World

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Earlier this week, a Japanese company announced a $20 billion bid for a majority stake in Sprint-Nextel, America's third-largest mobile carrier. The deal was launched by the CEO of Softbank - an executive who says he has a 300-year business plan and who is fond of making investments his peers call crazy.

Lucy Craft has this profile.

LUCY CRAFT, BYLINE: In a society where conformity, conservatism and harmony are virtues, CEO Masayoshi Son breaks all the rules, says his biographer, Shinichi Sano.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

America's presidential debates have long inspired debate parties and media coverage that brings together American voters to offer their impressions. This week, we've expanded that concept all the way to China. NPR invited eight people to watch the debate at our bureau in Shanghai and then asked them for their opinions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the candidates' on China generated some interesting reactions.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts a plan to save the euro.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: A week after the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize, its leaders are meeting in Brussels to discuss strengthening their fiscal union to help stabilize European economies. Any the afterglow from receiving the peace prize has been dimmed by renewed divisions on how best to tackle the debt crisis, which suggests that this meeting won't make much progress.

NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports.

Israel's newsstands are looking noticeably less crowded these days, as a crisis in the Israeli press threatens several of the country's oldest publications. Media experts in Israel say that market competition and a tendency to buy political influence through media ownership have crippled Israel's once-thriving newspaper market.

It's midday in the cafeteria of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, and legislators and their aides are busy wheeling and dealing over lunch.

Gil Hoffman, political analyst for The Jerusalem Post newspaper, surveys the cafeteria floor with an expert's eye.

"Never a dull moment in election season," he says. "This is where the politicians, when there is something really important to get across to the press, this is where they do it; this is where they meet and make whatever political deals they need to get ahead."

In 1990, a bloodless revolution brought down the Communist government of Mongolia,and their memorials to communist heroes were destroyed or sold for scrap. But one remaining statue of Lenin is being sold at auction.

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After controlling the comings and goings of its citizens for 50 years, Cuba is relaxing its grip. The government announced it would eliminate the exit visa requirements. That announcement has been welcomed by many there, but as Nick Miroff reports from Havana, not all Cubans will be treated equally when the new immigrations rules take effect in January.

NICK MIROFF, BYLINE: Cuban broadcasters read the announcement word-for-word on state television, just in case there were some who wouldn't have believed it otherwise.

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It was, in the words of one specialist in recovering stolen art, a hell of a haul. The haul being the theft of seven paintings from a museum in the Netherlands, among them were works by such masters as Picasso, Monet, Matisse and Gauguin. Thieves defeated a sophisticated alarm system, lifted the canvases from the walls, and disappeared into the darkness, overnight Tuesday. It's being described as one of the biggest and most daring art heists in modern history.