All Things Considered

Faced with harsh criticism over its vast surveillance operation, the NSA and its allies are pushing back. They say their intelligence collection is being done in response to demands from the executive branch of the U.S. government and not on its own. The NSA says it is currently working on 36,000 pages of what it calls "requirements" — intel speak for intelligence assignments it gets from branches of the U.S. government.

Secretary of State John Kerry is back in Washington to defend the proposed nuclear deal with Iran to skeptical members of Congress. He and his colleagues from other major powers failed to reach a deal with Iran during talks over the weekend in Geneva. Iran blames France's hard line for blowing up the deal, though Kerry has tried to downplay that.

Perhaps no company showed how the Internet could turn sharing into a global phenomenon more than Napster. The music-sharing site upended the record industry. But the industry ultimately survived and free-music Napster did not. What are new businesses doing to avoid the same fate?

There's been a rare bit of good news in Eastern Congo this month. One of the rebel groups that have terrorized civilians in the mineral rich part of the the Democratic Republic of Congo agreed to end its rebellion. There's still a lot of work to do to disarm the M23 and to keep other rebel movements in check. But this small victory is a boost for U.N. peacekeepers, who are under a new, tougher mandate to protect civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some experts wonder if this could be a new model for peacekeeping.