In recent years, China's real estate market has boomed. A three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai overlooking the river would cost more than $3 million. But that's beginning to change. The slide comes as the world's most dynamic economy grapples with other challenges, including massive local government debt and slowing growth.

A disputed election in the Democratic Republic of Congo has returned sitting President Joseph Kabila to power for the next five years. The opposition claims there was election fraud. Congo's influential Catholic church has voiced reservations about the conduct of the elections.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets over the weekend to denounce alleged election fraud in parliamentary elections earlier this month. David Remnick, editor of "The New Yorker," has written an article about Russian's resistance to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and talks to Steve Inskeep about Russian politics.

Calls for a boycott against home improvement giant Lowes have been streaming in. The controversy involves Lowes advertising on the reality TV show All-American Muslim, which follows the daily lives of five Arab-American families in Dearborn, Mich. Lowes pulled its ads after a conservative group complained.

Hundreds of Occupy protesters marched to Seattle's Harbor Island Monday, and briefly blocked traffic coming into the city's busy port. The Seattle protest was the culmination of a day of coordinated protests at ports up and down the West Coast.

Becoming a small farmer is an entrepreneurial dream for some people. But when the dream comes true — even when it’s successful — the reality can be quite different from expectations.

By Dean Borg.

DAVE MARS / Columbia Water and Light / Energy saving tips  

Although all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction have characters — be they animals, hobbits, dragons, humans, werewolves or whatever — I've found that there are some books in which these characters are three-dimensional and awfully interesting. (Whether or not they're likable is another question.) These characters become, as the story progresses, more and more real to me. It's as though they've become good friends.