Mark Memmott

With the president praising their plan, and with critics from both sides of the political aisle taking shots at it, the "Gang of Six" is this week at the center of the deficit-reduction talks in Washington.

The "Gang of Six" bipartisan plan has emerged as a possible framework for a deficit-reduction deal because it has "Republican senators acknowledging that revenues need to be part of a balanced package and you had Democratic senators acknowledge that we're going to have to make some difficult spending cuts," President Obama told NPR this afternoon.

Breaking news from NPR's Carrie Johnson:

"The Justice Department inspector general has opened an investigation into possible retaliation against a whistle-blowing agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.

"British Phone-Hacking Probe Expands Beyond Murdoch Papers" is the headline on one of CNN's main stories right now.

Planet Money spotted this before us, but it's still an interesting story and there are more developments to pass along today, so here goes:

Kudos to the BirdAbroad blog for this week posting photos and a detailed description of what sounds and looks like an Apple store in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming — but is in fact a pretty good imitation.