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Residents can now get into their devastated neighborhoods without passing through police checkpoints. Meanwhile, there's word that insurance policies may cover less of the cost of damages than in past disasters.

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Also: Mary Karr on addiction and David Foster Wallace; Maria Semple calls Jonathan Franzen her "big daddy."

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After a truck carrying a heavy load struck the side of a bridge that carries Interstate 5 over the Skagit River north of Seattle, the roadway collapsed. No one was killed. Dan Sligh and his wife were in a pickup. "You just hold on as tight as you can," he says of the fall they took.

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Until recently, Google's X Lab was kind of a secret compound, or at least a place that wasn't broadcasting it's tech experiments to the public. Google Glass, the company's web streaming spectacles, was born there.

The Bay Area facility was recently visited by Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel. He says the labs are a place where scientists can think big ideas, with a lot of freedom.

Click on the audio player above to hear more.

Recently The Associated Press, the Onion, and the Daily Telegraph suffered Twitter hacks by a group which calls themselves the Syrian Electronic Army. Now the social media company is offering an extra layer of security. It will send a code to your cellphone that you need to enter before logging in with your password.

Hackers are already claiming they can get around the two-step login process in a matter of minutes.

Will Oremus, who writes for the blog Future Tense at Slate magazine, joins Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson to discuss.

President Obama delivered his most detailed comments yet on the use of drones to kill reputed terrorists yesterday. The use of drones at home and abroad is controversial, and has led several Congressional hearings and sharp debate among law enforcement.

The President confirmed that drone strikes had killed Americans abroad. But he strongly defended the U.S. drone program, saying its use has been important to the war against terrorism.

"Simply put...these strikes have saved lives," Obama said.

John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering and public policy at UCLA, thinks it's a little more complicated.

"I don't think anyone disputes the program has been 'successful' in the sense of reaching targets," Villasenor says. "The question is the significant amount of collateral damage."

Despite controversy surrounding drone strikes abroad, many see a long list of potential positives for domestic unmanned aerial vehicles. Villasenor is a supporter.

"Here at home, unmanned aircraft can be used for agricultural spraying, they can be used for surveying, for search and rescue, for spotting hot spots in a wild fire," he says.

Domestic drone use could become much more commonplace in the next few years. A bill passed in Congress last year requires the Federal Aviation Administration to facilitate widespread use by 2015.

This final note today, in which 9-year-old Hannah Robertson gives the CEO of McDonald's a talking to.

Hannah showed up at the company's shareholder meeting yesterday -- accompanied by her mother, who is presumably the actual shareholder. Anyway, Hannah lined up at the mic during question and answer time and said to CEO Don Thompson, "It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time."

Thompson said first off, they don't sell junk food; that his kids eat McDonald's. And that Ronald's a pretty nice guy.

Sure...unless you're afraid of clowns.

If you happen to have a burning question for the IRS, HUD or the EPA, it’ll have to wait until next week. As a result of sequester, some government offices are closed today as part of the largest wave of government closures since the mid-nineties.

Linda Bilmes, a professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, thinks the sequester, is, to put it quite simply, “dumb”.
 
“Because it treats everything the same," Bilmes says. "It cuts cancer research and air traffic controllers the same as it cuts the window shades at the regional office of the IRS in Cleveland,” she says.
 
The IRS is closed today. Bilmes says the government is thinking short term and forgetting about long term costs. She notes that if a taxpayer makes a mistake during one of the IRS’s furloughed days, it means more work for the revenue service in the end.
 
“Over the long term, it will require more government intervention to sort out the tax form and return it to the tax payer, or audit it, than we’re saving in the short term of furlough,” she says. 

Some government closures may be felt immediately. Tori Lyon, executive director of the Jericho Project, works with the homeless in New York . She says HUD’s closure means funding and paperwork delays for non-profits like hers.
 
“It’s really a hard way to do business when your focus should be on helping homeless people and instead you’re worried about when you’re going to get your contract,” she says.

Harvard’s Linda Bilmes says furloughs may mean a penny saved, but in the end, they really represent a dollar wasted.

Here at Marketplace, we've been following the sequester and its impacts closely. Follow along with our furlough expo below:

Federal Aviation Administration: There has been a lot of talk about the potential consequences of sequester furloughs, but little action -- with one exception: FAA furloughs. Earlier this month, Congress suspended its automatic FAA spending cuts.

Airlines complained the cuts, which decreased the number of air traffic controllers, would harm their bottomlines and cause flight delays. One JFK air traffic controller shared his take on the first day of cut backs. And, never fear, corporate jets will live to fly another day.

Public Defenders: Public lawyers who defend the nation's poor in federal courts across the country say sequester budget cuts will force them to cut back on hours and delay cases. Some federal courts have already announced they'll stop trying criminal cases on Fridays.

Internal Revenue Service: The sequestration may cause more disruptions than justdelayed refund checks at the IRS. The budget cuts could give an edge to tax evaders and cheats, who already cost the government billions of dollars each year. If workers are furloughed, the IRS would have fewer eyeballs to scour tax returns.

Department of Agriculture: The threat of broad, sweeping federal budget cuts points out just how dependent a lot of things are on the federal government, including our dinner choices. Sequestration could leave America's meat inspectors sitting on their couches at home, not inspecting meat. Between March and September, USDA inspectors may need to take as many as 15 days off without pay.

Department of Defense: Some federal workers stand to lose as much as 20 percent of their pay. Erika Townes, a nurse at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland, describes how she plans to cope with the gap in salary. And get advice from our Marketplace Money team on how to deal with the uncertainty of a pay cut.

Curious how today's sequester compares to budget cuts past? Check out our guide here.

The slacker.  The gossiper.  The loud talker.  The incompetent boss. 

