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In Ruth Ozeki's new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, a 16-year-old girl in Japan starts a diary, writing that it will be a record of her last days before she commits suicide, and gets an unexpected reader when that diary washes up in Canada.

Melissa Block talks to Philip Reeves about reaction to the selection of a new pope to lead the Catholic Church, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

An inspector general investigation exposed deep fissures within the unit for the past dozen years and gave rise to perceptions of politicized and partial behavior by lawyers there.

On Tuesday, 115 cardinals convened, celebrated mass and then entered the Sistine Chapel for the first day of closed door deliberations on who should be the next pope.

Mr. Stubbs (his tail was bitten off years ago) was taken in by the Phoenix Herpetological Society. There, The Arizona Republic reports, an orthopedic care specialist realized a silicone tail could be designed for him. Now, Mr. Stubbs sports a $6,000 prosthetic.

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.