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Ever since the collapse of the domestic steel industry, blue-collar workers living in the mountain towns near the border of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio have struggled to find jobs.

But last June, Shell Oil Co. announced it would build a huge petrochemical refinery somewhere in that Appalachian region. The plant, known in the industry as a "cracker," could bring billions of investment dollars and thousands of jobs.

At the 2012 North American International Auto Show, it's clear that the industry's love affair with alpha-numeric designations hasn't waned. There's the ATS, the 700C, the MKZ. Now comes the CTX, a new line of Craftsman riding lawn mowers. They are fast, powerful and loaded with amenities.

"Everybody knows that Detroit's the national stage for cars — Motor City is where autos come from. So this show made perfect sense to come here and launch the tractor," says Onney Crawley, Craftsman's director of brand management for lawn and garden.

Private auditors paid to review food safety at the Colorado cantaloupe packer responsible for last summer's massive outbreak gave the facility rave reviews just before contaminated melons were shipped, which killed 30 people.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

You can buy Twinkies on the cheap right now. Safeway, just around the corner from our office here in Washington, has them on sale - two boxes for five bucks. So the NPR Science Desk was inspired to take part in the fine, long-standing tradition of experimenting with Twinkies.

NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on their findings.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: My colleagues, Julie Rovner, our health policy correspondent, and Adam Cole, a new addition to our team, had one idea.

So, what is your experiment, guys?

Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli will leave the third highest-ranking post at the Justice Department in March after nearly three years managing a bustling portfolio that has run the gamut from mortgage abuses and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to stamping out domestic violence in Indian country.