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The Federal Reserve said it would buy $40 billion a month on bond purchases to stimulate the economy.

The Census Bureau announced that 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2011 — a slight drop from the year before. But income disparities continue to grow. Host Michel Martin talks with Harvard professor William Julius Wilson, author of the 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.

Protests over a video insulting the Prophet Mohammad have spread throughout the Muslim world. Host Michel Martin discusses reactions and why it has elicited such anger with Al Jazeera's Abderrahim Foukara and Georgetown University Professor John Esposito. Advisory: This segment may be uncomfortable for some listeners.

Some 15 percent of the U.S. population lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to a report from the Census Bureau. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, co-authors of The Rich and the Rest of the U.S., argue that both political parties virtually ignore the issue of poverty.

One of the sticking points in the Chicago teachers' strike is how teachers should be evaluated — and the role student performance should play. Districts are grappling with the issue nationwide, but there's little agreement on how to implement such a system well.

Free speech is not absolute. But the sweeping nature of the First Amendment puts the United States at odds with most of the world.

Starting Saturday, California shoppers will begin paying sales tax on more online purchases. It's the eighth state to pass a so-called "Amazon tax," named after the mega e-tailer. But most of the sales tax owed will remain uncollected.

The unemployment rate dropped last month, but it's not all good news. Some 844,000 people have given up on finding a job for one reason or another. Some have decided to go back to school to train for a new career, but others have simply become too dejected to keep trying.

The State Department is mourning those killed in the violence in Libya, while trying to calm the storm the anti-Islamic video has caused — add to that, standing by free-speech principles and facing an ever-skeptical audience in the Arab world.

Enlisting nomadic African herders finally helped the world eliminate the cattle plague rinderpest. But the veterinarians, who had the power to shut the program down, had to be rewarded for success, too.