NPR News

Local food is fashionable. Customers are swarming farmers' markets. Organic vegetables sell at a premium. So what's to keep a young, smart, enthusiastic would-be farmer from getting into this business and making a good living?

An Associated Press story that says a "28-year-old German is the designer of an award-winning new textile made entirely from milk that's environmentally friendly as well as soothing to people with skin allergies," caught our eye this morning — especially when we saw that the noo ... er, new ... product is called Qmilch.

That's "q" for quality and milch for milk (in German). Sounds like a winning word for Scrabble fans.

For all of us who want to know when the economy's going to get moving again and when we'll start to see some consistently healthy job growth, the conversation that opened Morning Edition today was enlightening — though not particularly encouraging.

Persistent shortages of life-saving drugs led President Obama to issue an executive order last month to try and ease what one administration official called a "dire public health situation" that has created problems for patient care.

Two new economic indicators:

-- Sales in the retail and food sectors rose 0.5 percent in October from September, the Census Bureau says. They were up 7.2 percent from October 2010.

Bloomberg News says the increase in retail sales was "more than projected as Americans snapped up new Apple Inc. iPhones and demand for automobiles improved."

Good morning.

Our early headines today:

-- New York Police Clear Occupy Wall Street Protesters From Park.

-- Penn State Scandal: More Suspected Victims; Sandusky Says He's Innocent.

Other top stories of the day include:

As former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was being heard on NBC-TV last night declaring "I am innocent of those charges" and that he's not sexually attracted to young boys, The New York Times was landing with a report th

Police temporarily cleared Zuccotti Park early Tuesday so that sanitation crews could clean the site Occupy Wall Street protesters have inhabited for two months. About 70 protesters were arrested including some who chained themselves together.

Veterans Day was last week, and with it came a reminder of a World War 1 strategy. Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on the fake city France was creating in hopes German bombs wouldn't hit the real Paris. The sham city was never finished because the war ended.

Saying that "the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the clearing of Zuccotti Park early today.