NPR News

People who want to find out more about the fate of Holocaust victims now have a new resource online.

Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate that makes blockbuster food products like Hellmann's mayonnaise and Skippy peanut butter and supplies thousands of food-service companies in 74 countries, is a Fortune Global 500 company. If it decides it wants to do something about food waste, it could keep a lot of perfectly tasty morsels out of the garbage heap.

An Atlanta woman claimed Monday that she has had long-term affair with Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and has the records to prove it, an accusation that delivers another blow to the former corporate CEO's campaign.

Cain vehemently denied the allegation during an interview on CNN before the woman's story aired on an Atlanta television station.

He described her as a "friend," but said their relationship was not sexual. "I have nothing to hide," he told CNN.

An Atlanta woman has told a local TV station that she had a 13-year-long sexual relationship with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. For several weeks now, Cain's campaign has been dogged by several accusations of sexual harassment. Melissa Block talks with NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea.

A U.N. commission accused security forces loyal to Syria President Bashar Assad of killing hundreds of children and committing other "crimes against humanity" since the government began its crackdown on protesters back in March.

"I just wanted to give you a heads up and your audience a heads up that here we go again," Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said on CNN a few moments ago.

Cain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that another accuser would come forward and say they were involved in a long-term extramarital affair. Cain said he knows the accuser and he thought "we were friends."

A NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend has brought U.S.-Pakistani ties to a new level of strain, but experts say it's unlikely to produce a permanent rift in the relationship.

Barely a month ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad hoping to cement greater Pakistani cooperation to eliminate Taliban safe havens inside its territory. After Saturday's attack, that kind of cooperation appeared to be on indefinite hold.

The Associated Press and The New York Times report that Lana Peters, Josef Stalin's only daughter and his last surviving child, died last week at age 85. Peters was mainly known as the daughter of the Soviet tyrant, but her life was anything but simple: The evolution of her name says much about her efforts to escape the ignominy of her father. Peters was born Svetlana Stalina then changed her last name to Alliluyeva and later became Lana Peters.

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio — pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jamie Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson — will celebrate its 35th anniversary as one of the world's finest chamber-music ensembles this January. For the past 25 years, one of the group's frequent partners has been Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. She says it's always great fun to hand over a new piece.

Visitors to the grave of the Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde won't be able to leave a permanent mark on his tomb anymore. Since the '90s, mostly women started leaving lipstick kisses on his tomb in Paris' Père Lachaise cemetery, a gentle memento for a writer who didn't show much regard for women.

The problem was that cleaning off those kisses was damaging the stone. The Guardian reports:

Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank says he decided not to seek re-election to a 17th term in 2012 because congressional redistricting would have given him a slew of new constituents and a difficult, expensive campaign.

"I think I would have won," Frank, 71, said during a Monday press conference in Massachusetts announcing his retirement. "But it would have been a tough campaign."

Added Frank, who has led financial reform efforts on Capitol Hill: "I don't like raising money."

A federal judge nixed a $285 million settlement agreement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission involving a major financial case. U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said the proposed agreement is "neither far, no reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest." Under the deal, Citi would have settled charges that it misled investors in mortgage debt prior to the collapse of the housing market. Rakoff has been a persistent critic of the SEC's oversight of Wall Street. Guy Raz talks to NPR's Jim Zarroli for more.

Millions of voters go to the polls in the Democratic Republic of Congo Monday in only the second election in its history. The mood in the country is tense. The current president Joseph Kabila is deeply unpopular, but many in Congo believe he will go to any lengths to hold onto power. Melissa Block talks to NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

The Democratic National Committee released an Obama campaign ad Monday suggesting that Mitt Romney's worst enemy is Mitt Romney. The TV ad, airing in targeted markets in five swing states — including Ohio and Pennsylvania — highlights Romney's evolving positions on such central issues as health care, abortion and bank bailouts. It suggests Democrats assume Romney will be the nominee and indicates their plan of attack for the year.

Egyptian voters in Cairo, Alexandria and several other major cities are voting Monday in the first stage of the country's parliamentary election. Turn out is heavy and so far there has been no major violence. Melissa Block talks to NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

In the mid-'90s, the big banks set up the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, to track mortgages as they're traded by investors in mortgage-backed securities. It's a system set up to let banks skip the process of paying recurring filing fees at county courthouses each time a mortgage was bought or sold. Now, many cash-strapped local governments, big and small, are filing lawsuits against MERS. Politicians contend their communities are owed millions of dollars.

Urban Meyer, who led the Florida Gators to two national football championships, will indeed be taking the head coaching job at Ohio State, according to reports from The Columbus Dispatch, ESPN and several other news outlets. There's a news conference at the school scheduled for 5:15 p.m. ET.

There's no need for 18-year-old Emma Sullivan to apologize and his staff overreacted by telling officials at her high school that the teen had tweeted about how the governor "sucked," Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) said today.

A United States District Court judge in Manhattan has thrown a wrench into the way the Security and Exchange Commission has been enforcing its fraud cases.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff threw out a $285 million settlement deal between the S.E.C. and Citigroup in which the bank would not admit nor deny wrongdoing in a mortgage derivatives deal.

Rakoff said he would not OK the settlement because he did not know the facts of the case and it was "neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest" for him to do so.

Shoppers stormed retail stores this past weekend, and now on Cyber Monday, many are clicking their way to more purchases.

"I am definitely a price-based shopper," said Sarah Kelly, a 28-year-old Washington, D.C., resident who bought a KitchenAid mixer Monday morning as a holiday gift. She also bought shoes, clothes and other presents after waking early to search for online coupons and shipping offers. "I only purchase if the shipping is free," she said.

Bloomberg ran quite a story, yesterday. It stems from a Freedom of Information Act Request that yielded the details of previously secret borrowing from the federal government to the biggest banks.

The bottom line, reports Bloomberg, by March of 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion "to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year." The lending began in August of 2007.

Federal authorities announced Monday that they have seized the domain names of 150 websites accused of selling counterfeit or pirated merchandise.

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI coordinated the effort for "Cyber Monday," the day that for many shoppers kicks off the online holiday shopping season.

Undercover agents had been buying phony merchandise from the websites for three months. Then they contacted big companies to make sure the items were phony before taking over the domain names.

The acclaimed, eccentric, and very polarizing British film director Ken Russell has died, after a series of strokes at the age of 84.

The director of Tommy, Women In Love and Altered States, Russell was known for a florid style and fascination with sadomasochism that earned him condemnations and a cult following. His adaptations of classic literature and over-the-top biopics ranged from perverse to merely provocative — and an indelible nickname: "Kinky Ken Russell."

It's funny how the birthplace of one little bean can stir up a world of passions. But when it's the soybean, maybe it's not such a shocker.

Soy plays an outsized role in human history, serving as the primary source of protein in Asia for millennia. That can slip by people in the United States, where — until very recently — the super-nutritious bean was relegated to animal feed.

At point today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 2.9 percent to 11,554. The rally comes after news that European leaders had made progress on a solution to the sovereign debt crisis and record sales this past Friday.

It also comes after a 4.8 percent downturn last week, the worst Thanksgiving week since the markets started observing the holiday in 1942.