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Christmas is less than a week away and shoppers continue their quest for the perfect gift at the perfect price. But at one shop in a southwest Ohio mall, Roman Catholic friars are offering their presence for free.

It's the start of retirement season in the House as members head home after a long, difficult year. Three House members — two Republicans and a Democrat — announced their retirements from Congress this week, ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.

Two billion — that's the number of dollars the federal government lost during the partial government shutdown, paying furloughed employees not to work.

On the first day of 2013, Obama expressed a hope that the new year would bring "a little less drama" and "a little less brinkmanship." In fact, the year saw high drama, a government shutdown, and massive problems with the website at the core of the president's new health care law.

Morning Edition wishes news anchors Jean Cochran and Paul Brown well. A number of our coworkers took the chance to accept voluntary buyouts as NPR changes. Leaving the Morning Edition staff are: Anne Hawke, Jim Wildman and Steve Munro.

Two members of the Russian activist band Pussy Riot and billionaire Mikhail Khordorkovsky are expected to be released from prison by Russian President Vladimir Putin. David Greene talks to reporter Masha Gessen about whether this move signals a liberalizing trend, or is simply a calculation ahead of the 2014 Olympics.

United Methodist church officials have defrocked the Rev. Frank Schaefer, who presided over his son's gay wedding.

The patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family has been suspended indefinitely from the hit reality TV show on A&E because of his remarks about homosexuality. He made the comments to GQ magazine. The show has spawned a multi-million-dollar industry of related products and books.

I'm thinking of a man and his cat. A real man. His real cat. Then I'm imagining a bunch of world-famous cartoonists, Calvin & Hobbes' Bill Watterson, Wile E. Coyote's Chuck Jones, Gary Larson, Maurice Sendak — all of them drawing this same man and his cat. Then I'm staring at very different men and very different cats. Then I'm giggling.

Some consumers are wary of making online purchases, fearing hackers would steal their credit card information. But as the security breach potentially involving 40 million payment cards at Target shows, even in-store transactions are vulnerable to high-tech thieves.