NPR News

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with another bye-bye at Barclays.

Whether economic sanctions can force a government to change course is far from clear, but Iran should be a good test case.

A European Union embargo on Iranian oil took full effect this week, complementing U.S. measures that have grown much more severe in recent weeks. Other Western sanctions now in place target Iranian banks, foreign companies that provide shipping insurance for Iranian oil tankers, and foreign firms that invest in the Iranian oil industry.

A new nonprofit organization that's supposed to take charge of expanding scientific research on the International Space Station has had a rocky first year but now is starting to show what it can do.

The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space just signed one agreement with a company not traditionally linked to research in space: the sporting goods company Cobra Puma Golf.

The Morning Edition mailboxes are always overflowing with books sent by publishers. And recently, a fair number have fallen into a category you might call "dog memoirs" — books about how dogs transform their owners' lives.

When Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. ruled that Twitter owns tweets made by OWS protester Malcolm Harris, and, furthermore, that these tweets would not be considered private in the eyes of the law, his opinion invoked the following metaphor:

Turkey's state TV is reporting that a Syrian general and 85 soldiers have defected and are seeking refuge in Turkey.

The AP reports that this just adds to a growing wave of defections. The AP adds:

Every day at 11 a.m., a few big banks tell the British Bankers' Association what it costs them to borrow. Out of that comes LIBOR — the London Interbank Offered Rate, a dull but vital interest rate that underpins trillions of dollars of transactions globally, from home mortgages and personal credit cards to major corporate lending.