National News

Members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee are holding a hearing today on sexual assault in the military. Host Michel Martin discusses how the military handles sexual assault cases with Anu Bhagwati, the executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, and with Jennifer Hlad, a reporter for Stars and Stripes.

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Among fast-fashion chains, "made in the USA" labels are hard to find. Forever 21 has reaped billions ordering clothes from around the world. American Apparel, however, boasts that its garments are made domestically. The key to its profitability may lie in the limited types of garments it sells.

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Telemedicine sounds like a good idea, but state laws limit it, and insurers usually won't pay for that. Parkinson's specialist Ray Dorsey is determined to prove that it can work, one patient at a time. The latest lure: free 30-minute consults.

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American corporations are on hight alert on the hacking front after a series of attacks coming from China.

President Obama sat down with a group of CEOs at the White House today to talk about strategies to protect their companies' confidential business information from the threat of cyber attacks.

But what happens when a company has already been attacked? Kim Zetter, senior writer for Wired, says that companies can't "hack back," or try to retrieve stolen data.

"You can be self-defensive, you can protect yourself against an attack. You can't go back after the hacker or the computer that appears to be attacking you because that's basically doing what the attacker is doing," said Zetter.

President Obama signed an executive order last month designed to make it easier for the government to warn private companies of cyber threats and to set up a system of voluntary cybersecurity standards. The government is in a better position than corporations to fight back after a company has been hacked.

"The government can take certain legal measure," Zetter said. "They can go after the servers and get them taken down. They can't hack the servers, but they can go after the authorities who host the servers and get those taken down."

Paris has culture. Barbados: beaches. The big draw to Southeastern China’s Fujian province: Breathable air.

A television ad from Fujian’s tourism bureau shows off the province’s lush, green mountains, and sandy beaches. Crystal clear views abound. "Take a deep breath," says the voiceover, "you’re in Fujian."

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"We launched the clean air tourism campaign in January, when Beijing’s pollution levels were very bad," says Zheng Weirong, deputy director of the bureau. "We’re promoting 20 tourism sites around the province where people can breathe clean air."

Boasting about clean air may seem to set the bar pretty low. But in a country where just one percent of half a billion urban residents breathe air judged safe by European Union standards, Fujian’s strategy is paying off.

A guide holding a neon pink flag in one hand and a megaphone in the other corrals a group of tourists along an island pathway overlooking the sea in the city of Xiamen. On this particular day, Xiamen’s level of what’s known as PM2.5 -- particulate matter in the air small enough to enter your blood stream -- hovers around 45. That’s dirtier than the most-polluted day on record in Los Angeles over a 24-hour period. But these folks are from Beijing, where on this day the level is 10 times as bad.
What would your city look like with Beijing's smog? Use our Smog Simulator to see. Tourist Yun Ya is thrilled. "The air is so fresh here!" she says, adjusting her sunglasses. "Whenever I go to work in Beijing, I have to wear a mask or else I’ll start coughing uncontrollably. It’s just been terrible lately."

Yun is part of a 38 percent spike in tourists to Fujian this year -- twice the national average. Like most tourists interviewed for this story, she came here to escape the smog. "China has always followed the path of ‘pollute first, clean up later,'" says Yun, who works for an environmental consulting company in Beijing, "But if China doesn’t start cleaning up its environment, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen. An environment like this one in China has become rare."

Fujian hugs China’s Southeastern coast. It’s position along the Taiwain Strait helps diffuse pollutants in the air. Deng Junjun, a researcher at the China Academy of Science’s Institute of Urban Environment, says Fujian’s air is cleaner than other parts of China thanks to policy decisions, too. "For 35 years, Fujian’s government has ensured that it’s had the highest forestry coverage rate throughout China," says Deng.

Still, Deng says an increase in car ownership means that Xiamen’s air, despite its national fame of a clean air city is getting slightly dirtier each year. There are no cars here on a quiet tree-lined alley on the island of Gulangyu in Xiamen; just birds.

And two young lovers on their honeymoon, holding hands, going for a morning stroll. Ai Jintao and Zhang Nana came here from Beijing."It’s nice to be here. On our way here, we drove through Shandong," recalls Ai. "The smog was so thick that police had to close the highway. You couldn’t even see the cars in front of you! There’s no traffic at all here. There’s a little fog in the morning here, but it smells like the ocean."

Ai says he’ll be sure to take a deep breath before he heads back home to smoggy Beijing.

The Los Angeles Times looks at the blog posts written over a 4-year period by "Rocy Bird," who told tales of what it's like inside a People's Liberation Army hacking unit.

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A bill proposed in California today could open the door a bit wider to massive open online courses, or MOOCs. (By the way, if anyone’s got a better name for these things, send it our way). The bill would require public colleges and universities in the state to grant credit for MOOCs and other online courses when students can’t get into those classes on campus

Budget cuts have taken such a big bite out of California’s community colleges and universities that thousands of students are turned away from required classes.

