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.

Johnson Publishing Company, 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.

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 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."

Twenty years ago, it was hard to imagine a grunge album unseating Michael Jackson for the No. 1 position at the top of the Billboard charts, but that's what happened when Nirvana's Nevermind came out in September 1991. Since then, it's sold more than 30 million copies — which is certainly not what the album's co-producer, Butch Vig, was expecting.

But Vig says he remembers, when he first met Nirvana, that it was a band eager to work.

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:

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.

A new survey of admissions officers released today by Inside Higher Ed, a news site for higher education professionals, shows that sometimes your worst thoughts about how colleges make admission decisions are right.

The survey found that in a cash-strapped environment, universities are paying more attention to whether a student can pay their own way and will pay more to attend the school.

Addressing the United Nations on Wednesday, President Obama reiterated his support for the creation of a Palestinian state. Still, the United States is expected to block the Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership.

In the hours following Obama's speech, the kind of backstage negotiations that have dominated activity at the U.N. this week continued.

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.