Polling found Congress' most recent approval rating is 9 percent. Other things were tested too, and it was discovered root canals are more popular than lawmakers. On the bright side for Congress, it is more popular than the Ebola virus and playground bullies.

Students of Don Gillett at Wrightsville Elementary in York., Pa., are in a program tracking books they read. If they total 2,000, he says he'll get a tent and a grill, and live on the roof for awhile.

In 1961, Robert Frost became the first poet to read at a U.S. inauguration when he recited "The Gift Outright" at President John F. Kennedy's swearing in. Since then, only three other poets have taken part in subsequent inaugural ceremonies: Maya Angelou, Miller Williams and Elizabeth Alexander. Now, there's a fifth.

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In Israel this week, the election campaign for a new parliament kicks into high gear. Last night the first television ads aired. Networks are required to leave long stretches of space for the ads. With the vote just two weeks off, opposition parties are hoping their TV spots will at last weaken the frontrunner, the prime minister's Likud Party.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports from Jerusalem.

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New York State already has some of the nation's toughest gun laws. And today Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to propose far-reaching new gun control measures during his State of the State address.

Getting those reforms through the state legislature may be another matter, as NPR's Joel Rose reports.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday delivered his State-of-the-State speech. It contained no new policy objectives. It was designed to boost morale in state where he said 346,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

The International Labor Organization, the U.N. agency that deals with labor issues, has released a report on the growing number of domestic workers around the globe, and their lack of legal and worker protections. There are almost 53 million domestic workers and 83 percent are women. They have often been ignored by policy makers.

Target says it will match the online prices of Amazon.com and others. Target knows that increasingly consumers are using mobile devices to check prices online as they cruise the aisles. And if the price is better somewhere else, that's where they'll buy it.