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House budget chief and former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan unveils the House GOP budget plan Tuesday morning. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats will do the same. For more on the GOP plan, Renee Montagne speaks with NPR's Tamara Keith.

For only the second time ever, the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging a state with fraud, for allegedly misleading investors about the health of its pension funds. The SEC says the state of Illinois did not properly inform investors that its pension funds were significantly underfunded when selling bonds from 2005 to 2009. This is the latest fiscal black eye for a state with a pension shortfall approaching a whopping $100 billion. The state has agreed to settle the charges.

As the conclave to select a new pope gets under way at the Vatican, what do American Catholics want from the next pontiff? Renee Montagne speaks with Greg Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life about their most recent survey.

A New York state judge has sided with the beverage industry and struck down the Bloomberg administration's controversial ban on big sugary drinks. The judge ruled that the rule, put in place by New York City's health department and set to take effect Tuesday, is "arbitrary and capricious."

A Seattle widow's one-stop estate planning advice blog was inspired by her own paperwork frustrations after her husband's death. Chanel Reynolds offers a checklist of documents to prepare, a will template and a list of details to write down, like passwords to online accounts.

"The blunt truth is men still run the world," says Silicon Valley executive Sheryl Sandberg — and the problem begins as early as the playground, where assertive boys are called leaders, and assertive girls are called bossy.

Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan took a bit of a professional risk this week by publicly declaring his vegetarianism. He's not alone: Many Americans say they've cut back on meat in recent years, and like Yonan, they cite health as a primary concern.

For Navy Lt. Mark Radlinski, coming home from Iraq was both the best and worst day. But his brother had no mixed emotions — it was all positive. When Felicia Banks deployed with the Army, her children were not as aware of what was going on. They knew they were thrilled to have her back, though.

Recently, a few musical alchemists have been tweaking popular songs, converting minor keys to major ones and raising questions about how the human brain processes music.

The jobs report for February came in surprisingly strong this morning. Employers added 236,000 jobs to payrolls and the unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.7 percent.