NPR News

Egyptian authorities are preventing six Americans, including the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, from leaving the country. They work for non-governmental agencies that were raided by Egyptian security forces last month.

After more than a century of providing services for immigrants and the poor, the organization founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams is shutting down. The Jane Addams Hull House Association has struggled financially in recent years.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

In Europe, there's a movement to provide better protections for Web users. The European Union has outlined tough new data privacy recommendations that it wants to become law. Among its targets, the American companies Facebook and Google. Google just announced a new privacy policy that would track all the Web movements of its registered users.

Teri Schultz is in Brussels and reports on EU efforts to strengthen online protections of personal information.

A Los Angeles restaurant famous for its 9 cent cup of coffee is raising the price to 45 cents -– 50 cents with tax. Management at Philippe the Original told the Los Angeles Times they can no longer keep up with the cost of coffee.

In Cuba this weekend, President Raul Castro will preside over the first meeting of the island's all-powerful Communist Party since last April. Castro has lowered expectations for any new economic reform announcements, saying that internal party affairs will be the business at hand.

But many Cubans will be watching for signs of who is rising in the party's ranks — and who could take over after Raul and Fidel Castro, both in their 80s, are gone.

From Pensacola to Miami, the Republican primary is in full swing. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are blanketing the state with rallies and personal appearances. The airwaves are full of campaign ads.

But Jeanne Casserta has heard enough. With several days left to go in the campaign, she stopped by the library in Coral Springs this week to cast her vote. She said she's heard plenty from both the Romney and Gingrich campaigns.

Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been making the rounds lately. He's out of prison. He has a new book. He's in a talkative mood. So I figured it was a good time to ask him about the business of lobbying — not about what he did that was illegal, but the ordinary, legal stuff.

The firm he worked for was called Greenberg Traurig. I chose a year at random when Abramoff was working there, and picked a client who I hoped would be fairly typical. I chose Tyco International, a multinational corporation that in 2003 gave Abramoff's firm $1.3 million.