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Sweetness And Light
3:23 am
Wed June 19, 2013

Tick Tock: Make The Serve, Pitch, Putt Or Shot

Credit Tom Lynn / Getty Images
Two fans catch a nap during a game between the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals last month in Milwaukee.

In Milwaukee, cartoon characters dressed up like various sausages race at each Brewers' game; in Washington, five of our beloved presidents do their own bratwurst ramble. But the character I want to appear at every baseball game –– and at a couple of other sports, too, is ...

tick-tock,tick-tock

... the crocodile from Peter Pan who swallowed a clock and shadows a terrified Capt. Hook.

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Business
3:21 am
Wed June 19, 2013

U.S. Automakers Are On A Roll, But Hiring Is Slow And Steady

Credit Geoff Robins / AFP/Getty Images
A worker installs parts on a Chrysler SUV engine at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Plants in the U.S. are now operating above 90 percent capacity, but automakers are wary of adding large numbers of new workers.

There is one basic question that keeps being asked about the U.S. auto industry: Is it on the rebound?

"People ask a lot, is the auto industry back?" says Kristin Dziczek, a director at the Center for Automotive Research. "And it depends on what scale you want to look at."

So if we're looking at scales, let's start with productivity. In this case, how many work hours it takes to build a car. Productivity in U.S. plants is 39 percent higher than it was in 2000. "Productivity has never been this high," Dziczek says.

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Parallels
3:20 am
Wed June 19, 2013

Fashion's Victims: An Artist's Focus On Garment Workers

Politics
3:19 am
Wed June 19, 2013

How A Merger Could Affect Congress' Favorite Airport

If the US Airways-American Airlines merger announced earlier this year is approved, the combined airline would control two-thirds of the takeoff and landing slots at Reagan National Airport, outside Washington, D.C.

The government could force the airline to give up some of those slots as a condition of the merger. But lawmakers warn that could have consequences for some small- and medium-sized cities. And, not coincidentally, it could affect flight plans for lawmakers themselves.

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Parallels
3:18 am
Wed June 19, 2013

Parvum Opus: Followers Flock To Pope's Latin Twitter Feed

Against all Vatican expectations, the pope's Twitter account in Latin has gained more than 100,000 followers in six months and continues to grow.

Followers are not exclusively Roman Catholics or Latin scholars, but represent a wide variety of professions and religions from all over the world. Some go so far as to claim that the language of the ancient Romans is perfectly suited to 21st-century social media.

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Dollar For Dollar: Adventures In Investing
3:17 am
Wed June 19, 2013

The Art Of Investing: The Rewards Aren't Always Financial

Credit Vladimir Kryloff
Flower Study #14 by Vladimir Kryloff, the painting NPR's Uri Berliner bought as an investment for $450.

NPR's Uri Berliner is taking $5,000 of his own savings and putting it to work. Though he's no financial whiz or guru, he's exploring different types of investments — alternatives that may fare better than staying in a savings account that's not keeping up with inflation.

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Animals
3:16 am
Wed June 19, 2013

Animal CSI: Inside The Smithsonian's Feather Forensics Lab

Carla Dove smiles as she tears open a small, flat cardboard box. She is sitting at a lab bench in her office at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"It's kind of like Christmas for me because I never know what's going to be in the packages," she says.

Inside the box are a bunch of sealed sandwich-size bags. Dove counts the bags.

"Eight samples today," she notes. Each sample consists of grayish pieces of feathers, and sometimes bones, all from inside the stomachs and intestines of Burmese pythons.

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The Two-Way
7:13 pm
Tue June 18, 2013

Google Files First-Amendment Request With FISA Court

Google has filed a legal motion asserting its "First Amendment right to publish aggregate information about FISA orders," asking the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to remove the gag order that keeps the company from issuing that information. Google and other big U.S. tech companies have been under fire after it was reported that they allowed the National Security Agency to mine customer data, in a government program called PRISM.

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It's All Politics
6:50 pm
Tue June 18, 2013

Boehner Seeks To Reassure House GOP On Immigration

Credit Susan Walsh / AP
House Speaker John Boehner is getting flak from fellow Republicans over immigration legislation.

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 10:29 pm

Faced with the threat of mutiny for what seems like the umpteenth time during his speakership, John Boehner moved to mollify fellow Republicans on Tuesday, saying immigration legislation would need the support of a majority of the House GOP before it could be brought to a floor vote.

After emerging from a meeting with House Republicans, following days of warnings by conservatives that the Ohio Republican had better not try to pass an immigration bill with mostly Democratic votes, Boehner sought to calm the roiling Republican waters.

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The Two-Way
6:31 pm
Tue June 18, 2013

A Field Guide To Jimmy Hoffa Searches

Credit Carlos Osorio / AP
Law enforcement officials search an area in Oakland Township, Mich., on Tuesday for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. The former Teamsters president was last seen at a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975.

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 6:32 pm

The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place was opened yet again Monday, when the FBI began digging up a field near Detroit in the hopes of finding the former Teamsters president, who was last seen on July 30, 1975.

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