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A storm is brewing in Washington that could darken political debate for months to come. It's about the debt, the deficit, taxes and spending — all hot topics lawmakers have been fighting about for years now.

This time, though, there's a deadline, and the consequences of inaction would be immediate. That has many in Washington saying: Here we go again.

In the past week, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have begun a new round of sparring over the U.S. debt ceiling.

Declaring that a "national emergency" exists in public education, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney shifted from his usual economic message to outline his education platform during a speech to a Latino business group Wednesday.

Romney pledged to provide federal funding for "every" child from low-income families, or those with special needs, to attend the public, public charter or, in some cases, private school of their parents' choice. The proposals are boilerplate Republican Party planks.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The director of the Secret Service assured a Senate committee, today, that a prostitution scandal involving his agents never compromised security. Mark Sullivan also apologized for behavior he said was reckless. It was Sullivan's first public testimony since news broke last month of Secret Service employees picking up prostitutes before a presidential visit to Colombia. He insisted this was an isolated incident.

But NPR's Tamara Keith reports, some on the committee weren't buying it.

Sufjan Stevens is a classically trained singer-songwriter whose recent work has leaned symphonic. Son Lux is a classically trained beatmaker whose solo albums do indeed evoke luxury. Serengeti is a self-trained rapper who creates voices for a panoply of full-fledged characters who range from scufflers to yuppies. Billed as s / s / s, this ad hoc trio has just released an EP called Beak and Claw that somehow synthesizes their specialties.

As part of what it calls "a multi-year restructuring," Hewlett-Packard announced it was cutting 27,000 jobs or 8 percent of its workforce.

HP said the cuts would happen over an extended period and should be done by the end of 2014.

"The restructuring is expected to generate annualized savings in the range of $3.0 to $3.5 billion exiting fiscal year 2014, of which the majority will be reinvested back into the company," the company said in a statement.

Richard Grenell, the former campaign staffer for Mitt Romney who resigned after some conservatives criticized the hiring of an openly gay adviser who favors same-sex marriage, said Wednesday that the issue should not determine how most Americans vote.

The dust is nowhere near settled over advice that men of all ages should forgo a routine blood test to detect prostate cancer.

The harms, such as false alarms and unnecessary surgeries that leave some men impotent and incontinent, outweigh the benefits of the PSA test, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

So the influential group this week made an official recommendation against a regular PSA.

Filing your taxes may be a dreaded task. But eating healthy can be an even bigger struggle for many Americans.

According to the results of a new survey of more than 1,000 Americans, almost half of us think its harder to eat right than do our taxes. And genderwise, 55 percent of men say it's harder to figure out what you should be eating than it is to figure out how to do your own taxes. For women, it's slightly lower, at 48 percent. The survey comes from the folks at the International Food Information Council Foundation.

Poachers caught hunting tigers in India's Maharashtra state are on notice that they could be shot on sight.

The Times of India says the "stern stand against poachers" means "if the forest officials fire upon the poachers injuring or killing them, the action will not be considered a crime." Prior to this week's announcement by state officials, those guards were subject to prosecution for such actions.

We've all been there: Banging the back of a glass ketchup bottle, begging it to give you a dollop of the good stuff or battling with a plastic bottle coercing it into giving up the last of its contents.

Maybe that will be a thing of the past.

Six MIT researchers say they've solved that problem as part of an entrepreneurship competition. The result is a bottle coated with "LiquiGlide," a non-toxic material so slippery that the ketchup or for that matter mayonnaise just glides out when you turn it over.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Pop quiz, Ken: Name the primary opponent who got 42 percent of the vote against President Obama in Kentucky yesterday.

KEN RUDIN, BYLINE: That would be Mr. Wolf.

CONAN: No, that would be uncommitted.

RUDIN: Oh, uncommitted.

CONAN: Uncommitted would be the...

RUDIN: Oh, I should be committed.

CONAN: You should be committed.

RUDIN: I'm sorry.

CONAN: In which state with Dennis Kucinich run for Congress this year?

RUDIN: None.

In all likelihood it won't change the minds of those who believe President Obama is ineligible to be president, but today Arizona's top elections official said he had put the "birther" issue to rest, when Hawaii sent him confirmation that Obama's birth certificate is legitimate.

Nearly 4 million people are members of CouchSurfing.org and can find a host in every country — including North Korea — free of charge.

New Yorker staff writer Patricia Marx became a member recently and stayed with seven friendly strangers, from a graduate student in Iowa City to a couple in Bermuda in their 60s. She wrote about her experience for the magazine.

Mike Nichols has won every major entertainment award over a decades-long career that includes theater, comedy, television and film. He performed as half of the comedy team Nichols and May, won his first Academy Award directing The Graduate, and returned to Broadway with a revival of Death of a Salesman, which picked up seven Tony nominations. Nichols warns that the production may be his last.

When we first kicked around the idea of asking people to share their opinions about compensating organ donors, it was pretty clear that we were on to something. Everybody in the newsroom seemed to have a strong feeling about it.

It's safe to say that when it comes to recent presidents, Ronald Reagan is the most venerated, especially among Republicans but not exclusively so. Some even accuse conservatives of beatifying the 40th president as though he were on the road to sainthood.

So it's not surprising there would be a Reagan relic out there, specifically a medical-lab vial purportedly containing the dried remains of a blood sample taken from the president on the day he was nearly assassinated in March 1981.

For the most part, we don't hear novel arguments in favor or against the controversial issue of immigration. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been one of the few to take a different view. Last year, he advocated opening the door to new immigrants if they all moved to Detroit.

At the time, it was derided as weird.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor who obtained the conviction of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff for lying to authorities about the leaking of a CIA officer's name and who sent former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) to jail on corruption charges, is stepping down from his post.

Surely you've noticed the proliferation of certifications advertising farmers' and food companies' virtuous commitments to fix the environment or promote health. These seals can reassure, but the sheer volume of them can also confound. How to choose between grass-fed, organic, hormone-free or free range?

Now imagine that you have to feed 50 million people a day in 80 countries around the world. And every day more of those people are demanding that the food you serve them be organic, gluten-free, or fair trade.

Republicans have pounced on a comment by Newark, New Jersey mayor and Obama re-election surrogate Cory Booker. He called the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital "nauseating." Host Michel Martin discusses the art of messaging with former presidential speechwriter Mary Kate Cary, and journalism professor Cynthia Tucker.

The NAACP is officially supporting same-sex marriage. The group says marriage equality is a civil right and is encouraging black voters to support the issue if it shows up on state ballots. Host Michel Martin talks with Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the group.

Campaign fever is in the air in Cairo and around Egypt. Millions of voters go to the polls, Tuesday and Wednesday, for what many believe to be the country's first free election in its long history. Host Michel Martin discusses what's at stake in this election with Sherine Tadros, the Egypt correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

After hearing a lot about barefoot running, New York Times Phys Ed columnist Gretchen Reynolds decided to try it out for herself. An amateur runner for several decades, Reynolds says she thought the transition would be easy. But almost immediately, she got injured.