“No college student should be denied the right to complete their education because they could not get a seat [in] the course that they needed in order to graduate,” said Darrell Steinberg, president pro tem of the California senate, in a press conference announcing the bill today.

If it passes, the bill could be good news for companies like StraighterLine, based in Baltimore, Md. The company sells low-cost intro courses like the ones students are having trouble getting into.

“What it also does is open a much larger marketplace,” says Burck Smith, StraighterLine’s CEO.“A larger marketplace will ultimately drive prices down, will raise quality up, and that’s a good thing.”

Others looking for a bigger slice of that market are providers of those massive open courses -- companies like Udacity and Coursera. Classes on artificial intelligence and gamification have been wildly popular, but few colleges accept them for actual credit.

F. King Alexander, president of California State University, Long Beach, is concerned that too few students who sign up for MOOCs actually finish them. Of course, that might change when the stakes are higher.

“At the moment, we’re very neutral but very optimistic about taking advantage of these technologies,” says Alexander.

Faculty also have good reason to be nervous about online alternatives, says Kevin Carey, director of education policy at the New America Foundation.

“It may mean that people who right now are employed as adjunct professors teaching these basic classes will not have those jobs in the future,” Carey says.

The bill has to pass first. With Democrats controlling the legislature, it’s got a good shot. Sen. Steinberg said today, “if it wasn’t at least a little bit controversial, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”

The growing threat of cyber attacks has put business on the front lines of national security. Today, President Obama met CEOs of American defense and technology companies -- in the Situation Room, no less -- to discuss how companies and the government can work together to bolster digital defense. The meeting followed warnings from intelligence, defense and counter-terrorism officials that cyber security could pose as big a threat as terrorism.

One clear impact of the White House cybersecurity push is pressure on business to do more. Stewart Baker, a former senior official at the Homeland Security Department and National Security Agency, says he just met with Silicon Valley execs who are feeling the heat.

“Their boards of directors are asking questions about their cybersecurity and whether they’ve had intrusions and how they’ve responded to them,” says Baker, who is now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson. “And that’s a direct result of the kinds of publicity we’re seeing for these attacks.”

Whether it’s companies or governments, figuring out the right budget for digital defense is tricky. They never really know when they’ve spent too much. And they only know if they’ve spent too little when they get hacked. Experts don’t even agree on how much is actually being spent now.

"One number says annual global spending on cybersecurity is $18 billion. Another number says it’s $60 billion," notes Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department official.

Cybersecurity analysts say a lot of the money spent on digital security is wasted. In some cases, companies aren’t even doing the simple things right, unsexy stuff like managing passwords and updating software.

“This is not rocket science. That’ll remove about 80 percent of the successful attacks," Lewis says.

Then there’s the question of who foots the bill. America’s top cyber commander said yesterday there have been 140 attacks on Wall Street firms in the past six months. An attack on a large American company could damage the entire American economy. So companies argue the government should take more of the burden.

“There’s a sense that you want the government to come in and secure the cyber borders the same way the physical borders are secured,” says Tom Field, a vice president at Information Security Media Group, a cybersecurity trade publisher.

Field hears from a lot of execs frustrated that the government isn’t doing enough. On the other hand, taxpayers may not be too thrilled to pay for the security of private companies. We may not know what the tab will be, but it won’t be cheap.

Kai Ryssdal: The White House calls. Says the president wants you to come for a meeting. You get there this morning. They take you downstairs. Maybe way downstairs. People swipe their ID cards. Maybe there are biometric measuring devices.

All of a sudden, some door whooshes open -- and you're in the Situation Room. The real one -- not the one with Wolf Blitzer. You and a bunch of fellow defense and technology company CEOs there to talk cybersecurity.

This has been a week heavy on digital threats in Washington. Intelligence, defense and counter-terrorism officials have been sounding the alarm in speeches and on Capitol Hill. Today, the White House welcomed Beijing's willingness to hold talks on cyber threats.

But in the meanwhile, there was that meeting in the Situation Room. Marketplace's Mark Garrison has more on business at the front lines of national security.

Mark Garrison: One clear impact of the White House cybersecurity push is pressure on business to do more. Attorney Stewart Baker is a former senior official at the Homeland Security Department. He just met with Silicon Valley execs who are feeling the heat.

Stewart Baker: Their boards of directors are asking questions about their cybersecurity and whether they’ve had intrusions and how they’ve responded to them. And that’s a direct result of the kinds of publicity we’re seeing for these attacks.

America’s top cyber commander said yesterday there have been 140 attacks on Wall Street firms in the past six months. Whether it’s companies or governments, figuring out the right budget for digital defense is tricky. You never really know when you’ve spent too much. You only know if you’ve spent too little when you get hacked. Experts don’t even agree on how much is being spent now.

Jim Lewis: One number says annual global spending on cybersecurity is $18 billion. Another number says it’s $60 billion.

Jim Lewis is a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says for all they spend, companies aren’t even doing the simple things right, boring stuff like managing passwords and updating software.

Lewis: This is not rocket science. That’ll remove about 80% of the successful attacks.

