National News

In his first major statement on the global financial crisis, the pontiff calls on world leaders not to forget the poor.

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Egypt's capital has been associated with protest and political upheaval. But an arts festival attempts to clear away the dust and revitalize a once-glorious cultural hub.

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Police in Albuquerque, N.M., are interviewing a man they say is a "person of interest" in the abduction of a five-year-old girl. After the girl was taken Wednesday evening, her mother chased down and rammed the car she had been in; a suspect fled on foot. The girl is reportedly safe.

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Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld published his memoir, “Known and Unknown” in 2011. His latest book, “Rumsfeld’s Rules” suggests he still has lessons to share after a lifetime in politics and business.

The book is a collection of advice that he started collecting through a habit taught to him by his schoolteacher mother.

“If I didn’t know a word she’d say, 'Well write it down and look it up,'" he says. "Then I started writing down various other thoughts and rules and anecdotes.”

The anecdotes Rumsfeld recounts are pulled from his time in office with the Bush, Reagan and Nixon administrations.

Three of many Rumsfeld Rules in the book:

It’s easier to get into something than it is to get out.

“I thought of that when I was President Reagan’s Middle East envoy and we had 241 Marines killed at Beirut, at the airport. And I concluded then that the United States has to be careful about putting ground forces in because we’re such a big target. And I also over the years came to the conclusion over the years that the United States really was organized, trained and equipped to do nation-building.”

Rumsfeld says this was on his mind as the United States entered Afghanistan and Iraq. “When you do something, then someone wants you to do something else and then something else and then over time, the mission, historically, creeps into something else that was initiated at the outset.”

But in the end, “it’s not easy for countries to evolve and grow but I think that both of those countries are a whale of a lot better off than they were before.”

“I’ve been mistaken so many times I don’t even blush for it anymore.” – Napoleon

“You see things that don’t turn out the way you hoped.”

Monitor progress through metrics.

“I think that history over time will probably be a better judge than you or I, but I’ve been struck by the amount of criticism that the Bush administration has received and President Bush personally and the attempts to assign blame to him and I think it’s probably not going to sort out that way.”

He says President Bush’s decision to enter Iraq is “something that over time will be better understood.”

AUDIO EXTRA: Kai Ryssdal asks Donald Rumsfeld about a reputation for not tolerating dissent.

The number of passengers planning to fly this summer will rise 1 percent from 2012, climbing back to the highest level since 2008, an industry group said Thursday. After years of instability, airlines welcome an easing in jet fuel prices. Even customers' complaints are quieting down.

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Marilyn Tavenner, who has been running the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in an acting capacity since late 2011, has a big job. The agency oversees health coverage for more than 100 million Americans.

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When companies pack up and abandon places like apartment complexes, gas stations, factories, and rail yards, those properties often become what’s known as a brownfield.

Cleaning them up has become the focus of cities big and small.

This week, folks in Brownfield redevelopment from all over the nation are in Atlanta for the 2013 Brownfields Conference.  

And it’s no accident they picked Atlanta. The old railroad town is in the midst of a huge rebirth, spawned by a 22-mile system of trails, parks, and transit known as the BeltLine.

It’s been called “Atlanta’s best idea.” And it’s also one of the nation’s most successful brownfield clean-up stories.

“This most certainly is a Brownfield -- this was a Brownfield, I should say,” says Lee Harrop as he looks around a busy section of trailway in the northeast part of Atlanta known as the Old 4th Ward.

Amid the skyline views and park-like setting, bicyclists and runners create a steady stream of passers-by.

But this very area was a rail corridor for more than a century. And until about a year ago, it was a desolate area of urban blight.

“People call this the Hobo Highway,” says Harrop. “It was a source of dumping. It was a source of homelessness.  It was a source of really not what you wanted to see in the city.”

WhenBeltLine officials started sampling soil to find out what it would take to clean up this area, they discovered a toxic soup of contaminants in the soil, including arsenic, pesticides and dry cleaning solvents.

“It was a wasteland,” confirms Jenny Everett, who lives in the neighborhood and remembers how she avoided the area at all costs.

