NPR News

Last week, it was another blizzard.

Now, it's "just" some of the coldest weather so far this winter.

Hamburgers, pizza and other Western foods are popular in Iran. But Iranians who want to whip up those dishes won't be getting any cooking lessons on TV. The Iranian government has issued a ban on cooking shows that feature foreign cuisine.

From earliest times, the plight of the stranger, the outsider, has always made for a great story. In the Old Testament, Ruth follows her bereaved mother-in-law, Naomi, and embraces a new culture, customs (and husband) to make a home for them in a land far from her own. From ancient texts to the present day, perhaps this is what reading is always about — finding a space to explore worlds and lives that are not our own, to look in on places where we don't belong.

The Sparrow

There's a new job searching tool available on the web and it's causing a lot of buzz. The .jobs domain is a site that allows businesses to post job listings for free, and job-seekers to search for without paying. It's being supported by some of the world's largest companies, but it could be bad news for other career-searching sites like Monster.com.

Renee Montagne talks to Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who wrote the 1999 Booker-nominated "Map of Love." Soueif has been observing and participating in the protests in Cairo, and she talks about what she has seen and what it means for the country.