Last weekend, pizza magnate Herman Cain did something that surprised the political world: He came in first in a Florida GOP presidential straw poll.

One way Cain has attracted the attention of Republican voters is with what he calls his 9-9-9 plan. It's a cleverly marketed idea for changing the nation's tax code.

"We need Greece," Maurice Minot, a Frankfurt taxi driver, told me, swerving in excitement. "We need Spain, we need Italy. It's the dream for Europeans, for more than a hundred years."

For Minot, as for many Germans on both sides of the debate, the question of bailouts goes beyond narrow self interest. It gets at what it means to be German, and what it means to be European.

Klaus Frankenberger, an editor at the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, points to the painful labor reforms Germany went through a few years ago.

Adam: When I say "Henry Shrapnel, Jules Leotard, Robert Bunsen," you think — what?
Me: That they're inventors?
Adam: No. Better than that. Each one has become immortal. They're nouns!
Me: Is that a good thing, becoming a noun? ...
Adam: Are you kidding? It's a wonderful thing. A thing to sing about.
Me: You're going to sing?
Adam: If I may ...

As best as I know, I own the distinction of being the first human being to call our national attention to a linguistic phenomenon.

This was back in 1972, in an article in Sports Illustrated about Robyn Smith, who was then the best female jockey in the land. Smith referred to married couples as "you guys." I was so bemused that someone might actually refer to a woman as a guy that I felt obliged to mention it in the piece.

In an interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, Pakistan's foreign minister said her country and the United States "need each other" and "are fighting against the same people" but "Pakistan's dignity must not be compromised."

Increasingly visible, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. census they're living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade to about 650,000, and more than 130,000 same-sex households recorded themselves as husband or wife.

Seven former and current students from a prestigious New York high school have been arrested for allegedly running an SAT cheating ring.

The Nassau County district attorney announced today that Samuel Eshaghoff, a 19-year-old Emory University student, took the SAT exam for at least six John L. Miller Great Neck North High School students. Each one of those students paid Eshaghoff between $1,500 and $2,500. Eshagoff graduated from Great Neck in 2010.

COMMERCE - Autopsy results are pending in the death of an 18-month-old female child, found deceased at a residence in Commerce.

In a move that's bound to stress Israeli-Palestinian relations further, Israel's Interior Ministry announced it would allow 1,100 Israeli homes to be built in East Jerusalem. Palestinians want that area as the capital of their future state.

Reporting from Jerusalem, NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro filed this report:

The homes will be built in Gilo, a huge east Jerusalem settlement. The United Nations and the European Union criticized the move today restating their position that settlement activity is illegal under international law.