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A few weeks ago, Mike Wendlinger bought himself a Christmas present — a Nook Simple Touch e-book reader. And when he did, he joined a wave of Americans who have combined to make e-readers and their more powerful bretheren, tablet computers, into genuine mass market devices.

Here's your interesting numbers story of the day: Based on The Washington Post's analysis of Internal Revenue Service records, about 98,000 federal employees — including those from the post office — owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes. It's a number that has been reported before but this year, while the number of delinquent employees fell, the total amount owed ballooned by $32 million or 3 percent.

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich today made the case that those who have been collecting jobless benefits for extended periods of time should be required to enroll in job-training programs, saying that "we shouldn't give people 99 weeks to do nothing," our colleagues at WUSF in Tampa report.

John Hawkes' conversation with Melissa Block on today's All Things Considered begins as many of his conversations might: with her noting that when she told people she was coming to talk to him and rattled off his credits, she got a response that he undoubtedly gets a lot: "Ohhh, he's that guy."

Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is hospitalized in Chicago after undergoing surgery to relieve swelling on his brain; doctors discovered he'd suffered a stroke over the weekend.

Women consistently say they suffer more intense pain than men — about 20 percent more on average, even from seemingly gender-neutral ailments like sinus infections.

That's the word from a big new study that tracked reports of pain from people diagnosed with the same medical conditions. So much for the old cliche that women handle pain more easily than men. Or maybe this backs another cliche, that guys are tough and unfeeling.

The case of a U.S. marine accused of killing 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq came to a surprising end today. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of three months in confinement.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The South is cleaning up from yet another round of devastating tornadoes. The storms started first in Arkansas, then brought baseball-sized hail, heavy wind and lightning to parts of Tennessee and Mississippi. But it was Alabama that saw the worst of it. At least two people died with 100 more injured.

As NPR's Russell Lewis reports, the overnight storms hit communities still struggling to recover from a series of devastating tornadoes last year.