eden has just come out with an aperitif cider infused with red currants and bitters, and they are now fermenting something like an apple champagne.

"We want Vermont to be known for ice cider," Eleanor Leger says. "This is apple country."

But Maine, New York, Michigan, and Washington are starting to ride the ice cider wave, too. The question is not whether they have enough apples. The real test will be whether they have enough ice.

There, at least this year, far northern Vermont may have them beat.

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Russia continues to wrest control of Crimea from Ukraine and now has an estimated 20,000 troops there, Bloomberg News reports.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again deflected the concerns of Western leaders. Reuters reports that, according to the Kremlin, Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday that Russia's actions in Crimea are "based on international law and aimed at guaranteeing the legitimate interests of the peninsula's population."

This latest news comes after Sunday's reports about pro-Russian groups using whips to attack pro-Ukrainian demonstrators in Sevastopol, the key port city on the Crimean Peninsula.

As of Monday afternoon in Crimea, there had been no confrontations between Russian and Ukrainian troops. The critical question now, as NPR's Emily Harris reports from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, is whether serious violence will flare up — either between civilians or the Ukrainian and Russian forces — before diplomacy can bring about some sort of resolution to the crisis in Crimea.

As we've previously written:

While it is part of Ukraine, Crimea is a largely autonomous region with its own parliament. The majority of its people are Russian-speaking. Russia maintains a large naval base on the Black Sea peninsula.

Since last month's ouster of Russia-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, after several months of protests over alleged corruption and his decision to reject closer economic ties to the European Union, Crimea has been at the center of an international crisis.

It's taken several years, but in many parts of the country, home prices are nearly back to where they were at the peak. In places like Florida, where the housing recession hit hard, home prices rose last year by one-fifth or more.

A major factor in the price rise is hedge funds, private equity firms and other large investors. They've moved aggressively into the residential market over the last two years, buying tens of thousands of distressed properties, often at bargain prices.

Some analysts are worried those bulk purchases will leave middle-class buyers out in the cold.

One place investors have been very active is Florida's Palm Beach County. Jeff Lichtenstein is a real estate agent there and he's busy. He's listing and selling homes at a pace reminiscent of the go-go days of the last real estate boom back in 2005 and 2006. "I have 19 or 20 under contract right now, which is the most I've had at any given time," he says.

Lichtenstein is currently showing a home he has listed in PGA National, a resort and residential development with more than 5,000 homes. It's a community of palm trees, lakes, golf courses and manicured lawns.

"This was built in '92 or '93. Three bedrooms, three baths," he explains as he shows off the house, which has a back patio looking out onto a golf course. "The view is what people come here to Florida for."

The home is listed for $499,000, a bit below what it would have sold for at the peak, Lichtenstein says. But in Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas and parts of California, prices are rising fast. In South Florida, home prices climbed 21 percent last year.

Big-Money Investors, Buying To Rent

Homes, especially foreclosures and short sales, are being snapped up as soon as they go on the market, mostly by large investment groups. Companies like the Blackstone Group, Colony Capital and Starwood Property Trust have spent billions over the past two years buying homes across the country and putting them on the rental market.

Business

Marching Into Spring, Realtors' Hopes Rise

What do an eccentric British detective, a cut-throat Washington pol and a bunch of nerds at Caltech have in common?

They are characters in some of the most popular foreign TV shows in China.

Over the past five years, The Big Bang Theory alone has been streamed more than 1.3 billion times. To appreciate how much some young Chinese love the BBC series, Sherlock, step inside 221B Baker Street. That's Holmes' fictitious address in London as well as the name of a caf that opened last year in Shanghai's former French Concession.

Good luck, though, finding a table.

"Business has been very good since the premier of the third season," says Eric Zhang, the caf's twenty-seven-year-old owner. "People have to line up or make reservations in advance on Saturday and Sunday, otherwise they can't get a seat."

Like many young people here, Zhang grew up reading the detective classics by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, translated into Chinese. Zhang says his father is a detective and used to share murder, smuggling and arson cases with him.

"Actually, I aspired to be a policeman," says Zhang, "but I didn't pass the physical and opened a caf instead."

The caf – all wood and leather — is drenched in Sherlock paraphernalia. On the wall next to the bar are hand-written, Sherlock plot-lines. By the window sits a tableful of what is supposed to be Dr. Watson's medical equipment, including a microscope and old glass syringes retrieved from the basement of a Chinese hospital. On the bookshelves sit seemingly endless photos of Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Holmes in the series. Zhang explains the shrine-like treatment of the British actor.

Code Switch

To Play The Part, Actors Must Talk The Talk — In Chinese

Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night but could not find a rectangle object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went missing more than two days ago.

Doan Huu Gia, the chief of Vietnam's search and rescue coordination center, said Monday that four planes and seven ships from Vietnam were searching for the object but nothing had been found.

The Boeing 777 went missing early Saturday morning on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam, and searchers in a low-flying plane spotted an object that appeared to be one of the plane's doors, the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said, citing the deputy chief of staff of Vietnam's army, Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan.

The jetliner apparently fell from the sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either unable or had no time to send a distress signal, adding to the mystery over the final minutes of the flight.

There are also questions over how two passengers managed to board the ill-fated aircraft using stolen passports.

Interpol confirmed it knew about the stolen passports but said no authorities checked its vast databases on stolen documents before the Boeing jetliner departed Saturday.

Warning "only a handful of countries" routinely make such checks, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble chided authorities for "waiting for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates."

On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

"I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board."

The thefts of the two passports — one belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were entered into Interpol's database after they were stolen in Thailand in 2012 and last year, the police body said.

Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. A person who answered the phone at the agency said she could not comment.

