NPR News

A few weeks ago, Mike Wendlinger bought himself a Christmas present — a Nook Simple Touch e-book reader. And when he did, he joined a wave of Americans who have combined to make e-readers and their more powerful bretheren, tablet computers, into genuine mass market devices.

Here's your interesting numbers story of the day: Based on The Washington Post's analysis of Internal Revenue Service records, about 98,000 federal employees — including those from the post office — owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes. It's a number that has been reported before but this year, while the number of delinquent employees fell, the total amount owed ballooned by $32 million or 3 percent.

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich today made the case that those who have been collecting jobless benefits for extended periods of time should be required to enroll in job-training programs, saying that "we shouldn't give people 99 weeks to do nothing," our colleagues at WUSF in Tampa report.

John Hawkes' conversation with Melissa Block on today's All Things Considered begins as many of his conversations might: with her noting that when she told people she was coming to talk to him and rattled off his credits, she got a response that he undoubtedly gets a lot: "Ohhh, he's that guy."

Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is hospitalized in Chicago after undergoing surgery to relieve swelling on his brain; doctors discovered he'd suffered a stroke over the weekend.