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Senate Democrats offered an alternative Thursday to the sequester, the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts set to hit March 1.

Despite dire warnings in congressional hearings this week, many on Capitol Hill seem resigned to the sequester.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and the private equity firm 3G Capital are set buy ketchup giant Heinz.

The proposed marriage of American Airlines and US Airways announced Thursday is likely the last in a series of industry mega-mergers, but history suggests combining two big carriers isn't easy.

"The history of airline mergers in the U.S. is good, bad and ugly," says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at the consulting firm Hudson Crossing. He and many others point to the 2008 union of Delta and Northwest as the best merger in recent memory.

In 1988, Chile's brutal military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, was facing international pressure to legitimize his regime. Confident that the opposition was splintered, and that state-run media could control the political dialogue, his administration agreed to a simple yes-or-no vote on extending his rule.

It was a vote that even Pinochet's opponents expected to go his way — but it didn't, for reasons made both compelling and instructive in Pablo Larrain's rousing Oscar-nominated drama, No.

A cloture vote on the nomination of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for defense secretary failed in the Senate, today.

That means Senate Republicans succeeded — with a vote of 58 to 40 — in keeping the Hagel nomination from coming before a final vote. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled the cloture vote after Republicans refused to give unanimous consent to proceed with the final vote.

Remember Sen. Marco Rubio's paean to his Florida neighborhood in giving the Republican response to the State of the Union address?

Don't you just love pointing out when others are wrong? In this game, contestants hear fictitious reports from actual NPR correspondents, and must identify which piece of information is inaccurate. This game is unpossible!

Transcript

(APPLAUSE)

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

Audience, this is what we've all been waiting for. It's our Ask Me One More final round. This final elimination round will determine this week's ASK ME ANOTHER champion. So let's bring back the winners from all of our previous rounds.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: From "Happy and You Know it" we have Brice Gaillard. From "Forward and Backwards" Ken Stern. "Down at Downton Abbey," Tom Miller and "Spot the Mistakes" Sam Meyer.

(APPLAUSE)

Jonathan Coulton quizzes contestants on the lost verses of "If You're Happy and You Know It," in which the lyrics hint to certain things. The song should really be re-titled, "If You're An Inanimate Object And You Know It." Clap your hands.

Transcript

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

Let's welcome our next two contestants.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Andy Duong and Tom Miller. Welcome to ASK ME ANOTHER, Andy, Tom. So, Andy, you have been to a huge number of countries.

ANDY DUONG: I have.

EISENBERG: How many?

DUONG: Twenty-eight.

EISENBERG: Twenty-eight. Do you have a favorite?

DUONG: The Netherlands actually.

EISENBERG: Oh yeah, yeah, [unintelligible].

DUONG: For many reasons.

EISENBERG: For many reasons? What's your second favorite reason?

Transcript

(APPLAUSE)

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

You're listening to ASK ME ANOTHER. I'm your host Ophira Eisenberg and with me is puzzler extraordinaire, John Chaneski.

JOHN CHANESKI: Hi, all right.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: And we have our next contestants, let's welcome Susan Poliniak.

SUSAN POLINIAK: Hello.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Hi. And Ken Stern.

CHANESKI: Ken Stern.

(APPLAUSE)

KEN STERN: Ken Stern.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: So Susan, you actually were, or maybe still are, a puppeteer?

Following President Obama's State of the Union there was the customary response from the Republican Party, and for the second year there was another response from the Tea Party. Sen. Rand Paul delivered that response and joins Robert Siegel to talk about his differences with the Republican establishment.

Robert Siegel talks to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington. She's chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senate Majority Conference Secretary, making her the fourth highest ranking Democrat in the Senate. They discuss her hopes to forestall the coming sequester.

Senate Republicans embarked on an unprecedented filibuster of President Obama's choice for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, on Thursday.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee who made history last year by competing in the London Olympic Games, is in the headlines for a very different reason today. The South African runner and Paralympic athlete, known as the Blade Runner, is facing charges of murder. This, after his girlfriend was shot to death at his home in Pretoria early this morning.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports.

(SOUNDBITE OF A NEWS CLIP)

The boards of US Airways Group and AMR have approved the merger of American Airlines and US Airways. The resulting company will become the world's largest airline. American is in bankruptcy, so its creditors will own a big chunk of the new company and US Airways shareholders will own the rest.

In his State of Union address this week, President Obama pointed to a successful manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio, as a model for other programs.

On Thursday, President Obama unveiled some of the details of his proposal for universal pre-K education. Robert Siegel talks with University of Chicago economist James Heckman, who's studied the benefits to society of early intervention.

Bravado, body checking and broken bones are all surprisingly commonplace in sled hockey — a sport designed for people with mobility limitations.

Lidia Jean Kott is an intern at NPR Books.

As the Carnival Triumph drifted for days in the Gulf of Mexico, we wondered: Instead of undertaking a slow, arduous tow to Mobile, Ala., wouldn't it have been easier — and more comfortable for passengers — to send an empty cruise ship to the area and evacuate the 3,143 passengers?

President Obama will cap off a busy week of politicking with some R&R in Florida.

Obama plans to travel to the West Palm Beach area for what his spokesman called "some well-deserved downtime."

"He's going to spend Presidents Day weekend relaxing with some friends," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "There's no work on the schedule."

In a federal court today, prosecutors said former San Diego Mayor Maureen O'Connor misappropriated $2 million of her late husband's charitable foundation because of a gambling addiction.

During a period between 2000 and 2008, reports the San Diego Union Tribune, prosecutors say O'Connor gambled away more than $1 billion.

The paper reports:

Today we got more troubling news for the world economy: Germany's GDP slipped 0.6 percent in the final quarter of 2012, sending the Eurozone deeper into recession.

The Guardian spoke to Carsten Brzeski and analyst for ING, who said: