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Parts of Puerto Rico look as if the hurricane struck yesterday, not last month. Gov. Ricardo Rossello is in Washington to speak with members of Congress. He'll also meet with President Trump.

Unemployment claims show another dramatic rise. Some 10 million Americans had already filed for unemploymen in the two weeks prior to this one.

A professor spends his off-time tracking the little things in life that bother us. Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, tells us what poor parking, long waits in the doctor's office, and the controversial brussel sprout tell us about science.

Underhill studies and tracks the habits of shoppers in order to learn the best way to lead them to make purchases. His retail consulting firm, Envirosell, has helped big-name companies such as McDonald's, Levi Strauss and Blockbuster to study their customers' browsing and buying habits. He's the author of the book Why We Buy, and the new book Call of the Mall.

Volvo is the first traditional automaker to set a date to phase out cars powered only by internal combustion engines. Volvo's CEO called Tesla "a tough competitor" in the premium electric market.

For American retailers, the bad news just kept coming this week. Circuit City joined the growing list of chain stores filing for bankruptcy. Best Buy warned of what it called "seismic changes" in consumer spending habits. And yesterday the commerce department said retail sales fell at a record 2.8 percent in October. The downturn is already forcing many stores to mark down what they sell.

Two recent studies suggest that prospective homeowners will have to earn more than $100,000 annually to afford a typical home in much of the U.S.

In France, residents go to the polls Sunday in the first round of a two-part presidential election. The top two vote-getters from Sunday's balloting go to a runoff on May 6. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy is trailing Socialist candidate Francois Hollande.

The federal government launched a database Wednesday that shows how much hospitals charge for the 100 most common procedures. The data reveals extreme variances in hospital billing. One hospital in Dallas, Texas charges $38,000 for treating pneumonia, while another charges over $14,000.

The press will have to hold accountable a president who rarely takes responsibility for mistakes and who's threatened to punish the media. How adversarial will it be in covering Trump's White House?