National News

The Republican National Committee report offers the party a way forward after its 2012 failure to defeat President Obama, who was long seen as vulnerable because of a relatively high jobless rate and uninspiring economic growth.

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As the Sooners' quarterback in the early and mid-'70s, Davis was part of two national championship teams. He was MVP of the 1976 Orange Bowl. After his playing career, he went on to be a football broadcaster. Another man also died in Sunday's crash in Indiana.

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Parents frequently fret about risks to their daughters from vaccination against cervical cancer, even though the vaccines are safe. Parents who don't plan to have their daughter get the shots often say they don't know enough about the vaccine or that their child doesn't need it anyway.

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Some people with a rare neurological condition known as synesthesia can taste shapes or smell color. And when these people work in the food industry, it can radically redefine flavor profiles. (Blue wine? Moss-flavored cotton candy?)

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Jammie Thomas-Rasset was the first to challenge a lawsuit from the Recording Industry Association. A jury awarded Capitol Records $222,000 in damages for the 24 songs that Thomas-Rasset shared.

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Not to get too personal, but do you ever fight with your car? If that sounds ridiculous, it's probably because you haven't been in a new vehicle lately.

In an attempt to increase safety, comply with government mandates, and attract young and tech-focused buyers, automakers have added lots of collision-avoidance and infotainment features that come with their own -- sometimes grating -- personality.

Writer Beth Teitell notes the downsides of having her own car act as backseat driver. 

Do you ever get annoyed by your tech-heavy vehicle? Or do you like the robot companionship? Tell us in the comments below.

For decades, musicians and filmmakers have marketed themselves as 'indie', initially in an effort to break away from the too-dominant industries that picked and chose stars, not always based on talent. Later, the label 'indie' became a marker of status and style, regardless of whether an artist was independent from a record label or movie studio.

And while some writers have always been 'indie', publishing everything from pamphlets to zines, to blogs, the book world has long been centered on publishing a book with a major publishing house.

But talk to novelist Hugh Howey, and he'll tell you the era of the mass market paperback is over. Howey said it's sexy to be an 'indie' author.

"You have access to readers all over the world now, through their digital devices. So rather than finding success through a bookstore, I found success through bathrooms and living rooms," Howey said.

Howey has been pushing out books on his own for years now, self-publishing ebooks and allowing fans to purchase print-on-demand editions.

And now, success has come in the form of his latest sci-fi novel, "Wool." Out since January 2012, it's sold over half a million editions, and eventually reached the New York Times bestseller list.

That's when calls started rolling in from major publishing houses. Having worked in bookstores much of his adult life, Howey was pleased at the idea of a print edition, but insisted he would not give up digital rights to "Wool." As it stands, he keeps 70 percent of royalties on ebook editions.

"Most of my months are six figure months, so that's what I would have been giving up to sign a deal and handing over those earnings to a publisher. And I was never willing to do that," said Howey.

After rejecting a dozen publishers, Simon & Schuster approached Howey with the deal he had been told was impossible: print-only, while he retained digital rights.

And he insisted his isn't a one-in-a-million story. Other self published authors are inking print-only publishing deals. And many more are making a living wage -- or more -- without a brand name.

"It's changed everything," Howey said. "I have the complete freedom to ignore the finances, to have that be a just a part of the decision instead of the overriding decision."

NPR's David Gilkey was on the ground the night U.S. troops invaded Iraq 10 years ago this week. He describes a photograph he made that first night — one of the first photos of the invasion to come out of Iraq.

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President Obama announced his choice to be Labor secretary on Monday. It's Tom Perez, a Justice Department civil rights leader — bringing a high-profile Latino to the Cabinet.

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Syria's political opposition is meeting in Istanbul this week to choose a rebel government, despite opposition from the Obama administration. The vote has been postponed twice because of internal tensions over naming a rival government to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

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On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges former American service members face in accessing their disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.

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Cyprus and European regulators announced over the weekend a new plan to tax the country's savings accounts to help solve the country's debt crisis.

As originally proposed, bank accounts with less than $130,000 in deposit could be taxed up to 6.75 percent, and accounts with more than that amount would be taxed at an even higher rate, 9.9 percent. That money would then go to help defray some of the cost of the bailout to the rest of Europe.

The idea of an across-the-board wealth tax to fund debt restructuring has come up before, though in the U.S., it has not surprisingly been met with little more than jeers.

But if you want to know the tax bill you'd owe if Cyprus' original proposal we're instituted in the U.S., use our simple calculator above to compute how much you'd pay in taxes on money you saved in Cyprus.

After the original proposal was blamed for depressed markets across the globe, European sources began telling news outlets that Cyprus would be given more flexibility over the bank levy, including possibly eliminating the tax for those with less than $130,000 in the bank.

The levy on deposits is an unusual method, but there’s no mystery why it is being imposed on bank accounts in Cyprus. The Germans in particular insisted on it. They believe that large amounts of cash in the Cypriot banking system belong to Russian money launderers, and that it’s only right that they too should bear some of the cost of the bailout.

