NPR News

Business leaders involved in homebuilding, oil drilling or automaking are happy about the way 2013 has kicked off. Lower- and middle-income consumers, on the other hand, are feeling like the year has kicked them in the head.

"Consumers have not rebounded with the arrival of the new year," says Ed Farrell, director of consumer insight at the Consumer Reports National Research Center. "Middle-income Americans were particularly hard hit this month and appear to be losing ground."

The Environmental Protection Agency's once-secret "Watch List" of allegedly chronic polluters is under review by the EPA's inspector general.

The existence of the list was first disclosed by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and NPR in 2011 during a joint investigation of EPA's air pollution regulation. CPI's Jim Morris discovered the list and a CPI/NPR Freedom of Information Act request prompted its public release.

Wednesday, Hasbro announced that it was welcoming a new member of the Monopoly-token family. And because it asked the Internet, it wound up with a cat. (For whatever reason, the Internet was not offered Gotye or a bacon cupcake.)

The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday announced that it plans to halt Saturday mail delivery, a major shift in operations that the agency says it must make in order to keep from bleeding billions of dollars every year. Package deliveries would continue under the plan.

Go to the doctor with an aching elbow, and the prescription may well be a cortisone shot. Ah, relief!

But that short-term gain may make for long-term pain. There's mounting evidence that cortisone shots, long the first response for the painful tendon problem known as tennis elbow, increases the risk of continued problems or relapse one year out.

That may come as a surprise to those who have availed themselves of this seemingly miraculous quick fix.

Have you ever spent a couple of hours working on a craft project — or a presentation for work — and then fallen in love with what you've accomplished? Do the colors you've picked for your PowerPoint background pop so beautifully that you just have to sit back and admire your own genius?

If so, get in line: You're the latest person to fall victim to the Ikea Effect.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm David Greene.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Monopoly players, your game will never be the same. Hasbro, which has been making the for some 80 years, is retiring a game piece. The iron will no longer be passing Go or stopping at Park Place. The company ran a Save Your Token campaign, and only eight percent of respondents fought for the iron. The winner? That little Scottie dog, who may prefer the old iron to the token replacing it - a cat - though players using the cat may get nine chances to win.

More is being learned about Monday's rescue of that little boy in Midland City, Ala.

Scottie the dog is not going to like this news:

Monopoly fans have voted to add a cat to the classic game's cast of eight playing pieces. Getting the boot: Well, it wasn't the boot. It's the iron that got flattened.

The results of Hasbro's Facebook vote were revealed on NBC-TV's Today Show.

Thousands of Tunisians are protesting in the streets after the assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid, a critic of the moderate Islamist group that dominates the country's government. Steve Inskeep talks with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution's Doha Center.