So, who should pay? Companies argue the government should take more of the burden. Tom Field is VP at Information Security Media Group, a trade publisher. He hears from a lot of frustrated execs.

Tom Field: There’s a sense that you want the government to come in and secure the cyber borders the same way the physical borders are secured.

Of course, taxpayers may not be too thrilled to pay for the security of private companies. We may not know what the tab will be, but it won’t be cheap. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

A bold question to the pop star — "could I play with you?" — got an "OK" response. The video of student Michael Pollack knocking it out of the park on the piano as Joel sings is going viral. "Guy's got chops!" Joel declared.

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Retail sales ticked up by 1.1 percent last month according to the Commerce Department. The growth was better than expected, despite higher gas prices and the payroll tax increase that went into effect at the beginning of the year.

Shoppers around the world may have tightened their belts, but the world’s biggest clothing retailer is doing the opposite -- it is expanding fast. The Spanish company Inditex, which owns Zara among other chain stores, has just unveiled an impressive set of figures: a 22 percent jump in profits. Large does not necessarily mean unwieldy, and Inditext is the proof. The world’s biggest clothing retailer is also one of the  nimblest; it invented fast fashion. By manufacturing more than 50 percent of its products itself the Inditex chains can respond quickly to changing tastes.

President Obama is getting together with a group of CEO's today to discuss cybersecurity. Obama will be talking with the CEO's -- such as JPMorgan head Jamie Dimon -- about how the public and private sectors can work together to protect against cyber attacks.

President Obama is meeting at the White House this morning with corporate CEO's to talk about cybersecurity. The CEO's and the administration will discuss sharing information about potential computer vulnerabliess and specific threats.

"There are sensitivities both ways because some of the information the government has comes from intelligence sources and that needs to be protected," said Michael Kaiser*, who works with the National Cyber Security Alliance representing big names from the digital world, including Google and Facebook. "Going the other way, industry wants to be sure that when they give information to the government, that somehow won't come back to haunt them."

Some worry the government will impose technology that it wants on the private sector. 

"It may force things to be deployed which are less than optimal," said Michael Angelo with NetIQ Corporation. "There have been instances where proposed legislation actually recommended technology, and [that] causes issues for growth."

Today's White House meeting comes soon after U.S. officials said they're looking into reports that Obama's own family, including the First Lady, has been hit by hacking.

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article mis-identified the first name of Michael Kaiser. The text has been corrected.

A new clickable atlas shows just how far it is to the grocery store, everywhere in the United States. "Food deserts" are the focus of state, local and federal anti-obesity efforts.

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The 1.1 percent increase is a sign that despite higher payroll taxes and increases in the price of such things as gasoline, consumers are still willing to spend. And that's good news for the economy.

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Retail sales ticked up by 1.1 percent last month according to the Commerce Department. The growth was better than expected, despite higher gas prices and the payroll tax increase that went into effect at the beginning of the year.

Gus Faucher, senior economist with PNC Financial Services Group, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to break down the details behind the numbers.

The allegations against two high school football players in an Ohio town obsessed with high school football have attracted attention around the world.

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The Federal Aviation Administration has approved Boeing's plans for new safety tests that could get its troubled 787 Dreamliner back in the air as early as this spring. After a series of incidents linked to its lithium ion batteries, all 50 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners were grounded earlier this year.

Though Boeing has added extra safety precautions to the 787 and remains upbeat about the plane's future, will passengers feel confident enough to fly it? 

Seth Kaplan, at Airline Weekly, says yes.

"People [will] fly [the] aircraft for the same reason they always do, which is that there is a plane going from where they are to where they are going for about the price they want to pay," Kaplan says, adding that as long as regulatory authorities are on-board, travelers will be too.

Mitch Seavey is 53. His son Dallas holds the record as the youngest musher to win the race. He was 25 when his team finished the 1,000-mile course first in 2012.

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Also: Maurice Sendak's watercolors; the longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction is announced; and complaints against Bob Woodward's book on John Belushi.

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This final note today, courtesy of the Associated Press. The AP got its hands on an application for benefits under the health care law. A draft application, we should say. It's 15 pages long, could take anywhere form 30 to 45 minutes to fill out.

It was characterized as a "daunting" process in some of the reporting we read today.

So we went out and did an unofficial poll: Do you think it's worth it? 45 minutes in exchange for health care benefits?

Tell us what you think in the comments below, or tweeting us @MarketplaceAPM. And listen to the audio above to hear other responses.

The Dow broke another record yesterday and is now on its longest record-breaking streak -- six days -- since 1998. And while that all sounds great, one man is not happy.

Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large at Fortune magazine, is focusing instead on the four-year anniversary of the market bottom.

"The mood was suicidal, the market was crashing, people were scared," Sloan says. "[But] I learned that nothing is forever."

According to Sloan, today's booming market could use a healthy dose of that suspicion.

"I am a student of history, I've seen people stampede up, I've seen people stampede down," Sloan says. "What I try to do is to be half a cycle out of phase."

To hear more investing tips from Allan Sloan, click on the audio player above.