Morning Edition

This story is part of our occasional series Fiscal Cliff Notes.

If the Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire, the majority of Americans will see their taxes rise. Those who will see the largest increase are the wealthy.

Dr. Hamilton Lempert, an emergency room doctor in Cincinnati, works almost exclusively on overnight shifts.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of a musical format many of us grew up with: the compact disc. It's been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just the latest musical format to rise and fall in roughly the same 30-year cycle.

Compact discs had been pressed before 1982, but the first CD to officially go on sale was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news begins with more fallout from the financial crisis.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

A sensational political scandal in China involves murder, abuse of power, and an attempted defection. And the case of senior politician Bo Xilai took another twist today. After months of speculation, it has just been announced that he has been expelled from the Communist Party and will face criminal charges. NPR's Louisa Lim is on the line with us from Beijing, and Louisa, what kind of charges is Bo Xilai going to face?

A young boy in Canada wondered where butterflies go in the winter — and spent 40 years trying to answer that question.

In 1973, Dr. Fred Urquhart — all grown up by then — placed an ad in a newspaper in Mexico looking for volunteers to tag and observe butterflies and find their destination. A woman named Catalina Aguado and her American husband, Kenneth Brugger, answered that ad. They spent two years searching in remote parts of Mexico.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

European finance ministers have asked Spain if it might need a few bucks to tide it over - in particular, $125 billion to prop up failing banks. The Spanish government is expected to announce today how much of that sum it will need.

Shoring up banks is one step Spain is taking to prevent economic collapse. Another step is to slash more than $50 billion dollars in spending.

Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid on Spain's new budget, unveiled last night.

PNC Bank says its website is the latest victim of a denial of service attack. Users who tried to access the bank's websites had trouble loading the pages, or couldn't get into their accounts. But officials say the accounts were not compromised.