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Host Michel Martin gets a fresh take on some of this week's top stories from the ladies of the Beauty Shop. This week they discuss Fast Company's list of the 25 Smartest Women on Twitter.

Nonprofits and advocacy groups use the rankings as a tool to name and shame countries into improving their policies. But the indexes do have some drawbacks.

The United Nations says President Bashar Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people during the year-long popular revolt. Now, the plight of Syria's children has captured attention. Host Scott Simon talks with Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who is one of the most prominent voices calling for their protection.

In Denmark, far-right movements from various countries are gathering with the hope of launching a pan-European, anti-Islamist alliance. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.

Author Philip Kerr's latest novel takes his wartime German gumshoe Bernie Gunther from Berlin to Prague at the behest of notorious SS boss Reynhard Heydrich. Gunther must solve an Agatha Christie-style country house murder mystery in which the suspects are all mass murderers already.

A special tribunal in The Hague has found former Liberian President Charles Taylor guilty of aiding war crimes. Taylor armed fighters in neighboring Sierra Leone in return for "blood diamonds."

While property taxes used to cover school bus transportation, Indiana voters passed a cap on the state's property tax rate last November, forcing some districts to cut costs. Now, Franklin Township is charging families monthly fees for their kids to ride the bus — and the superintendent isn't happy he has to do it.

There's no better way to build a team than to start a band, say the executives of one telecom firm who met while playing music. Soon, their employees will play against each other in a companywide battle of the bands. The only rule is they have to pick an instrument they don't already know how to play.

Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Critic David Edelstein says the end result doesn't fully mesh with the story it is trying to tell.

This week, the Senate blocked the confirmation of Richard Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general chosen by President Obama to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It boils down to yet another partisan fight: Republicans say the agency has too much power, and the White House says they won't weaken an agency that is supposed to protect consumers. Host Scott Simon talks with Joe Nocera, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.