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Audie Cornish and Melissa Block have more on some websites that deliver emergency compliments and virtual hugs when you need them most.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. In Britain, palace officials have confirmed that Prince William's wife, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, is in the very early stages of pregnancy. The former Kate Middleton has been hospitalized with severe morning sickness but her health is not believed to be in danger. From London, Vicki Barker has the story.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)

Around 20,000 kids will be spending more time in school next year. A public-private partnership was announced on Monday to fund longer school days at some low-performing schools in five states.

On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner answered criticisms that Republicans have not proposed a deficit plan to counter the one from President Obama which they find so objectionable. Boehner's plan takes elements from presidential nominee Mitt Romney's proposal. David Welna talks to Melissa Block about the counteroffer.

News Corp announced on Monday that it's making some changes to its management and structure. The company has decided to end The Daily, its tablet-exclusive newspaper. They have also named the management team for its split off newspaper division. David Folkenflik talks to Audie Cornish.

A group of atheists has filed a lawsuit seeking the removal of a statue of Jesus on federal land near a Montana ski resort. Melissa Block talks with William Cox of Kalispell, Mont., who is the plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Ford Motor Company is changing the name of it Lincoln brand to the Lincoln Motor Company. Ford is also planning to sell the hybrid version of their flagship sedan, the new MKZ, for the same price as the gasoline version.

Life can be especially cruel for girls growing up on Kenya's Swahili Coast. Some families sell their daughters to earn the bride price, while others encourage them to become child prostitutes for tourists. The girls drop out of school and have babies, and their childhoods are stolen. Now, a coalition of educators, religious and traditional leaders is fighting back.

Thirteen teenage girls — all with babies on their laps — are gathered around a table in the town hall of Msabaha village, not far from the beach resort of Malindi.

Ten years after jumpstarting Mitt Romney's political career with a widely-praised Winter Olympics, officials in Utah say they're ready to do it all over again.

But there's no word on whether the unemployed Romney is interested in reprising his role as Salt Lake City Olympics chief. He would be 78, after all, when the 2026 games roll around. That's the earliest opportunity for a Winter Olympics in the United States.

During the presidential campaign, President Obama said that one of things he would do more of during his second term is engage the American people. One attempt at such a thing came on Wednesday, when the White House announced the #My2K Twitter hashtag that they hoped Americans would use to continue debating the "fiscal cliff."

Kishi Bashi, my favorite new artist of the year, now has a holiday song. It's such a great way to bring us back around to a musician I first discovered while sifting through 1,300 songs for the South by Southwest music festival back at the beginning of the year. We all ended up falling in love with his music.

The story of Bridget Hughes' missing hat struck a chord with many. It was the floppy hat her mom wore years ago when she had breast cancer and was having chemotherapy. Mom died when Bridget, now a volunteer preschool teacher in New Mexico, was seven.

When Christine Rowan gave birth prematurely in August, her new baby was having problems breathing. So Rowan brought her daughter, Zoe, to the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for genetic testing.

"It's funny because when we first had the testing done, we didn't even really think about the fact the testing was going to lay out all of her DNA," says Rowan, 32, who lives in Northern Virginia.

But while Rowan and her husband were waiting for the results, questions started popping into their heads.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

And now, The Opinion Page; in fact a first, an Opinion Page series on the latest round of arguments on taxes and spending that have come to national attention under the ominous term the fiscal cliff. At the moment, the White House and congressional Republicans are at an impasse, and if that sounds familiar, that's because they arrived at a similar stalemate last year. When a subsequent supercommittee failed to reach agreement, the clock started ticking.

The United States is increasingly concerned that Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons might be used by the regime of Bashar Assad or that it could fall in the hands of terrorists, as the country's civil war continues.

NPR's Tom Bowman tells our Newscast unit that Syria has one of the largest stockpiles of deadly nerve agents in the Middle East. Tom filed this report:

We're close to reaching the breaking point. The White House knows it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress know it. Wall Street knows it, economists know it. We've been pushing this off for quite some time, and now it's time to take action.

Of course, I'm talking about solving this week's ScuttleButton puzzle.

A notorious group of Internet trolls says it has unleashed a worm that has littered Tumblr blogs with inflammatory and racist posts.

According to the technology site The Verge, GNNA, whose full name we can't print in a family blog, says the worm has infected more than 8,000 accounts. The worm spread when users were logged into Tumblr and clicked on a viral — in more ways than one — post that asked for all Tumblr users to "drink bleach and die."

David Oliver Relin, a journalist who had reported from around the world before gaining fame — and getting mired in controversy — as co-author of the best-selling Three Cups of Tea, took his own life when he died on Nov. 15 in Oregon, The New York Times reports.

It got that word from Relin's family.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We're going to spend the next few minutes talking about the world of work. Later, we take a look at this week's Washington Post Magazine and we'll speak with a writer who says that the so-called millennial generation, especially the women, really are changing what work looks like.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Court will decide if some states need to get permission from the federal government before making changes that affect voting. Host Michel Martin speaks with Spencer Overton of George Washington University and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation.

Telecommuting and flexible schedules are the latest tools for establishing work-life balance. 'Generation Y' women are taking greater advantage of them. Host Michel Martin talks to Laura Sessions Stepp, who has written about the career choices of millennial women in this week's Washington Post Magazine.

Here's the news you've been waiting for, royal watchers:

"The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby, St James's Palace has announced." (BBC News)

That would be Catherine, wife of Prince William (the Duke of Cambridge). They, of course, are the potential future king and queen.

The BBC adds that:

Whenever the Syrian military fires across the border into Turkey, it threatens to ignite a major confrontation.

But sometimes the Turks choose to play down cross-border attacks on their territory, and an episode Saturday shows how complicated these shootings can be in a war that continues to evolve.