Let's face it.  There's probably someone at your job who can make your day miserable and a little less productive.  The latest reality venture from the folks at FOX TV is capitalizing off this frustrating fact of office life with a series about giving workers the opportunity to fire their colleagues.  It's called "Does Someone Have To Go?" and it premieres on the network tonight.

Cris Abrego, executive producer of the series, recently chatted with Marketplace Money host Adriene Hill about the premise.

"It's really about office personnel issues.  It's really about the toxic level of an office sometimes.  And in order to fix that sometimes, does someone have to go?" said Abrego.

His interview got us thinking about how fun it could be to fire fictional office nuisances we all know and love to hate from contemporary workplace TV shows.  Take a look at five characters we'd like to leave with a pink slip and help us decide who should pack up and go.

There is some political willingness, but because China is highly decentralized politically, the Communist Party has only limited influence over provincial governments and how they regulate their dirty factories. The powerful state-owned oil companies have also resisted pressure to produce cleaner-burning fuel.

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There is some political willingness, but because China is highly decentralized politically the Communist Party has only limited influence over provincial governments and how they regulate their dirty factories. The powerful state-owned oil companies have also resisted pressure to produce cleaner-burning fuel.

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The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., just a few miles from where the tornado hit Monday, had warned that bad weather was coming. But experts there say they're surprised the monster storm didn't cause more deaths, and they want to know why.

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A big chunk of private-sector infrastructure opens at New York’s JFK airport today. It's the new Delta Air Lines terminal, with its $1.6 billion worth of lounge area, gates, and services.

Delta’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Anderson, joins Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio to discuss the industry, mergers, passenger fees, and why Delta thinks its about to have its most profitable year ever.

On Delta's business performance:

Anderson: "Delta had a quite profitable year last year and 2013 will be the fourth year in a row of significant profitability. 2013 should be our most profitable year in our history. Fuel prices have come down, but it's almost the quintessential American story of aviation in the U.S., if you think back to 9/11. The industry was rocked by 9/11. Then we had fuel prices run from $20 a barrel to $150 a barrel. Then we went through the financial crisis. And through all of that, without a government intervention, we remade ourselves. And today, Delta is the most profitable airline in the United States, if not the most profitable in the world."

On consolidation, mergers and competition:

Anderson: "The industry went through -- after deregulation -- a fair amount of consolidation. Now, you essentially, if the US Airways-American merger when it's approved, will have four really big strong airlines in the U.S. And when you think about the necessity of having a strong airline industry, you can have a strong airline industry and at the same time have a very contestable, competitive marketplace because you have four big players that each have the capital to invest in their employees, airplanes, communities, and in customers."

On tech at Delta and why the company still uses older planes:

Anderson: "The best example and the best notion of how to explain this is that we think a mix of airplanes is appropriate when you are operating the airline for a return on invested capital.  When you think about it from a technology perspective, just think of it this way: The president of the United States flies around on some of the oldest aviation technology in the world -- that technology was invented in the 1960s-70s. We have a lot of new technology airplanes, but we also have a very good mix of airplanes -- both mature fleet and new fleet."

Click on the audio player above to hear more.

A big chunk of private-sector infrastructure opens at New York’s JFK airport today. It's the new Delta Airlines terminal, with its $1.6 billion worth of lounge area, gates, and services.

Delta’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Anderson, joins Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio to discuss the industry, mergers, passenger fees, and why Delta thinks its about to have its most profitable year ever.

On Delta's business performance:

Anderson: "Delta had a quite profitable year last year and 2013 will be the fourth year in a row of significant profitability. 2013 should be our most profitable year in our history. Fuel prices have come down, but it's almost the quintessential American story of aviation in the U.S., if you think back to 9/11. The industry was rocked by 9/11. Then we had fuel prices run from $20 a barrel to $150 a barrel. Then we went through the financial crisis. And through all of that, without a government intervention, we remade ourselves. And today, Delta is the most profitable airline in the United States, if not the most profitable in the world."

On consolidation, mergers and competition:

Anderson: "The industry went through -- after deregulation -- a fair amount of consolidation. Now, you essentially, if the US Airways-American merger when it's approved, will have four really big strong airlines in the U.S. And when you think about the necessity of having a strong airline industry, you can have a strong airline industry and at the same time have a very contestable, competitive marketplace because you have four big players that each have the capital to invest in their employees, airplanes, communities, and in customers."

On tech at Delta and why the company still uses older planes:

Anderson: "The best example and the best notion of how to explain this is that we think a mix of airplanes is appropriate when you are operating the airline for a return on invested capital.  When you think about it from a technology perspective, just think of it this way: The president of the United States flies around on some of the oldest aviation technology in the world -- that technology was invented in the 1960s-70s. We have a lot of new technology airplanes, but we also have a very good mix of airplanes -- both mature fleet and new fleet."

Click on the audio player above to hear more.

A Stanford MBA who used to work for Google returned to Myanmar to be an Internet entrepreneur. But it's tough to start an Internet company in a country where the power goes out every day.

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A Stanford MBA who used to work for Google returned to Myanmar to be an Internet entrepreneur. But it's tough to start an Internet company in a country where the power goes out every day.

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Two mothers whose sons were killed during the first Gulf War talk about how they became friends after their sons died. The past 22 years would have been tough without the friendship, because, as one tells the other, "what's in our hearts we share."

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TAn unknown number of people and vehicles are in the Skagit River, and rescue crews are looking for them. The bridge collapsed at 7 p.m., but the reason is unclear.

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The jury that convicted her of first-degree murder earlier this month in the brutal killing of her ex-boyfriend were unable to decide whether to give the death penalty.

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A new study unravels the mystery of a peculiar transformation: sometime in the 1990s, the insects developed a sudden aversion to sweet-tasting poisons.

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