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In recent decades, a quiet revolution has been transforming the way Washington works.

Because the U.S. government does not have the workforce to complete all of its tasks, it employs private companies like Booz Allen Hamilton to do the work for it. Booz Allen is the company where Edward Snowden, who said he leaked secrets about the National Security Agency, most recently worked.

Over the past 25 years, this contract workforce has grown and plays a major role in the U.S. government, says Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

The administration had been trying to appeal a judge's ruling to make the morning-after birth control pill available over the counter with no age restrictions. The Justice Department said it would obey the order — sort of. The FDA may soon approve the over-the-counter sale of Plan B One Step without a prescription.

Some churches have said they will end their affiliation with the Boy Scouts after its decision to allow openly gay members to join. Others, including Southern Baptists, are considering their next move. Another group plans to hold a meeting in Louisville later this month with parents who say they want a more Christian organization for their children.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the public has had several glimpses of the government's growing surveillance powers. The Bush administration had a program so secret, it dispensed with judicial warrants altogether. The resulting scandals and lawsuits appear to have done little to roll back the spying.

Cell phone rings. Loud talking. Candy wrappers crinkling. Even fights in the aisles. Have Broadway audiences gotten ruder?

When surveillance laws were revised in 2012, Congress expressed great concerns that without proper oversight intelligence agencies would engage in the sort of monitoring that has been uncovered in recent days. Congress put a number of safeguards in place, but rejected others that would have guarantee more public discussion about what the NSA does.

The Senate voted Monday to approve its version of the farm bill, a massive spending measure that covers everything from food stamps to crop insurance and sets the nation's farm policy for the next five years.

The centerpiece of that policy is an expanded crop insurance program, designed to protect farmers from losses, that some say amounts to a highly subsidized gift to agribusiness. That debate is set to continue as the House plans to take up its version of the bill this month.

As we head into the summer months, NPR is looking back to the summer of 1963, a momentous year in civil rights history. As part of NPR's partnership with The Race Card Project, which asks people to distill their thoughts on race to six words, Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris is asking people who were on the front lines of history to share their memories and their thoughts on race in America today.

Twenty Feet from Stardom, filmmaker Morgan Neville's new documentary, is a reminder that most of pop music's catchiest hooks, riffs and refrains were sung by voices harmonizing in the background. Neville says he wanted to put backup singers — black, female and honed in church — front and center.

"I was really more interested in people who were voices for hire," he says, "who were able to walk into sessions never knowing what they had to do and could bring it."

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. In Stockholm, engineers on the Swedish commuter rail line have found a new way to skirt a dress code. The drivers were told no more shorts, even though the heat in the cab can top 95 degrees - just long pants or skirts. So many of the male engineers are now wearing skirts. Women are allowed to, so the company says it will not discriminate. Something tasteful in an A-line, or pleats, perhaps? It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Sheriff's deputies on patrol in the Florida Keys spotted a deer on the side of a road with an empty bag of Doritos stuck on its head. "It must have wanted the last chip in the bottom," a deputy told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The story of Venezuela's Eloisa Barrios is especially revealing because so many of her relatives have been killed. Revealing because of who she believes pulled the trigger.

Some weeks ago, Barrios climbed into our van for a drive to a cemetery. The burial ground is outside a village in the Venezuelan countryside. We went there to visit the Barrios family dead.

She told us nine relatives had been killed in shootings over the past 15 years. All nine were young men.

Winners of 14^th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition were announced Sunday night in Fort Worth, Texas. The competition was held over 17 days.

Vadym Kholodenko, 26, of Ukraine, won the top prize of $50,000, but he said the rankings don't mean that much.

"It's kind of fun for audience, for press. It's interesting to put first, second, 10^th and so on. But in life, not so important," Kholodenko says.

And, he says, so much of life involves competing no matter what you're doing.

City life can be harsh on people. For example, it pushes people to work longer and sleep less. A new study suggests that city life can have a somewhat similar effect on birds too. It shows urban blackbirds wake up earlier and go to bed later than their forest dwelling cousins.

