World

Given tea's rap today as both a popular pick-me-up and a health elixir, it's hard to imagine that sipping tea was once thought of as a reckless, suspicious act, linked to revolutionary feminism.

"The death toll from a typhoon that ravaged the Philippines jumped to 238 Wednesday with hundreds missing, as rescuers battled to reach areas cut off by floods and mudslides," The Manila Times writes.

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After eight days and billions of dollars in lost business, the shutdown at the nation's busiest port hub is over. Striking clerks at the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have reached a tentative agreement with managers. At issue: worries about outsourcing jobs. The clerks, hundreds of them, and ten thousand longshoremen, who refused to cross picket lines, head back to work this morning.

Wal-Mart has long stirred controversy as it has moved into American towns, and many small businesses found they were unable to compete. Now the fight has come to India, where Parliament has been hotly debating whether to ease restrictions on direct foreign investment by such giant retailers.

India's lower house of Parliament handed the country's fragile coalition government a victory Wednesday by endorsing a plan by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's governing coalition to allow foreign supermarkets to operate in Asia's third-largest economy. The debate now goes to the upper house.

Across the West Bank, olive harvesting season is drawing to a close once again. But this year, the usually joyous occasion has become grimly purposeful because the Palestinian economy, according to some economists, is being held hostage to politics, and is on the verge of collapse.

In the West Bank village of Deir Ibzie, Amal Karajeh and her husband, Basem, comb through the leaves and branches of an olive tree in their front yard.

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More now on those warnings to President Assad that Kelly mentioned about chemical weapons. Here's President Obama speaking yesterday.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command, the world is watching. The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.

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And I'm Audie Cornish. We begin this hour in Syria, with some tragic news from the fighting and word of a possible defection. First, at least 13 children were killed when a mortar round hit a school today. There are differing reports of who was responsible for the explosion and NPR's Kelly McEvers is reporting on this for us from Beirut.

And Kelly, to start, what have you learned about this explosion at the school?

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The African nation of Mali is one of the many pressing topics facing the U.N. Security Council this month. After a coup in Mali back in March, an al-Qaida affiliate seized control of the northern part of the country, and the terrorist threat there is growing. As NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, U.S. officials aren't the only ones raising alarms.

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Last week in the country of Qatar, a poet was sentenced to life in prison. That was the punishment for writing verse that the country's ruler found insulting. The poet's name is Mohammed Ajami, and his poem skewered governments across the region. At one point, it declared: We are all Tunisia in the face of the repressive elite.

Well, commentator Andrei Codrescu says this case shows a brazen bit of hypocrisy.