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It goes back to a single page in a report written decades ago by U.S. consultants, and funded by the U.S. State Department.

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It goes back to a single page in a report written decades ago by U.S. consultants, and funded by the U.S. State Department.

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Political unpredictability in the region hampers all kinds of businesses: from stone-cutters and shoemakers to IT. Business owners in the West Bank say Secretary of State John Kerry's commitment to remove barriers to commerce might go further than actual cash.

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Political unpredictability in the region hampers all kinds of businesses: from stone-cutters and shoemakers to IT. Business owners in the West Bank say Secretary of State John Kerry's commitment to remove barriers to commerce might go further than actual cash.

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NASA and Google have come together to buy a new kind of computer that the manufacturer says runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But some physicists counter that the machine, known as the D-Wave Two, has never demonstrated a phenomenon known as "quantum entanglement."

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It's a hard time to be a saver. The return on a savings account doesn't even keep up with inflation, and that has led many savers to ask: What should I do with my money? NPR's Uri Berliner takes $5,000 out of his own personal savings and explores various investment opportunities.

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Some single baby boomers are moving into group houses, a college-era solution to their modern needs. Housemates share costs, socialize, and cheer each other on through life's thick and thin.

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Far-reaching legislation that grants a chance at citizenship to millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a solid bipartisan vote Tuesday night. It passed after supporters somberly sidestepped a controversy over the rights of gay spouses.

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After the announcement that David Beckham is retiring, there's been much discussion about how good of an athlete he's really been. Sports commentator Frank Deford says Beckham's talents have been overlooked.

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Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division dealing with nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status, will not testify on Wednesday despite a congressional subpoena, her attorney says. She is accused of closely scrutinizing conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status.

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The waiver means the details of Fazliddin Kurbanov's alleged crimes remain mostly a mystery.

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A high water table and red clay that soaks up the moisture make dry basements an expensive and iffy proposition right in the heart of Tornado Alley.

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The Guardian Council, which vets all candidates, approved eight names, but left out an influential former president and a top aide to the current president. Their exclusion gives establishment-friendly candidates a clear path to the presidency in the June 14 election.

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A growing number of companies are packing their workers into ever smaller workspaces. They're ditching offices and cubicles in favor of a more open office plan. Some companies say they're creating a hipper, more collaborative work environment. But there may be an even more important strategy in play: cost-cutting.

Before they became a dystopian symbol of the American office, cubicles were meant to be ... nice. You know -- a slick and sophisticated place where the average worker and her, um, machines... could have a little privacy. It was all part of a concept that the furniture maker Herman Miller called "the action office."

“She needs a special, easy-to-get-to place to work...she needs space for her machines along with room for herself,” says the announcer in one vintage Herman Miller ad. “She's an action secretary and she needs action office.”

But collaboration is where the action is today. Cubicle walls are coming down so workers can communicate more easily. 

That's the case at the Minneapolis office of Cassidy Turley. It's a commercial real estate services firm. The company recently moved into a new space with a more open floor plan. In the old days, most of the staff had private offices. Now, only three do. Everyone else sits or stands at desks -- with no cubicle walls separating them.

Noam Newman is an associate broker there. He says he doesn't mind overhearing his colleagues' phone calls, because he can take pointers on deal-making.

“If I am hearing them, it's probably a positive, because I'm hearing how they interact with clients,” says Newman.

He may not mind the energetic chatter around him, but the office can get pretty loud with people working elbow-to-elbow in some cases.

Still, lots of companies are overhauling their office plans in a similar way. Over the last couple decades, the average worker has gone from having 90 square feet of space to just 75. That's according to the International Facility Management Association.

One of the biggest factors driving the trend is this: less space means lower costs. Dennis Panzer is the managing principal of Cassidy Turley. He says his company chose to go with an open plan for a lot of reasons. But there was a big savings. In the company's old office, which occupied way more square footage, the rent was 50 percent higher.

“If you can save a dollar in cost, there's no additional revenue that needs to be produced, and it can fall right to the bottom line,” Panzer says.

But Susan Cain says, “There is a hidden cost, in productivity and in morale.” Cain is a former Wall Street attorney turned author and speaker. And she's not a big fan of open office plans. She says they make it hard for workers to concentrate.