"I think this is a scary measure," says European fund manager Henri Dixon. "It would be absurd to think that people are not thinking about depositors in Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain and thinking maybe -- you know -- my money’s better out of the bank and under a mattress."

Perez would replace Hilda Solis and if confirmed, become President Obama's only Hispanic cabinet member. He is currently in charge of civil rights at the Justice Department.

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Detroit's emergency fiscal manager is tasked with turning around the city's troubled finances. But some residents say they've been robbed of the right to pick their own leaders. Host Michel Martin speaks with Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley, about future of the Motor City.

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The fatal police shooting of teenager Kimani Gray in East Flatbush, Brooklyn led to days of protests and some violence; it also heightened tensions in a community already distrustful of the police. Host Michel Martin discusses the shooting, and its aftermath, with WNYC talk show host Brian Lehrer and community activist Shanduke McPhatter.

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Ruth Ann Steinhagen was 19 when she shot Eddie Waitkus, a Philadelphia Phillie. She had been obsessed with him, and lured Waitkus to a Chicago hotel room. Initially judged to be insane, she was never tried. For about 60 years, she lived a quiet life in Chicago.

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The move is seen by many as aimed at bolstering a key constituency ahead of a run for the White House in 2016.

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What if a gun could only be fired by its rightful owner? What if it recognized a grip or fingerprint, or communicated with a special ring? It's been a fantasy for years, and in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, so-called smart gun technology is back in the spotlight.

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Lego is building its first factory in China, the company announced Monday.

This isn’t a story about making manufacturing cheaper. Lego wants to be closer to its Asian customers -- sales there have grown by more than 50 percent annually in recent years.

But the truth is that Lego is having all kinds of success in all kinds of places – even through a recession where other toy companies suffered. This makes company is an unlikely star. After all, they sell plastic bricks in the age of the iPad.

But Lego products fly off the shelves, says Alexis Smith, a manager at Kidding Around, an independent toy store in New York.

She says the store tries to stay away from products that are too mainstream, “but Lego is just one of those things that you can’t not have. It’s something that sells itself.”

Lego is also starting to sell itself to a growing Asian middle class, says Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham & Company.

“As they have more spending power, alongside of that they’re also developing the inclination to spend that money on toys,” he says. “In a sense they want to emulate the success of the West.”

Licenses with movies, like Star Wars, and other entertainment brands have also been big for the company. Plus Friends, Lego’s new product marketed to girls, has been a recent hit.

“They were successful at capturing what it was that girls were interested in,” say McGowan. “And the name says it all. They’re really interested in the relationships between the characters.”

For an adult, it’s easy to dismiss Lego as just some pieces of plastic. But the company is actually quite innovative, says Dave Robertson, a professor at The University of Pennsylvania and the author of a forthcoming book on Lego, "Brick by Brick."

After almost going bankrupt in 2003 with lots of distracting side products, Lego decided to get back to the brick.

“What really keeps Lego going is their ability to tell stories that play out around the bricks and construct richly detailed toys,” says Robertson, citing the example of Ninjago, a top-selling product focused on Ninjas that fight skeletons.

Those stories are important because Lego’s patent has expired. Anyone can make and sell a Lego-style brick, which perhaps makes the company’s success all the more impressive.

Today the Republican Party released a Growth and Opportunity Project Report, saying that the GOP needs to rebrand itself. The report said the party must expand its market appeal to young people, minorities and women. It cited its own focus groups, in which people described the Republican Party as “scary” and “narrow minded.” That 100-page report today reads, in some ways, like a corporate manifesto, full of marketing lingo and customer data about a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. 

What does it take to rebrand? First and foremost, says brand strategist Adam Hanft, "Never let people know that you've decided to rebrand." As far as the GOP's image overhaul is concerned, that ship has sailed.

Second, it can't be just skin deep. "Rebranding is not just a superficial layer, it has to go deep into the way a company operates," Hanft says. He points out that Oldsmobile had one of the most iconic ad campaigns of all time -- "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" -- but the catchy slogan couldn't save the car line. "It was a clever way to rebrand, but the product never lived up to it," says Hanft.

One company that did it right is Nintendo, says Ira Kalb, a professor of marketing at USC's Marshall School of Business. Nintendo had ruled the video game roost, but started losing market share to Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox.

"Nintendo kind of lost their position in the marketplace," says Kalb, "so they decided to come up with a completely type of a game and they came out with Nintendo Wii." Suddenly Nintendo had a new niche: It made video games that everyone could understand and use, and it promoted fitness.

Still, there’s a danger in rebranding, says consultant Debra Kaye, author of "Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation." Kaye has worked with companies like McDonald's, Apple and Nissan. "If there’s something really loved and classic, they don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater," she warns.

Case in point: The New Coke debacle of the mid-1980s when, Kaye says, Coke overlooked its real strength. "Coke represents deep American values, it’s everything we grew up with. So when they put New Coke out there, they were saying this is better." 

Kaye says a successful rebranding requires buy-in at all levels: employees, management, investors. And consensus could be a tricky formula for any political party.