Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, host: NPR's business news starts with the government's insider trading probe.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: Federal prosecutors are set to file criminal charges today against a prominent business executive. Rajat Gupta was head of the consulting firm MacKenzie and a board member of Goldman Sachs.

Ten years ago, on Oct. 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Act.

Congress overwhelmingly passed the law only weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. It's designed to give the FBI more power to collect information in cases that involve national security.

But in the decade since then, civil liberties groups have raised concerns about whether the Patriot Act goes too far by scooping up too much data and violating people's rights to privacy.

Nicholas Merrill is one of the people sounding an alarm.

For those of you desperately missing basketball during the NBA lockout, an antidote to your hoop pangs is on the way: A musical comedy about basketball will open for previews on Broadway on Nov. 12. It's called Lysistrata Jones and is based on the original Lysistrata, which, of course, was written by Aristophanes back in 411 B.C.

Wed. 10/26 at 11a:  The National Indian Education Association (NIEA) is holding its annual convention in Albuquerque, NM. One of the key questions at the conference is, “are tribal governments and tribal leaders ready to support the education of their tribal members?”

Twice a year, Google releases aggregate data on requests it receives from governments across the world. It's part of a project they call "Transparency Report."

In its latest release, Google says the number of content removal requests it received from the United States increased by 70 percent from the previous six months. And the number of user data requests jumped by by 29 compared to the previous reporting period.

Flu shots are safe, cheap and pretty much universally recommended.

But how well do they really protect us from getting sick?

The most comprehensive review to date, just published online by The Lancet, suggests that flu vaccines aren't as effective as many of us have thought.