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Alondis "Peaches" Jackson has lived in abandoned houses in New Orleans for at least two years. She is one of thousands of those still homeless four years after Katrina.

Orders to U.S. factories rose for the fifth time in six months, a sign that the manufacturing sector is continuing to recover from a steep downturn. Orders rose 1.3 percent in July, after a revised increase of 0.9 percent in June.

Recovering heroin addict Richard Farrell says a piece of his heart is going to war in Afghanistan, the world's top producer of the narcotic. Farrell's son William, a member of the U.S. Navy, is being deployed there. Farrell says the enemy his son will face has everything to do with heroin.

Ever since he burst onto the scene in Dakar, Senegal, in the early 1970s at age 12, Youssou N'Dour has been a sensation -- a musical chameleon capable of a seductive whisper or a siren's cry.

The Apple iPhone is an iconic American product, invented, designed and sold by a California company. But when trade figures are tallied, the iPhone is counted as a Chinese import. That means every iPhone sold here makes the U.S. trade deficit with China grow.

Bob Mondello looks at a new documentary about the economic meltdown and examines where it falls in a spectrum of current fact-based films.

Congress has pushed back the deadline for deciding what to about the Bush-era tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year. The decision to not do anything until after the midterm elections is making it hard for some small-business owners to decide whether to hire new workers or invest.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, has made it known that he is interested in winning a government contract to build a high speed rail in Florida. Steve LeVine of Foreign Policy argues that this could revive part of President Obama's presumed-dead energy plan.

A tentative agreement between the White House and Republicans in Congress would reduce payroll taxes by 2 percentage points in 2011. The possible change would allow employees to keep a little more money in their wallets. For more details, Steve Inskeep talks with NPR's John Ydstie.

California lawmakers appear to be on the verge of an agreement to fix the state's $41 billion budget deficit. The legislators have been deadlocked for months. Unless lawmakers hammer out a deal by Friday, the state won't be able to pay for some mandated programs.