All Things Considered

Aung San Suu Kyi would probably not be the symbol of Burma's quest for democracy without her experiences at Oxford University. She studied there in the 1960s and raised a family there in the '70s.

Suu Kyi returned to her alma mater Wednesday to receive the honorary degree she was unable to collect for more than a decade while under house arrest.

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SIEGEL: Well, actually, in Washington...

BLOCK: Where franchisee meets lawmaker...

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SIEGEL: Yes, that's right. Some of the nation's largest pizza chains are lobbying on Capitol Hill to deliver a piping hot message.

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From NPR News, this ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel in Washington, D.C.

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Well, if like me, you're more than a little mystified by Operation Twist, the Federal Reserve policy that's being extended, join me now for a four-minute tutorial. We've got a very classy tutor, economics professor Alan Blinder of Princeton, who is a former Fed vice chairman. Welcome back to the program.

ALAN BLINDER: Thanks very much, Robert.

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What do the Latino officials want to hear? Well, we're joined by Arturo Vargas, who is the executive director of NALEO. Hi, welcome to the program.

ARTURO VARGAS: Hello.

SIEGEL: And first, is the policy that President Obama announced last week about deportations, does that effectively counter concerns in your group about his policy of deportations of people said to be criminals?

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The Senate has narrowly rejected an effort to scrap tough limits on mercury emitted from power plants. The Obama administration has trumpeted the rules affecting coal-burning power plants as an environmental triumph. But to industry groups, and many Republicans, these rules are the latest salvo in a war against coal. NPR's Tamara Keith reports.

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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted today to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. He's accused of refusing to turn over certain documents related to the controversial gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious.

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It's like discovering a distant cousin, a really distant cousin. It's like learning that someone you had barely heard of is actually part of the family. In this case, the family is the Indo-European family of languages. And the umpteenth cousin is a language called Burushaski. It's spoken by about 90,000 people, the Burusho people, and nearly all of them live in Pakistan. A few hundred live in India.

Just to give a sense of what it sounds like, here's a joke in Burushaski that we came across online.

For Langdon Cook, a walk in the woods isn't that different from a walk through the produce section of the supermarket. He's a writer, blogger and all-around outdoorsy type, but in outdoorsy Seattle, he's made his name primarily as a forager.