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You could soon pay for a latte at Starbucks simply by walking into the store with a smartphone in your pocket and giving the cashier your name.

Square, a San Francisco-based payments startup unveiled a deal Wednesday with the world's largest coffee chain that will move its mobile payments products into Starbucks stores around the U.S. starting this fall.

Katherine Losse was Facebook's 51st employee. After earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2005, she got a job as a Facebook customer service representative — tasked with answering questions like "What is a poke?" In the course of five years, she became the personal ghostwriter for founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"I witnessed over those five years this huge transformation in how we lead our lives," she tells NPR's Tom Gjelten.

This map is disturbing, once you understand it. It's a new attempt to visualize an old problem — the shrinking of underground water reserves, in most cases because farmers are pumping out water to irrigate their crops.

The recent shootings in Oak Creek, Wis., and Aurora, Colo., have reignited the debate about guns and gun control in America. But beyond the talking points and heated exchanges lie real questions about guns ownership, regulation and use.

Taunting and trash-talking are a regular part of the culture for online video gamers. Opponents tease and threaten each other to complement the violent clashes between the game avatars.

In a piece for The New York Times, reporter Amy O'Leary describes a series of incidents with female gamers over the past six months that have sparked a debate about sexual harassment in the online gaming community.

Transcript

TOM GJELTEN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Tom Gjelten in Washington. Harry Reid says Mitt Romney doesn't pay taxes. Romney supporters are furious. The VP speculation builds, and the debate on welfare reform is back on center stage. It's Wednesday and time for an...

MITT ROMNEY: Obamaloney...

GJELTEN: Edition of the Political Junkie.

(MONTAGE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS)

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?

Everybody knows that one good way to prevent a sunburn is to stay inside, where you're safe from the sun's ultraviolet rays. Right?

Well, that may not be true anymore if your house is lit with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Last month, researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook showed in a paper that tiny defects in the bulbs can let through UV light that can damage skin cells and lead to cancer.