Thousands of acres of the Mississippi Delta are being inundated by floodwaters. Backwater levees along the Yazoo River, which feeds into the Mississippi, are not high enough to withstand this record flood. NPR's Debbie Elliott visits one town in the danger zone — Rolling Fork, home of legendary Mississippi bluesman Muddy Waters.

Rex Ryan, the head coach of the New York Jets, has been called a lot of things: boastful, brash, profane and even fat. But one thing you can't call him is ineffective.

When the Libyan rebels went to look for someone to run their war economy, they went to an unlikely source: An economics teacher at the University of Washington.

Ali Tarhouni fled Libya 40 years ago after speaking out against Moammar Gadhafi. "I was given a choice to leave the country or go to jail," he says. His name wound up on a Gadhafi hit list in the 1980s.

He went back after the civil war broke out earlier this year. Now he's living in Benghazi, working as the finance minister for the rebels. His first job: Raise money to pay for the revolution.

In Chicago, a political transition will soon be under way. Next week, after 22 years in office, Mayor Richard M. Daley will step down, and a new mayor — former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — will be sworn in.

Daley's father, Richard J. Daley, who also served as mayor, was called "the boss." But his son cultivated his own kind of clout and became the city's longest-serving mayor.

'A Zest For Public Service'

When Daley took his first oath of office for mayor, he was quick to acknowledge his family history and to promise change.

Part of a series on the public relations industry

The language of advertising and public relations is meant to seduce you into buying or believing something. The first step — coming up with a really cool name.

Mopping Up The Competition

David Placek was on the team that came up with the names Blackberry and Outback for Subaru. Procter & Gamble once hired his company Lexicon to help create a name for an improved mop.

A top representative of the Libyan opposition is making the rounds in Washington, including a planned visit to the White House on Friday.

Mahmoud Jibril is the prime minister of the so-called Transitional National Council. His goal is to persuade the United States to recognize the body as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people — and to give it some of the Libyan money the U.S. has frozen.

A terrorism trial set to begin in Chicago next week could end up further inflaming tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan. The case involves a man named Tahawwur Rana, who was arrested two years ago and charged with conspiring with others in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Jury selection in his case begins Monday, but the question of Rana's guilt or innocence has taken a back seat to a bigger issue: Pakistan's role in the deadly attacks.

Like a Celtic Ken Loach, the invaluable Peter Mullan has become a passionate chronicler of underprivilege, class struggle and religious oppression. In 2003's The Magdalene Sisters, he highlighted abused girls in Ireland; now he turns to battered boys in Scotland with NEDS, a stringent street psychodrama in which brutality is an infection and every male is a carrier.

One of New Zealand's most popular live-entertainment acts is a set of small-town lesbian leftist twins who've been involved in just about every political issue that roiled their homeland over the last three decades, from apartheid to the nuclear-free zone to Maori land rights. (And, unsurprisingly, gay rights.) Yet somehow Jools and Lynda Topp remain as about as controversial as Bert and Ernie.