But no authorities in Malaysia or elsewhere checked the passports against the database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents before the Malaysian Airlines plane took off.

Possible causes of the crash included some sort of explosion, a catastrophic failure of the plane's engines, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.

Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that before it disappeared, the plane may have turned back, but there were no further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.

"We are trying to make sense of this," Daud said at a news conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar."

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. "From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled," he said.

A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States were deployed to the area where ground controllers lost contact with the plane on the maritime border between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, two-thirds were Chinese, while the rest were from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America, including three Americans.

Family members of Philip Wood, a 50-year-old IBM executive who was on board the plane, said they saw him a week ago when he visited them in Texas after relocating to Kuala Lumpur from Beijing, where he had worked for two years.

The other two Americans were identified on the passenger manifest as 4-year-old Nicole Meng and 2-year-old Yan Zhang. It was not known with whom they were traveling.

After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should "prepare themselves for the worst," Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline, told reporters.

Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over a large area. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.

A team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in the investigation into the crash. The team includes accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the safety board said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.

Details also emerged Sunday about the itineraries of the two passengers traveling on the stolen passports.

A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had been booked on one-way tickets on the same KLM flight, flying from Beijing to Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany.

She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, but she had no information on where they bought them.

As holders of EU passports with onward flights to Europe, the passengers would not have needed visas for China.

Interpol said it and national investigators were working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the flight. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.

Interpol has long sounded the alarm that growing international travel has underpinned a new market for identity theft: Bogus passports are mostly used by illegal immigrants, but also pretty much anyone looking to travel unnoticed such as drug runners or terrorists. More than 1 billion times last year, travelers boarded planes without their passports being checked against Interpol's database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents, the police agency said.

Italy has more UNESCO world heritage sites than any other country in the world, and its art and cultural riches have drawn visitors for centuries.

It also prides itself on being a culinary mecca, where preparing, cooking and serving meals is a fine, even sacred, art. And now that the country is in the deepest and most protracted recession since World War II, why not cash in on its reputation as a paradise for visiting gourmets and gourmands?

In late February, Oscar Farinetti, who founded the Eataly chain of food emporiums, announced a new plan to help rescue economy: "Fico Eataly World," a theme park devoted entirely to food and wine.

The project is a joint venture between Eataly and the municipality of Bologna, which is providing 86,000 square feet of land with warehouses to be transformed into food labs, grocery stores and, of course, restaurants. The price tag for the park is estimated at $55 million.

Eataly, which has over two dozen branches around the world, was founded in Turin in 2007 by Farinetti, who is CEO and owns a 60 percent share. The other 40 percent is owned by cooperatives of the COOP group of supermarkets.

The cooperatives have their roots in the Communist Party that was powerful in the Emilia-Romagna region that surrounds Bologna in the post-war period. The founder of the Slow Food Movement, Carlo Petrini, is also left-leaning, and another example of the ties between the left and the contemporary gastronomy movement.

The location for the Eataly theme park could not be more appropriate. Italy has many very different cuisines, but Bologna and Emilia-Romagna are widely, if grudgingly, recognized as the gastronomic capital of Italy.

The region is the home of Parmesan cheese, prosciutto di Parma, balsamic vinegar, tortellini and lasagna, among many other delicacies. Since the Middle Ages, the city was known as Bologna La Grassa, Bologna the fat – as in, affluent and epicurean.

Today, Bologna is also home to the world's only University of Gelato, as I reported in 2013.

The foreign media has referred to the planned food theme park as a "Disneyland of Food."

But when I mentioned the "Disneyland for foodies" to people shopping at two well-known Roman outdoor markets, everyone grimaced in disgust.

"Sounds like something for tourists," Simona Vitali, a middle-aged woman shopping for groceries in Piazza San Cosimato, told me. "We Italians have no need for such a theme park."

Farinetti told the online English language service ANSA he hopes the park will draw annually 10 million visitors who will "play with this magical thing, Italian food."

Eataly World is scheduled to open Nov. 1, 2015.

Pro-Russian groups used whips to attack pro-Ukrainian demonstrators in Sevastastopol, the port city of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, according to the BBC. The news agency says its reporter at the scene is "describing the scenes as very ugly."

The violence comes as Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk plans a visit to the United States, a trip that he announced during a cabinet meeting Sunday, reports NPR's Emily Harris. No details about that visit were made public, but it is believed to be scheduled for this week.

Here are other developments we're seeing today:

"The authorities in Ukraine's breakaway region of Crimea on Sunday ruled out negotiations with the central government, which they say is illegitimate," says Ria Novosti.

And referring to a referendum that will offer voters a choice of seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation is scheduled to take place next Sunday, the news agency says the process of joining Russia could take only "about a month," citing Crimean parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov.

Women in Ukraine are heeding the same call for action that has driven men to join the country's army. And while some are looking to work as nurses and in other support roles, others are raring for a fight, reports Radio Free Europe. The agency notes that women have played roles in the protests and civil unrest that led up to the current crisis.

"I've practiced sambo and judo professionally for 10 years," Tetiana Turchina tells RFE. "I know how to shoot and jump with a parachute. I'm familiar with extreme situations because I love extreme sports, rafting, and hiking. Sleeping in a tent surrounded by snow in minus-20-degrees-Celsius doesn't scare me."

Reuters says that pro-Russian forces have tightened their hold on Crimea:

"In the latest armed action, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea at around 6 a.m. (0400) GMT, trapping about 30 personnel inside, a border guard spokesman said.

"The spokesman, Oleh Slobodyan, said Russian forces now controlled 11 border guard posts across Crimea, a former Russian territory that is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet and has an ethnic Russian majority."