National / International News

Texas and New Mexico are locked in a dispute over the Rio Grande River, and it could end up being decided by the US Supreme Court

The UK video games industry says it is "disappointed" that the EU has blocked a proposed tax break while it investigates the threat of a "subsidy race" between states.

New Zealand's parliament legalises same-sex marriage, making it the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to do so.

Cardiff City fans are celebrating the club winning promotion to the Premier League for the first time after a home draw gives them the point they need.

In a cover story for The New Republic, journalist Jonathan Cohn examines the conundrum of day care in the United States. "On the one hand," he says, "improving the quality of child care ... is going to take more money. On the other hand, it already costs more than many families can pay."

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A new study from a firm called NQ Mobile says instances of malware showing up in mobile phones were up 163 percent last year. It's particularly a problem in Russia, China, and India, but malware by phone went up nearly 10 percent in the U.S.

Lindsey Turrentine, editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews, joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to explain.

Caitlin Freeman is an artist who uses sweet confections as her primary medium. Her desserts are clever culinary homages to the great works of art that hang at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her new book details how to re-create some of her edible art at home.

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Gold prices are down again this morning, after falling by more than 10 percent since Friday. Oil prices are also lower. But how do these drops in commodity prices affect your wallet?

Reports over the past couple years have suggested sky-high U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions have been falling, but what about the global energy picture? A new report suggests its nothing to write home about.

Bank of America said this morning that its profit quadrupled last quarter compared with a year ago, though that was below expectations. Toymaker Mattel also reported a quadrupling of profit last quarter, helped in part by cost cutting. David Kelly, chief global strategist with JP Morgan Funds, explains what's got profits up.

The Hungarian leader's European allies stand by him despite an EU inquiry into his constitutional changes.

Mike McLelland, the district attorney in Kaufman County, and his wife were murdered in late March. In January, an assistant district attorney in the county was killed. Authorities are looking at whether a justice of the peace with a possible grudge, and his wife, were involved.

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A policy pursued by hospitals, airlines and other companies in the U.S. allows employers to not hire a worker because he or she smokes.

Some employers say smoking interferes with tasks. For others, the policy is an easy way to avoid higher health care costs. Some employers say they hope their policy will help curb smoking. The nation is divided over the idea. Twenty-nine states prohibit employers from avoiding smokers, 21 don't.

See which states have enacted "smoker protection" laws and when they were put into play with the map below

This month, smokers got some backing from an unlikely source, Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’m a cancer doctor. I find smoking disgusting. I find smoking horrible. I wish that everyone who did it could quit," says Emanuel. "But I also recognize that it’s not voluntary, that most people start before they’re adults and that it’s incredibly hard to quit once you’ve started."

Emanuel argues that penalties against smokers shouldn't extend to the workplace, especially in organizations like hospitals and health plans, where caring is at the core of their mission.

Emanuel also thinks the policies open a dangerous door. "Once you’re on this kick, you can say, ‘Look, those Seventh Day Adventists! They’re the people we really want to employ because those guys they don’t smoke, they don’t drink, they eat very healthy, they don’t engage in high-risk sporting activities.’ That just seems to me exactly where we don’t want to be going."

Kai Ryssdal: Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio. It’s that moment every couple of weeks we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and blog of the same name. It is “the hidden side of everything.” Dubner, long time, no talk, man!

Stephen J. Dubner: Great to be back, Kai. Thanks for having me. I know you trained as a Navy pilot -- I wonder if you ever thought about afterward working as a commercial pilot? Was that ever a plan?

Ryssdal: No, not really. That was never my thing.

Dubner: Well, if you had, and if you had interviewed with, let’s say, Alaska Airlines, there’s something you would have needed to know. Here’s airline spokesperson Marianne Lindsey.

Marianne Lindsey: In general, there’s a question that’s asked, ‘have you smoked or used tobacco products within the last six months?’ And we go by how the employee responds to that question. And then, before they’re hired, they have a drug test that they take that detects nicotine use.

Ryssdal: So Alaska Airlines would not hire me, were I a smoker. Yes?

Dubner: Alaska Airlines would not hire you if you were a smoker. Now, they’ve had this policy for quite a few years. And more and more companies now are refusing to hire anyone who uses tobacco -- a lot of health care firms, especially, and hospitals.

Ryssdal: This has to be about cutting health care costs, right?

Dubner: That’s a primary reason, for sure. Smokers are more expensive than non-smokers, if you’re the company. By one estimate, about $4,000 a year more in terms of health care and lost productivity and so on. But there’s also the idea that you want to make every workplace healthier, which means smoke-free seems to be a good idea there.

Ryssdal: Right, OK. That makes sense. Question number two, though, Dubner, is this: Last time I checked, smoking is legal, man.

Dubner: Yes it is. So, as it turns out, in terms of the legality of hiring smokers: 29 states have passed laws that don’t let companies turn down smokers, but the other 21 states do allow you to do that. So if I’m a company in New York or North Carolina or California, I cannot reject an employee because he or she smokes. But if I run a company in Pennsylvania or Florida or Alaska, I can. So that’s a pretty severe split –- which recently led to a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine about the ethics of not hiring smokers. Here’s one of the authors, Zeke Emanuel, who is a bioethicist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Zeke Emanuel: I’m a cancer doctor. I find smoking disgusting. I find smoking horrible. I wish that everyone who did it could quit.

