National / International News

Thomas Mueller scores twice as Bayern Munich dismantle Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final.

Investigators are trying to determine if the bombing suspects acted alone. The bombs that exploded at the marathon were simple and similar to ones law enforcement officials come across on a regular basis.

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The Duchess of Cambridge has launched a counselling programme aimed at reducing the impact of drug and alcohol addiction on children in Manchester

A bill making its way through the Senate would make more online retailers collect sales taxes. The battle over the bill pits online retailers against brick-and-mortar stores — and, in some cases, against other online sellers. Amazon has endorsed the bill, while eBay is the loudest voice against it.

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Arbus was most famous for his role as the Army psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Freedman in the hit TV comedy.

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The Americans and the Europeans have different approaches to horse racing, and one key split is over the question of doping. While many drugs are allowed in the U.S., they are banned in European racing.

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In Michael Pollan's latest book, "Cooked," he's hoping he can convince readers to slow down and cook dinner tonight -- instead of microwaving a pre-made meal.

"I really think that we've been sold a bill of goods with the argument that [cooking] is drudgery and we lack the time and we lack the skills," he says. "It's one of the most democratic of pleasures available to all of us."

As cooking shows become more popular, we're paradoxically seeing a decrease in home cooking.

Since 1977, it's fallen by half. Pollan says that has "disastrous effects, both for our agriculture and for our health" and that shift has in part been a result of marketing efforts that have been "designed to get us out of the kitchen" in favor of pre-prepared meals that bring in more dollars for food companies.

"All the money in the food industry is in processing," he says. "It's very hard to make money selling simple ingredients."

There are other economic reasons fewer people are cooking: In an age when time is money, cooking takes a lot of time. Pollan says it's not so much about time as it is about putting value on a home cooked meal.

"We find time for the things we value."

He points to the two hours a day we spend outside of working surfing the web.

"We don't value cooking," he says. "We've fallen into this mode where we let the corporations do the cooking for us. The problem is, they don't do it very well."

Though prepared foods can be cheap and fast, the process to make them involves cheap materials and a ton of additives.

"This is a great case where the efficiency of capitalism is actually undermining the health of people."

AUDIO EXTRA: Michael Pollan on how the popularity of cooking shows doesn’t necessarily mean we’re cooking more, what he calls the "cooking paradox."

Are you cooking more or less? Comment below or tweet us @MarketplaceAPM.

Would you eat a double cheeseburger if you knew it took two hours of walking to burn it off? Participants in a new study said, hmm, maybe not. The researchers say that exercise-based labels could do a better job than calorie counts at steering people to healthful choices.

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Government education officials who try to persuade schools to become academies have been told to stop visiting the county of Lancashire.

The French parliament approves a bill legalising same-sex marriage and adoption, after a divisive public debate.

Celebrations of St. George's Day in England and around the world

Footage from privately owned surveillance cameras along the Boston Marathon route gave the FBI early clues about the bombing suspects. But the proliferation of cameras in America's big cities raises some tricky questions about the balance between security and privacy.

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Members of the Cuban opposition group Ladies in White collect the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in Brussels.

The first minister urges parents to make sure their children have both doses of the MMR vaccine, as the Swansea measles epidemic total rises to 886 cases.

Lord Justice Leveson dismisses suggestions an alleged relationship between two barristers involved in his inquiry had damaged its integrity.

The college said it was breaking with more than a century of tradition to protect its long-term viability. Cooper Union will begin to charge its undergraduate students half of the going rate in the fall of 2014.

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A chain of cafe bars employing 200 which was founded in north Wales 21 years ago and spread around the UK is placed into administration.

Shakespeare may not seem a suitable subject for a business show, but think again. A group of literary researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales, say that Shakespeare was a businessman to his fingertips, strongly motivated by money and not as lofty or magnanimous in his financial dealings as you’d expect.

“This was a man who lent money and pursued people through the courts when they did not repay on time,” says Jayne Archer, a lecturer in medieval and Renaissance literature at Aberystwith. “He also took out loans from other individuals and did not repay them.”

Clearly the Bard did not obey Polonius’ injunction in "Hamlet": “Neither a lender nor a borrower be.”

And he wasn’t always full of “the milk of human kindness” either. Jayne Archer and her colleagues say that the so-called Swan of Avon engaged in some unscrupulous commodity dealing, stockpiling grain at  a time of near famine in England.

“He buys an illegal quantity of grain and of barley to sell at a later date at inflated prices, probably in the late winter, early spring when people are at their most desperate for food," says Jayne.

Grain hoarder, money lender and -- the historical record shows -- a tax evader, too. This doesn’t fit with the popular image of Shakespeare as a wise and generous chronicler of the human heart.

Indeed, these revelations make the playwright sound both ruthless and sleazy.

But Jayne Archer’s co-researcher, Prof. Richard Marggraf Turley, says we should not judge Shakespeare too harshly. We should bear in mind that he was struggling to survive and prosper in a dog-eat-dog environment. He was driven by a powerful desire to rescue and protect his family’s fortunes after his father’s business failed. And we should dismiss the romantic notion about what motivates a towering talent like Shakespeare.

“This is the idea that great artists -- geniuses -- are solely driven to write for art’s sake. That is not a view of Shakespeare that his contemporaries would have recognized,” says Marggraf Turley.

Writing plays, running a theatre, buying land, and dealing in grain...Shakespeare was -- first and foremost -- in it for the money.

A millionaire businessman who sold fake bomb detectors around the world, including Iraq, knowing they did not work, is convicted of fraud.

Apples, oranges and ... squirrel? A new interactive map pinpoints more than a half-million locations around the world open to foraging for typical and not-so-typical free foods.

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