The revolutions in North Africa have put enormous strain on a cornerstone of European integration: the free movement of people and commerce in 25 European states under what's known as the Schengen Agreement.

France reinstated long-abolished checks along its border with Italy after waves of undocumented migrants arrived from Tunisia and Libya. It sent hundreds of migrants back to Italy, prompting Rome to issue temporary travel documents to thousands of refugees. The border row sparked outrage with European Union political leaders in Strasbourg, seat of the European Parliament.

The unrest in neighboring Syria has the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on edge. Thousands of refugees have poured over the border, the demand for weapons is skyrocketing, and the pro-Syrian Alawite minority is warning of chaos if Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime falls.

Though Hezbollah is the best known of the pro-Syrian actors in Lebanon, residents in Tripoli are more worried about the Alawites, members of the same minority that has ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Their numbers may be small, but they are well-armed and fiercely loyal to Damascus.

Unemployment is still at 9 percent, leaving more than 12 million Americans without work. But there are bright spots in the U.S. economy. Planet Money and Wired Magazine have spent the last six months scouring economic data and interviewing people around the country to find out what areas of our economy are doing well. It's part of a series called Smart Jobs.

Countries tend to have personalities just like people do. Researchers have set out to define those differences, using a scale that measures how tight the social rules and standards are. They find that cultural rules — as simple as when and where it's appropriate to kiss — are often shaped by a nation's experience with war, disease and other challenges.

As an American teenager, whenever I asked grown-ups about the Vietnam War, few wanted to discuss it. As an adult, it was just as hard to talk about the war. That's why I never told friends and neighbors about my family's history.

You see, the Vietnam War took place in my family's backyard. My family lived in northeastern Laos, in Nong Het, right on the border with Vietnam. When the CIA needed an ally, they found a charismatic, passionate young man not afraid to die.

That man was my great-uncle, the late Gen. Vang Pao.

We're on a crowded shopping street in Lahore, Pakistan, alongside the shrine to Data Ganj Baksh, one of the holiest places in the country. The shrine of a Muslim saint, it's a giant rectangle surrounded on all sides by giant white stone arches. This location was bombed last year. So we thought Thursday night, a very busy night at the shrine, would be a good night to ask people about what's happening in Pakistan.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will on July 21 officially become the nation's newest government agency — and the only one with the singular aim of looking out for the best interests of consumers. The agency is controversial, and at the center of it all is the woman whom President Obama asked to set it up: Elizabeth Warren.

To celebrate its anniversary the Lexington Opera House is turning itself over to some musical monsters.  Rich Copley, who’s an arts and cultural reporter with the Lexington Herald Leader, offers a preview of their 2011-2012 season.  He also looks ahead at the season planned for next year at the Norton Center for the Arts.

Alphabets and names make games and everybody has a name and all the same they have in a way to have a birthday.

The thing to do is to think of names.

Names will do.

Mildew.

And you have to think of alphabets too, without an alphabet well without names where are you, and birthdays are very favorable too, otherwise who are you.

Everything begins with A.

What did you say. I said everything begins with A and I was right and hold me tight and be all right.

Everything begins with A.

A. Annie, Arthur, Active, Albert.

Max and Kim Voelz served together in Iraq in the same Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit — that's the Army's elite bomb squad.

The couple met on Valentine's Day in 1997 at EOD school. They married on June 12, 1999.

"We deployed in 2003. We were in the same unit. She ripped bombs apart by hand in Iraq just like I did," Max says. "There was no being scared, no doubt, no 'I might die' — we never talked about that."

One night in 2003, Max called in the location of an explosive and sent his wife to disarm it.