Dubner: All right So it’s not hard to think that he’s in favor of not hiring smokers. Right? But wait, there’s more.

Emanuel: But I also recognize that it’s not voluntary, that most people start before they’re adults and that it’s incredibly hard to quit once you’ve started.

Ryssdal: OK, wait. “Not voluntary?” I mean, Zeke Emanuel is a smart guy and all, but huh?

Dubner: That is really the basis of his argument –- which is that most smokers want to quit, but can’t, and to refuse to hire them is therefore discriminatory or at least unethical.

Ryssdal: Does this break down on socioeconomic lines? Is there a low-income, low-wage worker versus high-wage, high-income person thing?

Dubner: Yeah, that’s a great question. So low-income people are substantially more likely to smoke than high-income people across the board. So, if you’re a low-income smoker and now can’t get a job because you smoke, it’s sort of a double jeopardy. But there’s also the fact that smoking is one of those activities –- legal, as you noted, but publicly frowned upon –- that seems to open a bigger can of worms in terms of hiring. Here’s Emanuel again.

Emanuel: Once you’re on this kick, you can say, ‘Look at those Seventh Day Adventists! They’re the people we really want to employ because those guys -- they don’t smoke, they don’t drink, they eat very healthy, they don’t engage in high-risk sporting activities.’ That just seems to me exactly where we don’t want to be going.

Dubner: So Kai, you can imagine a future where nobody wants to hire anybody who does anything at all risky. Maybe not even risky, but just expensive -- like becoming pregnant and having kids. Because, as we all increasingly share healthcare costs, that means that you increasingly are thinking about what I do because it affects what you’ll pay in insurance and taxes. In the case of smoking, it’s really all about the incentives. In a tough labor market like ours, will it turn out to be that getting a job is a such a strong incentive that it might help a smoker who has tried everything, but everything else else has failed? I have no idea if that will work, but it will sure be worth keeping an eye on.

Ryssdal: Stephen Dubner. Freakonomics.com is the website. Stephen, we’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

A policy pursued by hospitals, airlines and other companies in the U.S. allows employers to not hire a worker because he or she smokes.

Some employers say smoking interferes with tasks. For others, the policy is an easy way to avoid higher health care costs. Some employers say they hope their policy will help curb smoking. The nation is divided over the idea. Twenty-nine states prohibit employers from avoiding smokers, 21 don't.

See which states have enacted "smoker protection" laws and when they were put into play with the map below

This month, smokers got some backing from an unlikely source, Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’m a cancer doctor. I find smoking disgusting. I find smoking horrible. I wish that everyone who did it could quit," says Emanuel. "But I also recognize that it’s not voluntary, that most people start before they’re adults and that it’s incredibly hard to quit once you’ve started."

Emanuel argues that penalties against smokers shouldn't extend to the workplace, especially in organizations like hospitals and health plans, where caring is at the core of their mission.

Emanuel also thinks the policies open a dangerous door. "Once you’re on this kick, you can say, ‘Look, those Seventh Day Adventists! They’re the people we really want to employ because those guys they don’t smoke, they don’t drink, they eat very healthy, they don’t engage in high-risk sporting activities.’ That just seems to me exactly where we don’t want to be going."

Bank of America reports a sharp rise in profits after cutting costs and setting aside less money for bad loans.

Senior politicians from Scotland were among more than 2,000 guests who attended the funeral of former Conservative prime minister Baroness Thatcher.

Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed on Tuesday due to a glitch in the airline's computerized reservations system.

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London's Monument protest 100 years ago

The U.S is using and spewing less carbon these days. Chalk it up to better car mileage, energy efficiency, and the fracking boom. We burn more natural gas for electricity, and less dirty coal.

"However, that is still pretty much a U.S. phenomenon," says Markus Wrake with the International Energy Agency.

The IEA’s new report shows that globally, the carbon inside every unit of energy produced is virtually unchanged from 20 years ago. One reason: The natural gas revolution has yet to go global.

"Whereas we in the United States do see a lot of coal to gas switching, in fact in Europe we see a lot of the opposite," says Wrake.

Coal use in Europe has gone up lately, as well as emerging economies, like China and India.

"It’s safe to say that energy demand is growing fastest in the countries that can least afford renewables," says Kevin Book with Clear View Energy. "So what they are using primarily is coal."

The IEA says without more action, global temperatures are on track to rise at least two degrees Celsius.

 

Aston Villa captain Stiliyan Petrov says he is lucky to be alive after his first year of leukaemia treatment.

Known for his succinct style on the air, the broadcaster was teamed with the exuberant Madden for years on CBS and Fox. He was also the voice of the Masters golf tournament and U.S. Open tennis. Summerall died Tuesday. He was 82.

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Funeral of former UK PM Baroness Thatcher