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"My dad was such a comedian," Jennifer Lickteig tells Kansas City's KSHB-TV. "He loved the Chiefs, so we had to let him have the last word."

Which explains why his obituary begins this way:

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JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST:

Just days before the movie's premiere, there's word that during the filming of director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as many as 27 animals used in its production died at the farm in New Zealand where they were housed.

Animal wranglers tell The Associated Press that there were "bluffs, sinkholes and other 'death traps' " at the farm. Three horses died, along with "six goats, six sheep and a dozen chickens."

After the president's re-election, a slew of racist comments appeared on Twitter and Facebook. Guest host Celeste Headlee discusses some of the legal and privacy issues raised when people vent online. She speaks with Rey Junco of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and The Root's Political Correspondent Keli Goff.

Fiction and nonfiction releases from Richard Mason, Jean Baker, A.J. Jacobs, Bill Cosby and Geoff Dyer.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Celeste Headlee. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, the fiscal cliff is seen as a serious threat to the nation's financial health but for federal workers the impact could be even more immediate and devastating. We'll take a closer look at that in a moment.

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CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Celeste Headlee. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, the reelection of President Obama triggered a huge amount of racism on social media, particularly on Twitter. We'll talk about the psychology behind those tweets.

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener (yes, that's his name) says last year's law ordering those who bare everything in public to put a towel between their bottoms and public benches or restaurant seats hasn't stopped the complaints he gets about men who prefer to go without (clothes, that is) in the city's Castro District.

Two positive economic indicators:

-- "Sales of existing homes increased in October, even with some regional impact from Hurricane Sandy, while home prices continued to rise due to lower levels of inventory supply," the National Association of Realtors reports.

There was no violence, as had been feared, when hundreds of thousands of people gathered Sunday in Mumbai, India, to express their grief over the death of Bal Thackeray, "a Hindu extremist leader linked to waves of mob violence against Muslims and migrant workers in India."

Erin McKeown's music is a bit hard to describe. It is music and lyrics with meaning so it makes me think, but it's also playful and so it makes me smile. I'll have another chance to hear it soon, since Erin has made a new record, called MANIFESTRA. The album, her seventh, was funded by her fan base via PledgeMusic and will be out on January 15. Today we premiere her song, "Jailer."

Given my constitutional opposition to women being told to smile and look happy, it takes a lot for me to pick on scowling.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Pressure For Truce Grows, But Israel And Hamas Continue Firing.

-- U.S. Policy Is To Say 'Burma;' Obama Also Uses 'Myanmar'.

Other stories in the news:

We've noted before that whether you call the Southeast Asian nation Burma or Myanmar has mattered to many for many years.

It's official U.S. policy, out of support for the opposition that has pressed for democratic reform in that country, to call it Burma. That's the name the nation was known by before a military regime took power in 1989 and started using Myanmar.

(We rewrote the top of this post at 7:45 p.m. ET to sum up the day's news.)

The sixth day of Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip saw Israel striking a media center and other Palestinian targets, raising the Palestinian death toll to more than 100. Palestinian militants fired 95 rockets at Israel; a third of them were intercepted by Iron Dome, the Israeli missile shield. Also Monday, a flurry of diplomacy that attempted to mediate a cease-fire between the two sides.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne with a credit card that's worth its weight in gold. For those who want to buy bling with bling, a bank in Kazakhstan plans to offer a Visa card made of gold, plus a couple of dozen diamonds and mother of pearl. It will require $100,000 upfront and an annual fee of $2,000, but there are no late fees and you get a free iPhone. It won't be the first bejeweled card, just the first made of pure gold. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Does technology enrich our lives? This weekend in Glasgow, Scotland, it did. A Bank of Scotland ATM was dispensing cash at double the amount requested. Lines formed around the block until the police came. The bank says it's unlikely they'll try to get their money back. And they apologize for, quote, "any inconvenience caused." We suspect no apologies needed. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Marital fidelity is a sensitive subject for many in the military. Relationships are often strained by distance, frequent moves, the dangers of war. Gen. David Petraeus' admission that he had an extramarital affair has led some military families to reflect on the difficulties of keeping their personal relationships whole. Reporter Joanna Richards spoke with families from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, in upstate New York.

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Emergency managers around the nation have been paying close attention to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. From California, NPR's Richard Gonzales a look at what lessons disaster planners there say they've learned.

RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: Superstorm Sandy didn't sneak up on anybody.

CHRISTOPHER GODLEY: They had days of warning before it made landfall, before the damage really started to occur, so people could prepare themselves, their families, their neighborhoods.

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NPR's business news begins with credit card debt rising.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: Americans are running up more debt on their credit cards, and that could be a good sign. The average American had almost $5,000 of credit card debt in the third quarter of 2012, up almost 5 percent over the previous quarter.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

The day had started with more intense air attacks between Israel and the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza. Overnight air raids pushed the Palestinian death toll to more than 90, with more than 700 wounded. The numbers on the Israeli side are dramatically lower, with three dead so far.

Hamas militants have fired hundreds of missiles at Israel since the conflict intensified last week. Many of those missiles have fallen prey to Iron Dome, the U.S.-funded anti-missile system deployed in key areas across Israel.

In the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, guests at a wedding had barely managed to get through the hors d'oeuvres when a siren sounded warning of incoming rocket fire.

But instead of taking cover, the guests point at the sky and gawk as Israel's Iron Dome missile interceptor system explodes six Hamas rockets in midair.

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And in Austin, Texas, after a five-year absence, Formula One racing returned to the U.S. A Formula One track called the Circuit of the Americas, was inaugurated over the weekend in a race won by Lewis Hamilton. Formula One is immensely popular in Europe and much of the world, but it's failed to win a big audience in the U.S., dwarfed by the homegrown culture of NASCAR and the Indy circuit.