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Among the difficult decisions facing President Obama is whether to give the go-ahead for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada down to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmentalists want it blocked. They are concerned about endangering the Nebraska sand hills, under which is the largest aquifer in the country. It provides drinking water and irrigation water for several states.

There has been vigorous public debate this election cycle about the Supreme Court; from the Citizens United case to the Affordable Care Act.

Housing is always in short supply in New York City, and Superstorm Sandy just made things much worse. The government is paying hotel costs for many of those displaced, while others are staying with friends and family.

That still leaves many people still looking for a spare bedroom, and some are now turning to the social networking website Airbnb – a site that matches people seeking vacation rentals — to find a place to stay.

One scene has become increasingly common amid Spain's economic crisis: Thousands of people, many of them immigrants, are searching trash dumpsters by night. Some scour the garbage for food, but many others are involved in a black-market trade for recycled materials.

The scavengers have slowly become a sad fixture in many barrios across Spain, like the well-dressed, middle-aged man on a Barcelona street corner on a recent night. He averts his eyes from onlookers as he reaches his arm down deep into a dumpster.

For the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel fired warning shots into Syria on Sunday – just days after a Syrian mortar shell hit a target inside the Israel-occupied Golan Heights.

Here's more from the Israel Defense Forces:

"A short while ago, a mortar shell hit an IDF post in the Golan Heights adjacent to the Israel-Syria border, as part of the internal conflict inside Syria. No damage or injuries have been reported.

Each year around this time, weekends on All Things Considered welcomes world music DJ Betto Arcos onto the show to share some of his favorite nominees from this Latin Grammys, the 2012 installment of which is coming up next week. Arcos hosts the program Global Village on KPFK in Los Angeles; his picks include singer-songwriters from Mexico and Brazil, a Chilean rapper and a Puerto Rican-American jazz saxophonist.

With baseball playoffs becoming a distant memory, NPR's Mike Pesca talks to host Rachel Martin about basketball becoming more like baseball. People are increasingly trying to identify more valuable statistics for individual basketball players.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Host Rachel Martin talks with director Nikolaj Arcel about his new film, A Royal Affair. The movie focuses on an affair between the 18th-century queen of Denmark and her German physician, which led to a revolution. Arcel also wrote the screenplay of the Danish film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.