In Sanford, Fla., Monday, jury selection begins in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer charged with shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Police at first declined to charge Zimmerman after the shooting because of Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which gives immunity to people who, fearing for their lives, use deadly force in self-defense.

The Guardian has identified its source for a series of reports it published in recent days on secret U.S. surveillance activity. The paper says the source is Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA who now works for a private-sector defense and technology consulting firm.

Chinese exports grew by only 1 percent in May — the lowest rate in almost a year. Weak exports to the U.S. and Europe are the main culprits. And imports of the raw materials that fuel China's economy, such as copper and coal are also down.

Saudi prince and conspicuous billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal is suing the magazine in a London court. In its annual list of the world's wealthiest people, Forbes estimates bin Talal's fortune at $20 billion. But the prince says the magazine publicly short changed him by nearly $10 billion.

The Guardian newspaper says the insider who blew the whistle on the NSA's probing of major U.S. Internet and telecom companies is a 29-year-old analyst who's been working for the agency under a government contract. His name is Edward Snowden.

As privacy advocates and security experts debate the validity of the National Security Agency's massive data gathering operations, the agency is putting the finishing touches on its biggest data farm yet.

The gargantuan $1.2 billion complex at a National Guard base 26 miles south of Salt Lake City features 1.5 million square feet of top secret space. High-performance NSA computers alone will fill up 100,000 square feet.

The Utah Data Center is a data farm that will begin harvesting emails, phone records, text messages and other electronic data in September.

In California, a high-profile lawsuit is seeking to halt construction of a new $500 million rail yard next to the Port of Los Angeles. Activists, including a national environmental group that's spearheading the opposition, say the massive project would mean even more pollution for nearby neighborhoods that already have some of the worst air in the country.

For many years, high medical bills have been a leading cause of financial distress and bankruptcy in America. That pressure may be easing ever so slightly, according to a survey released earlier this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But 1 in 5 Americans still face hardships due to medical costs — and African-Americans continue to be the hardest hit.

If you walked into New York's Morgen's Restaurant in the 1950s, you'd be greeted at the door by a perfectly dressed and powdered blonde who'd smilingly show you to your table and hand over a menu. That hostess, Audrey Elaine Morgen Volk, is at the center of her daughter Patricia Volk's new memoir, Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, And Me. In it, Volk describes how two vivid women helped her move into adulthood: One was the iconoclastic Italian fashion designer Elsa Luisa Maria Schiaparelli; the other was her mother, a loving, difficult and icy stunner.

Syracuse city worker Gary Clifford saw a mother duck leading a dozen little ones down a busy street. He followed in his truck, stopping traffic along the way. Until they walked across a storm drain and four ducklings fell in. Syracuse.com reports a city crew was called in and took the feathered family to a creek.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Linda Wertheimer.

He has performed around the world for millions of screaming fans. Now, Justin Bieber is taking his talents off the planet. Bieber put a quarter-million dollar deposit on a seat on Virgin Galactic's spaceship. The singer wants to shoot a music video in space.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield already did that last month, singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on board the International Space Station.

It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

The Labor Department on Friday reported a jobless rate of 7.6 percent as employers added 175,000 jobs and more people began to look for work last month. That's up from April's rate of 7.5 percent.

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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.

Since 2007, America's National Security Agency has been mining data from the servers of major American Internet companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google. That's according to new reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post. This comes hard on the heels of another Guardian report revealing the intelligence agency is collecting Verizon phone records of millions of Americans

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with pension problems for Illinois.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: The credit rating for the state of Illinois has taken another step closer to junk bond status. Illinois already had the lowest credit rating in the nation before it was downgraded again this week by Moody's and Fitch. The state legislature adjourned last week without addressing a $100 billion pension shortfall.

So as NPR's David Schaper reports, the governor is calling lawmakers back.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Chinese President Xi Jinping begins a two-day meeting later today with President Obama near Palm Springs, California. There's a good deal of significance behind the choice of California as a venue for this summit. The state one of China's largest trading partners. And is also home to a recent boom in Chinese real estate investment.

NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer. Just one day after we learned the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records from millions of Americans, it's been revealed that the agency is also running a massive Internet surveillance program.