NPR's Morning Edition

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

Western governments are still debating whether to help Syria's rebels. But as they debate, the rebels are finding ways to help themselves.

INSKEEP: Syrians continue arming themselves, even after they retreated from the battered city of Homs. This week, the United Nations' humanitarian chief finally toured that city, including a rebel neighborhood, now mostly abandoned.

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NPR's business news starts with allegations of price fixing on e-books.

The Justice Department is threatening to sue Apple and five major U.S. publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of digital books. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple persuaded publishers, including Harper Collins, Penguin and Simon and Schuster, to change how they price their e-books before the launch of the first iPad in 2010.

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Private creditors holding Greek bonds have until the end of today to participate in the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history. This means creditors must exchange the Greek government bonds they now hold for new ones that are worth far less. Some creditors are balking, since it means up to a 70 percent loss on their returns.

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Here's a stunning fact we came across as the anniversary of Japan's tsunami and nuclear disaster approaches. Of Japan's nuclear plants, only two of 54 reactors are currently active one year after the disaster. To talk about the implications of this, we've called Kenneth Cukier. He is Tokyo correspondent for The Economist magazine. He's on the line.

Welcome to the program.

KENNETH CUKIER: Hi, there.

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And we turn now to a group of people worth almost as much as a small country. Today's last word in business goes to Forbes magazine, which has released its 25th annual billionaires list.

There were a lot of good stories from the 2008 presidential election, including Hillary Clinton's serious run for the Democratic nomination, not to mention the election of the first African-American president. The whole story was covered in the bestselling — and controversial — book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change.

Dr. Adam Wolfberg had two daughters and another on the way when his wife, Kelly, went into labor. But this joyous occasion had come much too soon — Kelly was three months away from her due date. After just 26 weeks in the womb, their baby daughter Larissa entered the world by emergency cesarean section and was whisked into the neonatal intensive care unit of a Boston hospital. It was the same hospital where Wolfberg was doing his residency in obstetrics and gynecology, and his medical background turned out to be a mixed blessing.

The first batch of Oreo cookies was made at the original Nabisco bakery in New York in 1912. The company is releasing limited edition "Birthday Cake" Oreos.

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Mitt Romney won six of the 10 Super Tuesday contests. Rick Santorum won three while Newt Gingrich won one. Ron Paul was the only candidate who did not win at least one contest.

In Houston Tuesday, a federal jury convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford of running a massive Ponzi scheme. Jurors agreed with prosecutors, who claimed he ran a global scheme that lasted more than 20 years and involved more than $7 billion in investments.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, it was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. More than three years later, Lehman is emerging from Chapter 11. The firm is really just back in business to liquidate itself. Lehman has about $65 billion in assets that it intends to distribute among its many creditors starting next month.

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And our last word in business today is: culinary frontiers.

When companies come into foreign markets, they often devise products that reflect local tastes - kosher Big Macs in Israel, for instance. So with Dunkin Donuts aiming to nearly double its outlets in China, it has come up with pork donuts.

Renee Montagne talks to Terry Emmert, who's in charge of transporting a 340 ton granite boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be featured in a modern art exhibit.