After weeks of leaving deficit-reduction talks to Vice President Biden, President Obama will meet personally with Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate. They're trying to work out a plan to stem the tide of red ink. But no matter what happens, the government will need to keep borrowing money. And that means lawmakers will need to raise the federal debt ceiling within the next five weeks.

On Thursday, Robert Gates will step down as defense secretary — a position he held for more than four years, overseeing two wars. He's the only person to hold the job under two presidents from different parties.

For the past two years, he's attained a kind of "wise man" status within the Obama administration. While he makes weekly visits to the White House, he has also spent a great deal of time in khakis and a baseball cap out in the field with men and women in uniform.

Steve Inskeep has the Last Word in business.

Drug companies aren't the only ones making money inventing new medicines for the market. A man in Massachusetts has brought three drugs to market almost on his own. His process is the same as the big drug makers, but he farms out each aspect of the process to independent labs and specialists. When the drug starts to succeed in trials, he sells it to one of the big companies. Curt Nickisch of member station WBUR reports.

Steve Inskeep has business news.

Earlier this year in Pakistan, the governor of Punjab province, who was an outspoken defender of civil rights, was gunned down. His daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, is a journalist in Pakistan, and she talks to Steve Inskeep about her father's legacy and her own fight against extremism.

The Souris River is slowly retreating in Minot, N.D., where the river peaked early Sunday at levels not seen in more than a century. About 4,000 homes are flooded and a quarter of the town's 40-thousand residents are displaced.

There is a constant stream of dump trucks crossing the main bridge in downtown Minot. Construction crews continue to build, fill and shore up levees aimed at keeping what's left of the town dry.

The city's records date back to the late 1800s, and they show there's never been this much water coming through town.

Gerontologist and commentator Mark Lachs says research in aging shows that once people reach a certain age, rates of disease, disability, and death start to decline.

I have a 98-year-old patient who's not only independent but rather dashing. He recently asked a series of questions that reminded me of one of the most intriguing scientific papers in gerontology.

Is it okay if he has a little cheese and butter from time to time? In modest amounts, he assured me.

In Russian culture, one iconic image is the elderly woman — in Russian, you call her a "babushka" — sitting on a roadside, selling vegetables from her garden.

One group of babushkas from the village of Buranovo, 600 miles east of Moscow, is blowing up that stereotype.

When Egyptian protesters clamored for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February, State TV journalist Shahira Amin took a bold move: She quit her job, joined the demonstrators and denounced her network's coverage.

Mubarak fled his presidential compound in Cairo on Feb. 11, and Amin and many others believed it would usher in a new era of media freedom.

She soon rejoined Nile TV, the English-language division of State TV, and said she hoped to help reform the agency.