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JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, we get the cross-cultural flavor of New Orleans music with writer and radio host, Gwen Thompkins. She talks to songwriters, musicians and producers in Louisiana for her program, Music Inside Out, and she shares their stories with us in just a few more minutes.

Google is eliminating about 20 percent of the jobs at Motorola Mobility, the struggling cellphone manufacturer it finished acquiring earlier this year for $12.5 billion, according to reports from The New York Times, Dow Jones' All Things Digital blog and other news outlets.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with a spike in gas prices.

Gasoline prices jumped 18 cents over the last couple of weeks. That's the biggest increase so far this year. The Lundberg Survey shows that heading into the weekend, the national average price of a gallon of self-serve was $3.69. Now, analysts say the spike is in part because of some refinery and pipeline issues around the country.

Researchers used economic principles to predict which countries would win the most medals at the London Olympic Games. The study was 95 percent accurate for the 2008 games. And this time around, it was 97.7 percent accurate.

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GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Now Florida is among the states that were hardest-hit by the housing crisis, and foreclosures remain a big problem there and in several other parts of the country.

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One thing the government has been struggling with is how to stop banks from foreclosing on people improperly. The government is also trying to figure out more quickly help homeowners who qualify for reduced interest rates.

A federal regulator has released new rules aimed at doing both, and NPR's Chris Arnold has more.

One factor that has kept Poland somewhat insulated from the eurozone crisis is domestic consumer spending. Poland had more than 4 percent growth last year while the rest of the continent was mired in negative or flat growth. Poles have more discretionary income than ever before, and they're using it to buy things in swank malls cropping up all over the country.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And now another gloomy financial message. Nouriel Roubini is a New York University professor and former economic advisor to the Clinton administration. And he has the nickname Dr. Doom. Roubini is next in our series of conversations with topnotch economists. But unlike some of his colleagues, he does not claim to have a crystal ball; he makes warnings, not predictions. Nouriel Roubini joins us from New York.

Welcome. So why do they call you Dr. Doom?

Ten years ago, Andres Cortez, a chauffeur in Los Angeles, might have been part of the hordes of people dabbling in day trading or haunting the online stock forums. He might have been bragging to his friends about the money he made in tech stocks, or learning how to margin trade at a night school.

Instead, he keeps his distance from stocks.

As he stands by his car and waits for a passenger downtown, Cortez says he has a little money he's put aside and is keeping it in a savings account, where it earns virtually nothing.

Zoe Chace and Robert Smith are reporting from European borders this week. This story is about the unofficial border within one country — the border that divides northern and southern Italy. This is the fourth story in a four-part series.

A decade ago, the Barilla pasta factory in Foggia, Italy, had a big problem with people skipping work. The absentee rate was around 10 percent.

Every nation that sent a delegation to the London Games sent at least one female athlete — a first for the Olympics. This year's Team USA has more female than male athletes — and the women have won nearly twice as many medals: 100 total medals, by my count, to 59 for the men.

So yes, it looks like this is the Year of the Woman at the Olympics, particularly for the United States.

The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a settlement with Facebook in which the social media leader agrees to get users' approval before making any privacy changes and agrees to periodic third-party audits for the next 20 years on how it handles user privacy.

We told you about this settlement back in November, but today, Reuters reports, after a period of public comment, the settlement has become official.

Saying it wants "to protect homeowners from surprises and costly mistakes by their mortgage servicers," the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today proposed new rules it believes would make the home loan process simpler and give struggling homeowners more of a chance to avoid foreclosures.