She's not advocating sticking with the lonely cubicle. Instead, Cain thinks companies should have a healthy mix of collaborative spaces, like cafes, and quiet places, like libraries.

“Make sure you are building in zones of privacy throughout, quiet places where people can go by themselves or with one other colleague to really focus,” she says.

That might be wishful thinking, though, given that some companies are doing extreme office makeovers, and nixing employee workspaces altogether. Dennis Panzer at Cassidy Turley says some accounting firms assume their workers will embed at clients' offices and not need a desk back at the mothership.

Panzer says it's all fair game when you're looking to cut costs.

“The way we say it our office: if you show me one company that's expanding I can show you five that are downsizing,” he says.

If workers aren't thrilled about all the downsizing, there might be some comfort in knowing that at least it's just their cubicles getting whacked, and not them.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington today, testifying before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The topic? Taxes. Specifically, how much Apple is paying on the $100 billion or so in cash that's held by its overseas subsidiaries. Cook says Apple isn't doing anything wrong.

"We pay all the taxes we owe -- every single dollar," Cook says. "We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws.”

The chairman of the committee, Sen. Carl Levin from Michigan, disagrees. He says Apple has moved money overseas and "as a result of that shift...they don't owe the taxes, but they avoid paying more taxes than they [should] pay."

Levin wants the public to know more about how large companies like Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard avoid paying more in taxes. He says the purpose of the committee was to "shine a light on the tax code and how it functions with real people, real businesses. And what we learned is the real world situation is just totally unacceptable."

He's betting the attention on the tax loopholes will help stir his fellow Congress members to action.

"We've got 30 of our largest corporations in the world that earn $160 billion in profits that pay no taxes. And unless the public is upset about that [and] understands how companies are able to avoid paying taxes, then Congress isn't going to be put under the kind of pressure that Congress needs to be put under, in order to reform this system."

Levin won't seek re-election in 2014. The tax reform he is pushing for? He's not sure if it could happen before he retires.

"There are certain unjustifiable loopholes which should be closed and that revenue ought to go to deficit reduction or protecting our kids or protecting our health or protecting our skies," he says. "There's a lot of things we need to do, that we've cut back on."

The tornado that hit Moore, Okla., was 1.3 miles wide, the National Weather Service said this afternoon. It's officially been classified as EF-5 -- that is, the strongest of possible tornadoes with winds at least 200 miles an hour.

Since the twister left town, hundreds of rescue and emergency crews have descended on the town. For others who live nearby, the best thing they could do is go to work.

"It's better than just me sitting at home watching TV all day," say Lori Ohgi*, who works at the Locke Supply Company. "But it's really, really, really bad...When I came work this morning -- I could hardly see through the tears, number one. But you drive for a whole mile down the highway, and when you look to the left or the right as far as you can see, it's absolutely flattened. Completely flattened. All those poor people."

Travel was difficult when she came in, she said, due to all of the help surrounding the town.

"The highway is going about five miles an hour, and they've got the military and just helicopters, crews, emergency vehicles -- just everything going on."

At work, there's paper receipts instead of the usual printouts. Conditions could be better, but they're going to work through them.

"There's no power, there's no water," she said. "But we have generators. We've had no customers today but [at] the company, this is what we do."

"I've lived here for seven years and this is the third time since I've lived here that a tornado has come as close as a quarter-mile from me. And it's scary, it's really scary. It's a beautiful, beautiful state. It's the best people. I love it, but those tornadoes are scary. And it looks like a warzone. It's the worst thing I've seen in my life."

*Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Lori Ohgi's name. The text has been corrected.

Nick Stremble, a registered nurse and manager at the hospital, described what he saw Monday. As winds ripped through the facility, people started "to tumble and roll and be pushed down the hall," he said.

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Once NOAA realized conditions were ripe for severe weather they put their satellites on overdrive. They beamed back amazing images.

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The nation's largest group of nutritionists is urging the FDA to reject the dairy industry's petition to change the definition of milk. The petition aims to allow aspartame or other alternatives to be used to sweeten milk in an effort to boost consumption in schools.

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Douglas Shulman, who led the IRS during the years when agency workers targeted tax-exempt applications from conservative groups, did his best to deflect accusations from unhappy senators.

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