NPR News

IPAB sounds like a new Apple product, but it's actually a controversial board that is at the heart of House Republicans' efforts to upend the 2010 federal health law.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the health law, is supposed to help hold down costs in Medicare, the federal health program for seniors and the disabled.

If you were young in the 1960s or '70s and like many of us didn't live around New York City, the first bagel you ever saw and enjoyed was probably a Lender's.

So it's with a sense of sadness and nostalgia that we pass along this, from The Associated Press:

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Suspect In Killing Spree Is Dead, French Interior Minister Says.

-- After Trayvon Martin's Death, We're All Having 'The Talk'.

There were 348,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance benefits last week, down 5,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

At that level, weekly claims remain the lowest they've been since March 2008.

The agency also said "the 4-week moving average was 355,000, a decrease of 1,250 from the previous week's revised average of 356,250."

A national discussion about race continues in the wake of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's death last month in Sanford, Fla.

After a massive manhunt and a two-day standoff at an apartment building in Toulouse, French authorities say a man who claimed to be a member of al-Qaida and to have killed seven people in recent weeks is now dead himself.

According to French Interior Minister Claude Guéant, in the hour before 7 a.m. ET there was a dramatic conclusion to the saga that had gripped France and gotten the attention of people around the world.

The price of gasoline keeps rising for Americans, but it's not because of rising demand from consumers.

Since the first Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, the U.S. has struggled to quench a growing appetite for oil and gasoline. Now, that trend is changing.

"When you look at the U.S. oil market, you see that there's actually no growth," says Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

He says gasoline demand peaked in 2007 and has fallen each year since, even though the economy has begun to recover.

Consider what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans, and you get an idea of the consequences of a cyberattack on critical U.S. infrastructure: No electricity. No water. No transportation. Terrorists or enemy adversaries with computer skills could conceivably take down a power grid, a nuclear station, a water treatment center or a chemical manufacturing plant.