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The Pentagon's hunt for an alternative to petroleum has turned a lowly weed and animal fat into something indistinguishable from jet fuel, and now the military is trying to kick-start a new biofuel industry.

"To flip the line from Field of Dreams, if the Navy comes, they will build it," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a recent speech.

There was outrage yesterday over the $16 muffins and $32 snack packs purchased by the Justice Department in recent years.

Today's this is outrageous news:

Diplomats owe the city of New York $17.2 million and owe Washington, D.C., more than $340,000 for unpaid parking tickets, Washington's WTOP-radio reports.

Now that the execution of convicted cop killer Troy Davis has been carried out in Georgia, the morning-after stories are focusing on the controversy over his punishment and the effect the case has had on all those involved.

I first came across Sultana's Dream while doing research for a novel set in Bangladesh. I had traveled to Dhaka, the capital city, and stumbled on the Liberation War museum, where my visit coincided with an exhibition on the story.

I became fascinated by the life of its author, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, when I learned that, like me, she had been raised by a progressive Muslim family and actively encouraged to seek an education.

Florida will be the center of Republicans' political universe for the next three days, starting with a televised GOP presidential debate Thursday night and wrapping up Saturday with a presidential straw poll.

Get used to it.

The spotlight will remain on Florida long after the last vote is tallied this weekend.

The protests of the Arab Spring have made it a risky time to be a ruler in the Middle East. But King Abdullah II of Jordan, who is among the world leaders at the United Nations this week, also sees opportunities.

"In certain countries, you're going to see revolution after revolution, until it calms down," the king tells Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep. "What we're trying to do in Jordan is [to] do evolution."

Johnson Publishing Co., the black American icon based in Chicago, is hiring. It's a sharp turnaround for a company that saw circulation numbers and revenue for its flagship Ebony and Jet magazines plummet over a number of years. Those numbers are on the rise now, and company officials say questions about Johnson Publishing's ability to survive the turmoil in the media industry are no longer relevant.

With the White House and Congress at loggerheads over how best to help the U.S. economy, some have pinned their hopes on the Federal Reserve to help fill the void.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the central bank still has a range of tools it can use to prop up the economy. But Greg McBride of the financial website Bankrate.com is not holding his breath.

The big losers of the Arab Spring in Egypt aren't just Hosni Mubarak and his allies.

Before the February revolution, one of every seven Egyptians made a living in the tourism industry. But nearly seven months after the popular uprising, foreign tourists are still largely staying away.

Their absence has delivered a multibillion-dollar financial blow that is reverberating from luxury tour operators down to vendors in Cairo's bazaars.

The Republican presidential candidates debate again Thursday night — this time in Orlando, Fla.

Mitt Romney, who comes to Florida as the former front-runner, is eager to find a way to knock the newest candidate in the race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, off his perch as the new GOP leader.

We already delivered the news earlier, but NPR's Robert Smith just delivered it in a more lyrical manner for our Newscast unit.

There's not much more we can add. You just have to listen:

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Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told a Senate panel Wednesday that the company faces tough competition and isn't using its dominance in Internet search to stifle competitors.

Schmidt is testifying at a hearing examining whether Google is abusing its power to thwart competition by placing links to its own content and services at the top of search results to the disadvantage of its rivals' links.

I don't want to freak you out. OK, maybe a tiny bit. Being a little scared might get you to wash your hands more often. And that would be a good thing for everyone.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday took the latest step in its effort to revive the economy, saying it will shift its portfolio of Treasury securities in a bid to drive down interest rates.

In recent months, the Fed has come under increasing fire both from politicians and regular citizens. One such critic is Steve Dore, a 65-year-old resident of San Antonio, Texas, who has a T-shirt that reads "End the Fed" in bold print.

Dore has written some 25 songs about the Fed, one of which argues: "Government promise ain't worth a damn. The Fed is an outrageous scam."

Update at 11:21 p.m. ET. 'Defiant Until The End':

Jon Lewis, of WSB Radio, who was one of the media witnesses, said Troy Davis was "defiant until the end," maintaing his innocence in his final minutes. The execution started at 10:53 p.m. Davis was asked if he had any final words.

Davis lifted his head up from the gurney and said he wanted to talk to the family of the victim.

"The incident that night was not my fault," he told MacPhail's family. "Look deeper into this case to find the truth."

With a diplomatic showdown looming at the United Nations, Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank both see their futures at stake, and emotions are running high.

In the Jewish settlement of Itamar this week, residents staged a march around what they call "the neighborhood." About 200 people were walking past hillside homes, separated by less than a mile from the large Palestinian city of Nablus.

Moshe Goldsmith, the mayor of Itamar, said the march was meant to show the world that the settlers are opposed to any U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state.

The two American men who stepped out of an Iranian prison Wednesday after spending more than two years in custody may have a tiny Persian Gulf nation to thank for greasing the wheels of their release.

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, had been accused of espionage along with fellow American Sarah Shourd and sentenced to eight years in prison. They were freed in exchange for $1 million and flown to Oman.

As Libyans work to form an interim government, some of those competing for power are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, raising fears that Islamist radicals may try to hijack the revolution. But many Libyans say those fears are mostly in the minds of Westerners.

Former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi banned the Muslim Brotherhood. The group attempted to overthrow Gadhafi in the 1990s, and he responded with a ferocious crackdown that put many of its members in jail.

Earlier this month, we reported a heartbreaking story about Billy, a San Francisco Giants fan, who showed up to every game for years, until one day he just stopped coming. The Giants went searching. Giants manager Bruce Bochy told NPR's All Things Considered that he was worried, "hoping to get some good news."

Contestants on the Season 12 Premiere of TV's The Biggest Loser last night may not be the only people motivated to lose weight. Viewers are influenced by weight-loss reality shows, too.

Imagine a city like Los Angeles disappearing from the map completely. That's exactly what happened to Chaohu, a city in eastern China's Anhui province with a similar population — about 4 million. The people have remained, but the city has vanished in an administrative sleight of hand.

That was the Kafkaesque reality for Chaohu's inhabitants, who went to bed one night and woke up the morning of Aug. 22 to find out that their city no longer existed. For many, their first inkling that something had changed was from the local news.

If you've been counting on your daily dose of merlot to stave off mortality, you might want to consider Plan B.

The links between red wine and longevity aren't nearly as strong as they once seemed, according to new research in the journal Nature. In fact, the research calls into question the whole mechanism used to explain wine's power to extend life.

Sorry, oenophiles.

Welcome to The Salt, NPR's shiny new food blog, brought to you by NPR's Science Desk. But it's not just any food blog.

This blog is about what we eat and why we eat it.

We'll be serving up culture and science, farming and business, along with a side of skepticism and a dash of panache.

We'll celebrate food, but also take a hard look at where it comes from, how it gets here, and what it does to us and the planet.

We want to know not just the good, but the bad and the ugly stuff, too.