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It's "outrageous and there's no place for it" if the Internal Revenue Service did, as it has admitted, single out some conservative groups for extra scrutiny in recent years, President Obama said Monday morning during a news conference at the White House.

Experts say the housing market is recovering, but the percentage of Americans who own homes is lower than it was a decade ago. Host Michel Martin speaks to Time's Rana Foroohar who looks at this and other paradoxes in the housing market, and asks if the recovery is really just a mirage.

House Republicans just passed a bill they say will help people juggle work and family. Supporters say the bill gives workers more flexibility by letting them trade for time off. But critics, including Senate Democrats, say it's just a ploy to pay workers less money. Host Michel Martin learns more from NPR's Senior Business Editor, Marilyn Geewax.

Millions of Americans rely on food stamps to keep from going hungry. They can also use them to buy sugary drinks. Some groups, including the National Center for Public Policy Research, say that's not right. Host Michel Martin discusses this with the Center's Justin Danhof, and University of Illinois Professor Craig Gundersen.

New Orleans might be famous for its culinary legacy, but the Big Easy also has neighborhoods without access to fresh, healthy food. Now actor Wendell Pierce is bringing grocery stores to some neglected parts of his home town. Host Michel Martin speaks with Pierce about his new grocery chain, Sterling Farms.

According to a new report, historically black colleges and universities are attracting more Asian and Latino students than ever before. Host Michel Martin discusses that and other findings with the report's author, Marybeth Gasman, and Morgan State University President, David Wilson.

The prosecutor in former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's trial on charges that he had sex with an underage prostitute is seeking a term of six years behind bars and a lifetime ban on the former premier from holding public office.

Overtime or comp time? Which one suits you best?

Both you and your boss may agree it would be best for you to work a sixth day when a big project is due in March, and then take off for a long weekend in June. No big deal.

But under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, private employers must pay time and a half to workers who put in more than 40 hours on the job in any one week.

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that an Indiana farmer infringed on Monsanto's patent when he planted soybeans that had been genetically modified by Monsanto without buying them from the agribusiness giant.

Almost half of teenagers cop to texting while driving. And those texting teens are more likely to make other risky moves while in the car, too.

That includes not wearing seat belts, drinking and driving, and riding with a driver who's been drinking, a study just published in the journal Pediatrics finds.

Car crashes have long been the leading cause of death for teenagers, even before texting entered the scene.

"The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their names — as the agency admitted Friday — to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to 'make America a better place to live,' " The Wall Street Journal reports.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry "made a real breakthrough" last week in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin when they agreed there will be an American-Russian peace conference on Syria, British Prime Minister David Cameron told NPR on Monday.

Calling his brother a hateful monster, Onil Castro has told CNN he hopes Ariel Castro "rots in that jail."

"I want him to suffer," he said of Ariel, the 52-year-old man accused of holding three young women captive in his Cleveland home for about a decade — years in which Ariel Castro allegedly raped them repeatedly and subjected them to other physical and mental torment.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

With a commanding lead for his party in the vote count following Saturday's parliamentary elections, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is returning to power with a clear mandate to focus on the grave problems facing his nation, as NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from Lahore for Morning Edition.

British Prime Minister David Cameron meets at the White House with President Obama on Monday. Steve Inskeep talks to Cameron about the options for dealing with the Syrian conflict.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm David Greene. What the mayor of Dorset, Minnesota lacks in experience he makes up for with youthful enthusiasm. Mayor Bobby Tufts is four years old. He won his seat by having his name picked out of a hat. That's an annual tradition for the small town of 22. Mayor Tufts is celebrated in town as a singer, a dancer, and fisherman.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

Etta May Lopez needed help. She wanted to quit smoking. She decided she needed to go someplace where she could not go buy cigarettes. And the place that came to mind was jail. Ms. Lopez says this is the reason she went to a jail, walked up to a Sacramento sheriff's deputy and slapped him in the face. The deputy took her inside the jail where she slapped him again. After pleading no contest to a misdemeanor, she faces 63 smoke-free days.

If you said the "s" word in the ninth century, you probably wouldn't have shocked or offended anyone. Back then, the "s" word was just the everyday word that was used to refer to excrement. That's one of many surprising, foul-mouthed facts Melissa Mohr reveals in her new book, Holy S- - -: A Brief History of Swearing.

David Greene speaks with Jessica Buchanan and her husband Erik Landemalm about their book Impossible Odds. It's the story of Jessica's abduction, along with a fellow aid worker, by Somali pirates in 2011. In the first of the two-part interview, we hear how Jessica was abducted, and how she refused to fall into despair while in captivity.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

On a Monday, it's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene. Good morning.

The last time Nawaz Sharif was prime minister of Pakistan, it did not work out so well for him. Sharif won a big election, moved to consolidate his power, and named a new army chief - only to see that same general overthrow him in a coupe in 1999.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm David Greene.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep.

Again and again, President Obama's administration tries to pivot attention toward East Asia. Administration officials believe China and its neighbors are where the economic future lies.

GREENE: And yet it's the Middle East that keeps demanding the president's attention. It brings to mind that line from F. Scott Fitzgerald's: So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Google Glass isn't even for sale yet, but it's already facing backlash.

As a Republican senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe was known for her willingness to stand alone. A moderate with independent views, she had substantial influence in the health care debate as both sides vied for her vote. Earlier this year she left the Senate, out of frustration, she says, with the inability to get anything done.

Larry Bright holds his 3-year-old son's hand while the boy steps through a leafy playground in Silver Spring, Md., and practices counting his numbers in English.

At the top of the slide, the boy begins counting in his other language: Vietnamese.

Bright, the boy's father, is African-American; his mother, Thien Kim Lam, is Vietnamese. The couple has two children.

"They are a perfect mix between the two of us," Lam tells Arun Rath, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

Comedian Seth Meyers will replace Jimmy Fallon on NBC's Late Night, the network announced Sunday.

Meyers, the longtime SNL cast member who anchors the show's "Weekend Update" segment, will take the 12:35 a.m. segment from Fallon, who's replacing Jay Leno as host of the Tonight show.

Any gardener will tell you that compost is "black gold," essential to cultivating vigorous, flavorful crops. But it always feels like there's never enough, and its weight and bulk make it tough stuff to cart around.

I belong to a community garden in Washington, D.C., that can't get its hands on enough compost. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that the U.S. Composting Council was connecting community gardeners with free material from local facilities through its Million Tomato Compost Campaign.