NPR News

In his new book, West of Here, novelist Jonathan Evison takes readers back to one of the last unexplored territories of the American West: Washington state's Olympic Peninsula. The novel centers on the story of a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest, told from the perspectives of the people who first settled there and their modern-day counterparts, who now have to live with the decisions that their ancestors made. In essence, the book is a conversation between past and present, between hopeful settlers and modern-day strugglers.

When protesters took to the streets in Cairo, President Obama spoke early and often, mentioning the crisis in front of TV cameras five times in two weeks.

But the unrest in Libya presents a very different set of political challenges for the White House, and President Obama has responded largely by working behind the scenes.

In his only public comment on Libya thus far, Obama did not call for Gadhafi to leave.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a Senate banking panel that the Fed has marginally upgraded its forecast for the U.S. economy, which it now expects to grow at a rate from 3.5 to 4 percent in 2011.

On Capitol Hill, Bernanke also spoke about the gold standard, the dollar — and gave the GOP's proposed spending cuts some political cover.

After focusing for weeks on his proposal to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled his full budget proposal Tuesday — a plan that cuts $1.5 billion in aid to governments and public schools and government but avoids any tax or fee increases, furloughs or widespread layoffs.

The disagreement between the Obama administration and Republican governors over how much say the federal government should have over Medicaid spending escalated today.