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The U.S. Postal Service lost some $16 billion last year and continues to bleed red ink. Congress has been unable to agree on a plan to turn things around. The latest proposal would allow the post office to end Saturday delivery in a year, and enable it to ship wine and beer.

Existing concepts in science like linear induction motors and magnetic levitation are back in the spotlight thanks to Elon Musk's proposal for a rail system that can travel faster than the speed of sound.

The website Groklaw, which for 10 years demystified complex issues involving technology and the law, is shutting down. Editor Pamela Jones writes that she can't run the site without email, and that since emails' privacy can't be guaranteed, she can no longer do the site's work.

One word: oversupply. Too many ships were built before the 2008 global economic crisis. This drove down shipping rates, forcing the industry to scale back. The effects are still being felt. This week, a Finnish shipbuilder said it would close a yard that employed 700 workers.

Serena Williams will take on Victoria Azarenka in the U.S. Open final. Host Scott Simon talks to NPR's Tom Goldman about tennis, as well as the season opener of the NFL.

When the swirling, howling winds of the 1930s Dust Bowl gobbled up farmland from Texas to the Dakotas, the federal government planted 100 million trees to act like a giant windbreak. It worked. But now, after years of drought, those old trees are dying.

China runs the largest censorship machine in human history, researchers say. But Harvard studies of Internet postings in China suggest that even vitriolic criticisms of leaders and state policies are not what officials want to censor.

Norman Rush's newest novel takes a geographic hiatus from Botswana, his usual literary location. Instead, reviewer Drew Toal says the book is instead full of irritating intellectuals, postmortem scandal, and a group of collegiate clowns who come together after the death of an old friend.

The group that claimed responsibility for the attack on the mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, began as a militia fighting in Somalia. But it has evolved into an al-Qaida affiliate that views Somalia as a front in the war against the West.

What happens when you ask architects to re-imagine a structure mandated by the Jewish holy book? A freaking cool cultural piece of art, that's what.