Now, she runs along the trail three times a week.

Everett says she was skeptical when she heard what the BeltLine would do to the Old 4th Ward neighborhood.  But color her skeptical no more.

“The place is packed,” Everett says as she walks along the Northeast Trail.  “You have every possible type person out on this BeltLine, from mothers strolling their children to guys and girls walking their dogs to runners and bicyclists. It serves a lot of purposes for a lot of different people.”

None of this comes cheap.

For this two square-mile section of trail and adjoining park, the price tag was $63 million. But that’s spawned three-quarters of a billion dollars in redevelopment, BeltLine officials say.

It’s likely developers wouldn’t have touched this place with a 10-foot railroad spike if the city, state and federal governments hadn’t shouldered the cost of  cleanup.

And this story isn’t unique to Atlanta -- it’s the same in every U.S. city.

“There’s sometimes could be situations where you say that you’ve just got to pass,” says Janine Betsey, a developer who heads the King Park Area Development Corporation in Indianapolis.  

Betsey says brownfield cleanup can get expensive. And without a little help taxpayers, developers sometimes won’t take the risk.  If that seems unfair, she says consider what would happen if cities don’t clean up brownfield sites.   

“Contamination can leak into drinking water and other things throughout the community. So you’re really preserving the health of the entire community and not just cleaning up a property,” says Betsey.

Much of the money for cleanup comes from federal Environmental Protection Agency grants and loan funds a lot of this. The EPA  has spent tens of millions of dollars in some cases to clean up so-called “superfund” sites. But often, brownfield clean-ups are only a few thousand dollars says Mathy Stanislaus, an assistant administrator with the EPA.  

“Because you’re able to quantify the relatively manageable cost,” says Stanislaus. “You can quickly conduct any necessary cleanup and redevelop the site.”

So what used to be seen as a brown liability is suddenly becoming a green opportunity.

Governments have struggled over how to deal with the digital currency bitcoin, which is popular globally but not regulated by any central bank. Washington just made its first move against the currency by seizing funds in a U.S. account used for bitcoin transactions.

Let's take a step back first, since bitcoin baffles more than just government officials. You know about the stock exchange, right? It’s where people buy and sell shares of companies.

Well, bitcoins are bought and sold on exchanges too, like Mt.Gox, an online trading site based in Tokyo. And while bitcoins might be “virtual” money, it takes cold, hard cash to buy them. Transactions are handled by payment networks such as Dwolla, which is similar to PayPal or Western Express. Dwolla takes your money and sends it to an American unit of Mt.Gox.

As Georgetown University business professor Jim Angel says, “think of Dwolla as a link in the payment chain.”

The weak link, perhaps. The Department of Homeland Security froze funds in the Dwolla account of Mt.Gox's U.S. unit, alleging that it had broken the law.

“The law says if you are handling money for other people you need to say so,” notes Helen Popper, a professor at Santa Clara University’s School of Business.

But the U.S. unit of Mt.Gox didn't disclose that. Popper says the the law governing money-service businesses is designed to ensure money isn’t being laundered by drug dealers, terrorists or other criminals. With more than $1 billion of bitcoins in circulation, there’s reason for concern.

Popper says the government's action could put a chill on bitcoin’s business. Anyone trading through American accounts might fear having their money seized by the Feds and advocates for the development of digital-cash fret that Washington wants to shut down bitcoin in the United States.

“My concern," says Jerry Brito, a researcher at George Mason University, "is that certain policy makers will overreact to the potential of bitcoin to be used for bad purposes.”

Brito says the real test will be whether the government will allow a bitcoin money service to register legally.

Correction: In an earlier version of the radio story, Jerry Brito's name was misstated.

Another day and more news out of everyone's favorite tax agency. Less than 24 hours after canning the last one, President Barack Obama named White House budget official Daniel Werfel as the new acting head of the Internal Revenue Service.

Suffice it to say, this hasn't been a great week for the IRS -- what with reports IRS functionaries targeted conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt status with extra scrutiny.  It's a scandal the likes of which the IRS hasn't seen in decades, and it's shed light on an agency that wasn't in great shape to begin with. 

