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At 17, Daniel Hodd was starting a promising career as a concert pianist, but he decided to become a Marine instead. Before his second deployment, he broke a finger and was given a choice: Treat it and stay, or cut it off and deploy.

Granta has published its once-a-decade list of the best young British novelists. It's a hefty volume that's showcased names like Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell in the past. This year's list is impressively diverse — though Granta editor John Freeman says that wasn't intentional.

Starting this year, competitors in the National Spelling Bee will not only have to know how to spell a word, but they'll also have to know what it means.

This week we're looking back at the year in music with a peek at NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2013. It's the annual list assembled by our in-house experts, including NPR music writer and editor Stephen Thompson. He tells Audie Cornish about his picks in the world of indie pop.

Officially designated as "ghettos," 25 areas with a high percentage of immigrant residents will be abolished. The government's goal is integration. "What they mean is 'go home,'" one immigrant says.

Since Superstorm Sandy, officials in Washington, D.C., have gotten a clear idea of what would happen in a worst-case storm scenario. Key government buildings and tourist sites like the Smithsonian museums are particularly vulnerable to flooding. So federal and local officials are taking steps to protect them.

A small business owner and her husband expect to save big on health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Their monthly health insurance bill will drop by more than half once the policy they're buying on the Colorado health exchange takes effect.

In the age of digital media, many newspapers have been forced to gut their staffs, leading some media analysts to sound the death knell for enterprise reporting and long-form storytelling. Not so fast, say the craft's most passionate advocates.

Footage from privately owned surveillance cameras along the Boston Marathon route gave the FBI early clues about the bombing suspects. But the proliferation of cameras in America's big cities raises some tricky questions about the balance between security and privacy.

Writer/director Lynn Shelton's latest film is about a man (Jay Duplass) freed from wrongful imprisonment thanks to the work of a woman (Edie Falco). The movie asks: What now?