Morning Edition on WRVO-1: NPR News

Steve Inskeep has business news.

Linda Wertheimer has the Last Word in business.

GOP presidential candidates are touring Iowa ahead of next week's caucuses. The main issue for many voters there is the economy, but another hot topic is emerging: overhauling immigration policies. Iowa's Hispanic population is surging, and Republican candidates are struggling with how best to deal with voter concerns.

In 2011, IBM's stock rose more than tech hotshots Google and Apple. IBM is 100 years old, but it has totally remade its business for the 21st century.

"There is no such thing as an IBM PC," declares IBM managing partner Adam Klaber. More than 83 percent of their business is now services and software. The NYPD hired IBM to track crime. Telecom Bharti Airtel wanted to build wireless coverage in 16 African countries, so they went to IBM.

Oh, and which supercomputer became Jeopardy champion in 2011? IBM's Watson.

Part of an ongoing series on unique holiday dishes

To celebrate the new year, for as long as I can remember, my mom has baked a cake called punch torte, a tradition started in her family back in the former Czechoslovakia.

Ah, we still do the town on New Year's Eve, but tearing the goal posts down is now verboten. Deemed too dangerous. In fact, as our new year approaches, it's a good time to look back on several other things in sport that have long since faded away.

Who remembers, for example, that at the end of each inning in the field, baseball players would just chuck their gloves onto the grass behind their position, leaving the field littered with mitts. All game long.

As 2011 winds down, Morning Edition is looking at music we missed over the past 12 months. Gregory Douglass is a pianist and guitarist from a small town in Vermont who blends electronic pop with folk and rock. At 31, he has already recorded eight albums, most of them released on a label he founded.

Douglass creates the sort of textured sound that you'd think comes from a big-budget studio, but he's on his own. His fans pre-order his albums before they're recorded, which helps pay his production costs. His latest is titled Lucid.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with Sears closing stores.

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INSKEEP: The holiday shopping season has gone well for some retailers, but apparently not for Sears Holdings, the company that owns Sears and Kmart. It plans to shut down up to 120 stores. Sears operates 4,000 outlets in the U.S. and Canada right now. The company says Kmart sales of clothing and consumer electronics fell, and at Sears there was not much demand for home appliances.

A Minnesota man provided live puppies, a llama and a goat to a nativity scene, but the goat escaped. The Fergus Falls Journal reports the goat has been spotted but not caught.

Isaiah Cutler, 18, is in jail accused of burglarizing a market with three friends and taking thousands in cash and merchandise. An hour later, he supposedly posted pictures of the fellows and their stash on Facebook. A relative saw the photos, alerted grandma and she called the cops.

In Texas, a private intelligence company has apparently been hacked by the loosely organized activist group Anonymous. Some members claim they obtained personal information about Stratfor's clients, as well as thousands of credit cards numbers which were then used to make donations to charities. But other members have disavowed the hacking job. Freelance journalist Quinn Norton, who has profiled Anonymous for Wired Magazine, talks to Linda Wertheimer about the breach.

The Arab League is formally launching its monitoring mission in Syria Tuesday. It's not certain they'll get to the central city of Homs, an opposition stronghold under siege by the Syrian army. There, doctors are forced to treat injured anti-government protesters in an underground network.

Some of the most spectacular business failings of 2011 were created or enhanced by the very people who should have provided protection against failure: the CEOs. Linda Wertheimer wraps up the year in CEO blunders with Professor Sydney Finkelstein, of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He's also the author of "Why Smart Executives Fail."

Steve Inskeep has business news.

As the debt crisis spreads across Europe, the economy in the region is slowing to a crawl. One place that's starting to feel the impact of the slowdown is the massive port of Rotterdam in Holland. It's the biggest port in the world outside Asia. Much of what's bought and sold in Europe goes through Rotterdam.

As North Korea prepares for the funeral of leader Kim Jong Il, attention is being focused on the country his son, heir apparent Kim Jong Un, will inherit. Like almost everything to do with North Korea, the picture of how the country's economy works is cloudy.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We're nearing the end of an unusual year for movies. No single film has dominated the conversation in Hollywood. Some celebrated films this year refer to the past of the movie industry itself, like the silent film "The Artist," or "Hugo," which becomes a tale of old film preservation.

Nearly three decades ago, Kenny Buchanan decided to drop out of school. Over the last 26 years, he's jumped from job to job and unemployment. He now has a full-time job and for the first time in years, he and his family have health insurance and can enjoy a few luxuries.

Steve Inskeep has the Last Word in business.

As 2011 winds down, Morning Edition is looking at music we missed over the past 12 months. R&B singer Anthony Hamilton is one artist that slipped under our noses; we just missed his album Back To Love, which came out earlier this month. Hamilton's been in the music business for two decades, during which he's had a mostly black audience. Now, with Back To Love, he's gaining even wider appeal.

NBA Commissioner David Stern visited Dallas to start the lockout-shortened season on Christmas Day. The Mavericks were raising their banner from last season's championship. But when Stern spoke, people booed. The lockout wasn't popular, and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban didn't like the settlement. Stern won over the home crowd though, praising Cuban and turning boos to cheers.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command keeps an eye on Saint Nick's progress from an Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. NORAD volunteers in elf hats fielded more than 100,000 calls from kids checking on Santa.

The Milwaukee VA is shortening its residential mental health treatment programs. Doctors there say the shortened stay from 90 to 45 days will mean more intense treatment and will make it easier for veterans to transition back into society sooner. Some patients say getting clean and sober is just the first step in their recovery, and they worry about being pushed out too soon.

Perhaps more than any other major professional sports league in this country, the National Basketball Association is star-driven. A Christmas slate of season-opening games featured the electric play of the league's Most Valuable Player Derrick Rose, the NBA's top scorer Kevin Durant and LeBron James, too.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets of Moscow. They disagree with elections allegedly rigged in favor of Vladimir Putin's party. Lilia Shevtsova, senior Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, talks to Steve Inskeep about the demonstrations.

Steve Inskeep and Linda Wertheimer have business news.

Linda Wertheimer talks to Rich Jaroslovsky, tech columnist for Bloomberg News, about his top gadget picks for 2011.

In 2011, Novak Djokovic had just about the best year a male tennis player has ever had, including wins at three of the four Grand Slam tournaments.

"This is the athlete of the year," says Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated. "This is a brutal, brutal sport. This guy is playing on six continents, every surface....This is one of the all time great years in open tennis history."

This year, Djokovic also kept to a gluten-free diet. Must have been particularly difficult since his family's business is a pizza parlor.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne. An Irish man received a touching Christmas gift when 100-year-old letter from his mother to Santa was printed in the Irish Times. He had never seen the letter. The slightly-scorched note had been stuck in the chimney of his mother's childhood home in Dublin for more than 80 years until the current owner discovered it. Annie Howard was just 10 in 1911 when she asked Santa for gloves, toffee and a baby doll.

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

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin was writing for the majority in an insurance fraud case. He produced six pages of verse with gems like: "Convictions for the forgery and theft are approbated — the sentence for insurance fraud, however, is vacated."