The IRS is a far cry from what it used to be in the 1960s, says Lloyd Mayer, who teaches tax law at Notre Dame.

“The IRS was often held up as a model government agency, a place you wanted to work,” he says.

He and other experts I talked to, including someone who recently left the IRS, told me morale there is low. For one thing, the agency is understaffed.

“There is an enormous number of IRS managers -- soon to approach more than half of them -- who are eligible for retirement,” Mayer says.

Of course, a scandal’s not going to help recruitment. NYU Law Professor Daniel Shaviro says staffing is just one part of the problem.

“The IRS is scandalously underfunded,” he says. “And it’s all out of politics.”

The agency’s budget has fallen by a billion dollars since 2010. If it got more money, the IRS could do more enforcement. But lawmakers know the prospect of more audits probably wouldn’t thrill constituents. So, like many regulatory agencies, the IRS has been forced to do more with less.

Howard Gleckman is with the Tax Policy Center. He says the IRS is under-resourced and overwhelmed, and it’s developed “a culture of secrecy.”

“The agency that expects 150 million taxpayers to fully disclose everything about their lives is unwilling to disclose very much at all about what it does,” he says.

And that’s more than just collecting taxes. “There are huge portions of the Internal Revenue code that really are about public policy,” says John Colombo, who teaches at the University of Illinois College of Law.

Like tax deductions to incentivize behavior, including home ownership. It also has to determine which groups should be tax-exempt and which shouldn’t. And if that’s not enough, the IRS will have to enforce the president’s new health care law.

Colombo says the IRS’ new commissioner has to focus on restoring the agency’s credibility.

No one’s ever going to like the IRS, he says. (We are talking about taxes here.) But it has to be respected.

There's a new scientific paper out that's gotten a whole lot of attention. Scientists in Oregon have learned how to turn human skin cells into embryonic stem cells.

It's a development that raises once again the prospect of human cloning and so comes loaded with questions -- scientific, moral, legal and financial.

Will the results of this new experiment lead to more stem cell investment? You’d think a breakthrough like this would have venture capitalists lining up to cash in on turning cells into nearly any organ in the human body. But Greg Bonfiglio, managing partner of the firm Proteus, says private investors have been burned before.

“When you lose a lot of money or when a nuclear bomb goes off in your portfolio, you typically stay away from that sector,” he says.

Making things even trickier for investors is that stem cell research is politically hot. With all the bio-ethical debates around cloning, it’s been harder to get your hands on money.

Tim Kamp oversees the Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin. He works on the heart.

“For example, one of the main supporters of cardiovascular research in the American Heart Association. And they’ve made a policy decision that they’d rather pass on funding human embryonic stem cell research,” he says.

Kamp says much of his funding has come from the federal government. Since 2002, the National Institutes of Health has spent several billion dollars on human stem cell research. The NIH’s Story Landis expects Washington will continue to invest, but at the same pace despite this new research.

“It’s a technological achievement. But is it going to change the strategies and opportunities that we have, no,” she says.

But Greg Bonfiglio says this advance may change the strategy for venture capitalists.

“Assume the technology is accurate, that they have now made this breakthrough. The next step in the process to bringing that breakthrough from bench to bedside is to commercialize it,” he says.

And even with all those past losses, Bonfiglio the money is going to come.  

The Justice Department searched phone records of AP reporters and editors in search of the source of a leak. Critics call that overreach. The president says the government must sometimes balance national security against press freedom.

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Disappointed by the latest economic indicators out today? Blame the weather. Walmart sales are down and so are housing starts, but that could be because retailers had to do a lot of heavy discounting in response to unseasonably cold spring weather. Snowstorms bombarded parts of the East Coast and Colorado in late March. 

Plus, the Cannes Film Festival is under way, and though Angelina Jolie won't be there, her star power will. The attention her mastectomy has brought to hereditary breast cancer is creating buzz for a film that will be screened Saturday.

