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Peter Jackson takes his audience back to Middle-earth in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, set in a time before the Lord of the Rings films. NPR's Bob Mondello says that where the Rings films struggled with what to omit, The Hobbit labors to justify its three-hour running time.

The Barcelona star has broken several records this year — and many say the 25-year-old still hasn't peaked.

A couple of high-profile incidents over the last week have increased attention on smuggling operations off the coast of California. Mexican cartels bring drugs and illegal immigrants up the coast of California in small fishing boats. Stiff border defenses are pushing the boats farther north.

This week Michigan became the 24th state to enact right-to-work laws. Advocates say such laws create more jobs, while opponents say it means lower wages for workers. Audie Cornish speaks with Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, who says that while there are many studies looking at the laws, it is difficult to determine what, if any, effect the laws have on a state's economic health.

Anthropologist, Dr. Weldon Lamb, previews his lecture at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology on the meaning of the predictions of the Maya stone glyphs.Will…

Hurricane Sandy delivered a powerful punch to New York's Ellis and Liberty islands. While Lady Liberty sustained no damage, flooding destroyed much of Ellis Island's infrastructure, and the Statue of Liberty National Monument is closed indefinitely.

More than 1,000 people have gone to court hoping to track down sons and daughters or brothers and sisters they were told died in childbirth during the Franco dictatorship. The mothers were often poor and had Marxist leanings. Some estimates put the total number of stolen babies as high as 300,000.

Parents in Adelanto have used a "parent-trigger" law for the first time to shut down and take over an elementary school. It's a revolt led by parents who say Desert Trails has failed their children, but others say it's not the school's fault.

Researchers wanted to take a census of all of the insects living in a small section of rainforest in Panama. To do this, they went up in a balloon, hung from a crane and walked atop the canopy in a huge tree raft. All told, they collected almost 130,000 specimens from more than 6,000 species.

As the negotiations drag on, the lack of progress means the key players have necessarily taken to repeating themselves. Sometimes, word-for-word, as they describe how they have worked for a solution while their opponents have stonewalled.