National News

Kenya's Rita Jeptoo won the women's race. It's her second victory at Boston. Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa won on the men's side. It's his first victory at Boston.

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Even though temperatures were less than normal late in the season, winter 2012-13 was still on the warm side.

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When a food-safety student found out her dog's food was being recalled for possible contamination with salmonella, she learned a few things about how germs travel between critters and their humans.

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When a food-safety student found out her dog's food was being recalled for possible contamination with Salmonella, she learned a few things about how germs travel between critters and their humans.

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During a time of paralysis in Washington, states are taking the lead on a whole host of issues, from guns and gay marriage to education and tax policy. Of course, not everyone applauds the laws they pass. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart recently called states the "meth laboratories of democracy."

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As the Senate prepares to vote on gun legislation, there are more mixed signals on what will be the fate of a bipartisan plan concerning background checks of gun purchasers.

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America's seismic demographic shift is upending life in our suburbs, cities and our popular culture. So why are we still clinging to the same stories to make sense of these changes?

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In a long interview with The Dallas Morning News, the former president says that "nobody likes to be criticized all the time," but that he made the right decisions based on the information he had at the time.

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The Dish TV Network  is making a big bid to get into the mobile space. It wants to buy the country’s third largest cellphone carrier Sprint-Nextel for more than $25 billion.

It's no surprise that Google is expanding, and one place where they are growing fast is New York City. The company's offices, which are located in the downtown Meat Packing neighborhood, feel part warehouse, part office building, and part elementary school. Chief Information Officer Ben Fried takes us on a tour of Google's East Coast headquarters and discusses how its culture differs from Silicon Valley.

The satellite TV distributor hopes it can outmaneuver Japanese phone company SoftBank for control of Sprint.

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Federal aviation regulators say a pin on the horizontal stabilizer could be prone to corrosion and "premature failure."

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The Dish TV Network this morning is making a big bid to get into the mobile space. It wants to buy the country’s third largest cellphone carrier Sprint-Nextel for more than $25 billion.

Dish Network is trying to steal Sprint Nextel from the clutches of another bidder: The Japanese telecom giant Softbank.

Dish is upping the price by $5 billion or so. Why? Jeff Silva at Medley Global Advisors says it wants to expand beyond the slow-growing TV business. It faces competition from cable, cellular and Internet streaming. 

"There’s Netflix out there. You’ve got some real headwinds for profits and gaining market share," says Silva.

Dish wants to offer customers everything -- voice, TV, mobile. Thing is, the dominant mobile players are already there. So time matters, and an acquisition takes time.

"Verizon and AT&T are expanding their LTE networks that have faster connections. And by the time it’s done they could have locked down a lot more customers," he says.

If Sprint Nextel doesn’t take this offer, Dish Network is believed to set its sights on other wireless carriers, like Clearwire and T-Mobile.

Also: Immigration bill to be unveiled soon; Dish bids $25.5 billion for Sprint; a nice guy finishes first at the Masters; and it's tax day.

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The baby is named for her grandmothers. Her granddad, the nation's 43rd president, has already prepared three paintings for the baby. He's "become an artiste," Jenna Bush Hager told People magazine.

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Australia's Adam Scott won in a dramatic two-hole playoff with Argentina's Angel Cabrera. The consensus is that one of golf's most-liked guys has now won his first "major."

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It's no surprise that Google is expanding, and one place where they are growing is New York City. The company's offices, which are located in the downtown Meat Packing neighborhood, feel part warehouse, part office building, and part elementary school.

Chief Information Officer Ben Fried joined Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson for a tour of Google's East Coast headquarters and to discuss how its culture differs from Silicon Valley.

On the competition for talent:

Fried: "The quest for technology talent is really a global one. Great engineers, great product managers, great technologists, great sales people, are in short supply. And creating a workplace that’s appealing to them is really important."

On the difference between a career in finance and tech:

Fried: "There are a number of differences that I think are all worth calling out. They largely start with the idea that Google is designed to become a product engineering company. And that dedication to building great products and doing great engineering, it drives so many other elements of the culture, wanting to be a place that inspires needs, develops great engineers. Morgan Stanley and finance were great places where computer science was incredibly important, but they weren’t the business of the company."

On New York versus Silicon Valley:

Fried: "New York is an interesting place because there are so many industries that are so big here, and technology has a role influencing all of them. I’d like to see New York develop as a city with a technology industry that can harmonize with the other industries that are successful here and at the same time have all this great product."

Click on the audio player above to hear more about Google's New York offices.

"The world media run headlines about the Korean peninsula being on the brink of war. Of course it's not on the brink of war, it's just [the] normal show," says Andrei Lankov, who has studied in the North and follows it closely from Kookmin University in Seoul.

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Also: David Foster Wallace on taxes; Marvel Comics accused of sexism; the best books coming out this week.

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The initial vote count shows Nicolas Maduro with a scant edge over challenger Henrique Capriles. Maduro, who was Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, had been expected to win easily.

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The deadline for filing income taxes is today, and while a third of Americans like doing their taxes and some are even inspired to write poetry, many find the process more complicated than ever.

Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics tells us what one British government unit is doing to help make paying taxes a little more...fun.

Here in this country, there are few things more divisive than taxes. Many Americans feel they pay too much, and get too little in return. But is that true? Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic, helped us take a look at how U.S. taxes stack up to other countries around the world -- and the results may surprise you.

Of course, your tax dollars pay for things like pensions, police and firefighters -- services that uphold community safety and maintain the peace. But when it gets down to the day-to-day budget, where does your locality put all the money?

And before your town or city can even think about spending, the IRS has to make its collections -- which can be tough as scammers abound. This year, identity theft ranks as the worst tax scheme. Check out which scams made the top 12 on IRS's 2013  "Dirty Dozen" list.

After you steer clear of those, learn how to avoid an audit. Here's a hint: Avoid round numbers. And, while you're at it, just say no to joint tax filing. Anne Alstott, professor of tax Law at Yale, says tax laws are stuck watching reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" while the rest of us have long since moved on to "Modern Family" -- which generates arbitrary tax penalties and bonuses.

And before you say good-bye to tax season, this final piece of advice from a tax accountant in Colorado, "the easier you make your accountant's life, the cheaper your [filing] price will be." But there can be bonus points for cute pets and outlandish excuses.