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President Barack Obama signed a $633 billion defense bill for next year despite serious concerns about the limits Congress imposed on his handling of terror suspects and lawmakers' unwillingness to back the cost-saving retirement of aging ships and aircraft.

For adults, "sagging" has long been a marker of slovenliness or something more sinister. But the style might just be the latest iteration of fashion freighted with some old anxieties.

In more flush economic times, voters in many states approved education mandates for things like smaller class sizes. But now that states are being forced to slash education budgets, those mandates are coming back to haunt them.

California's electric grid operators have promised to explain how a short but massive power outage occurred in the San Diego region last week. Energy watchers says that review should be done by outsiders.

Congress decided last week to ease the effects of the across-the-board federal spending cuts on travelers upset over airport delays. But low-income Americans who rely on government housing aid are still feeling the pain.

The work that Shaun O'Connell does is required by law, yet now he's sidelined by the government shutdown.

Airs Wednesday, December 18, 2013 at 8 p.m. on KPBS TV

As this immense generation keeps aging, most will end up with dementia or other disabilities that require costly care. For individuals, families and taxpayers, this demographic shift will drain dollars and attention, and force extremely difficult decisions about living arrangements, as well as end-of-life care.

When the cultural revolution ended thirty years ago, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou found themselves with no jobs, little education and an uncomfortable awareness of the rural China to which they'd been sent. When they returned to Beijing, they enrolled in the film institute and now are successful film directors. In 1984, Chen made his first film,

Pakistan's Karachi Literature Festival wrapped up earlier this week amid fresh reports of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. NPR's Steve Inskeep says that despite the violence, the festival was an intensely relevant and vibrant discussion of Pakistan's troubled path.