And, in Mexico, a look at how social media outlets such as Twitter are being used by the public to battle public corruption.

The new Google Maps features tailor-made results based on users' habits and search histories. The features were made possible by the revisions Google made to its privacy policies last year, a change that removed most of the barriers between its various services.

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NASA's Kepler space telescope searches for Earth-like planets. But this week, equipment failure means the $600-million Kepler is in "thruster-controlled safe mode," and may never fully operate again.

How much space exploration does $600 million buy? Is it worth it?

NASA’s budget is smaller than it used to be, but it’s still galaxy-sized -- about $17 billion a year. Which makes the budget for the Kepler telescope look pretty small in comparison. But what exactly do we get for $600 million? Bobby Braun, a professor of space systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology and former NASA chief technologist, says that amount is just about right for turning scientific dreams into reality.

“Five years ago when I would look up at the night sky, I would think to myself there has to be  a planet out there somewhere," Braun says. "There are so many stars…But I didn’t know that to be true. I just believed it.”

Now Braun says Kepler’s findings over the past four-plus years are going to change textbooks. The telescope has identified close to 3,000 candidates for planets and confirmed over 100. And while the dreamers and astrophysicists would love to continue the search, thanks to a broken wheel the Kepler mission’s future is cloudy.

John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, says that’s simply the price of doing business far, far away from earth and satellite-repairing engineers.

“When you put things in space they are tricky things to operate and eventually they wear out,” he says.

But Logsdon notes that Kepler’s broken wheel isn’t a case of premature failure. NASA says that the telescope has already outlived its expected life of four years. And the space agency says it still may find a fix. So what would be lost if the Kepler can’t continue its search? Logsdon says we’d lose more data.

“And scientists love data, because data leads to discoveries.”

Both Logsdon and NASA say there’s so much data from the mission already, it will take scientists years to analyze it.

The economic news out of Tokyo overnight was pretty good. The economy there grew at what you can fairly call a booming 3.5 percent annual rate last quarter. Nifty in and of itself -- downright awesome when you remember Japan's lost decades.

Credit -- most of it, anyway -- goes to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in December with an policy prescription that's come to be known as 'Abenomics.'

'Abenomics,' says BBC Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, isn't really about doing anything new, but combining two well-known strategies: Government spending, especially funding for public works; and the Bank of Japan printing a huge amount of money.

Those two moves have helped the Japanese stock market skyrocket, while at the same time pushing down the value of the yen. This was the desired effect for the government, says Wingfield-Hayes, because it wants Japanese companies to be able to export their goods at lower prices.

So far the plan seems to be working. Public sentiment is much more positive than it was in years past, and consumer spending is up.

Still, this kind of pace can't last forever.

"There are real dangers in this," says Wingfield-Hayes, "because while exporters like it, importers hate it." Japan imports a lot of food and almost all of its energy, he points out, and those rising prices will eventually affect Japanese consumers.

"This is a balancing act," adds Wingfield-Hayes. "It if goes too far, it's going to cause a lot of problems."

For a society that has struggled for the last few decades, change can be difficult.

"People want change," he says. "This has been a very comfortable country, a country where the people have been looked after by the system and change is frightening."

The targeting of some conservative groups for extra scrutiny from the IRS has ignited a political firestorm in Washington.

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A recently published study found slightly elevated amounts of inorganic arsenic in samples of chicken meat purchased at grocery stores. Arsenic-based drugs are no longer used in chickens — but they are still used in turkeys.

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A recently published study found slightly elevated amounts of inorganic arsenic in samples of chicken meat purchased at grocery stores. Arsenic-based drugs are no longer used in chickens — but they are still used in turkeys.

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Days after the marathon bombing, officials established the One Fund for Boston to assist victims and their families. Attorney Ken Feinberg, who managed similar funds after Sept. 11 and Virginia Tech and is managing this fund, says there's no easy way to decide who gets how much of the $30 million that's been donated.

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Most public swimming pools are contaminated with germs carried by poop, federal researchers found. We swimmers are to blame. Showering before swimming and taking kids to the bathroom often would help.

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