When the weather's good, Aaron Naparstek likes to pedal his two young kids to Hebrew school on a special Dutch-made bicycle. It has a big wooden box in the front where the kids ride.

The ride takes Naparstek across Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Prospect Park West — and what might be the most controversial bike lane in America. Naparstek, who's also the founder of the website Streetsblog, supports the new lane.

Read an excerpt from Brooke Gladstone's The Influencing Machine.

Just as buzz of LinkedIn's initial public offering settles, Facebook's chief operating officer said a Facebook IPO is "inevitable."

Sheryl Sandberg made the comment at the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Thursday. Reuters reports she did not provide details.

So how did things go at McDonald's annual meeting Thursday?

Fox News says it has confirmed that pro wrestling superstar "Macho Man" Randy Savage "died after having a heart attack while driving his Jeep Wrangler," in Tampa Bay.

The local Bay News 9 adds that:

One day after President Obama said the U.S. wants Israel's pre-1967 war borders to be the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition to that position. Obama, meanwhile, said he still believes "it is possible to shape a deal."

The two leaders met at the White House.

Pakistani officials said today that during a trip to Beijing, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had inked a deal in which China would immediately provide Pakistan with 50 JF-17 fighter jets.

The AP reports:

Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said Pakistan was seeking delivery within six months of the JF-17 Thunder jets, a single-engine multirole fighter developed in cooperation between China and Pakistan.

While the ashes still smolder from President Obama's failed nomination of Goodwin Liu for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it's probably worth asking, how can the Senate get past the cycle of retribution that makes it resemble the Appalachian feud the Hatfield and McCoys?

If you're a reality TV snob, maybe you think one hyped-up singing competition is just like any other.

But from the start, NBC's The Voice seems built as an answer to complaints about American Idol. And now they have emerged as mirror images of each other.

One of the biggest knocks on Idol is that great singers lose if they don't have an Idol-extruded generic popularity. Even the show's judges lamented the early departure of one of Idol's best singers this year, the charisma-challenged Pia Toscano.

Eddie Simmons was relieved to hear that the Mississippi River crested slightly lower than expected north of him in Vicksburg, Miss., confident his house would survive the flooding that is plaguing many states.

Simmons, a retired logger, is recovering from hip-replacement surgery and can barely leave his bed. Despite water swamping his front yard and creeping beneath his house in Port Gibson, he has decided to ride it out.