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Former South African President Nelson Mandela is universally admired but there was a time when he was caught up in controversy. Steve Inskeep talks to Bill Keller, a columnist for The New York Times, about Mandela's controversial past.

Some Californians are choosing plans that don't comply with the Affordable Care Act to save money. They have only a few weeks left to pick coverage that will last a year. It will eventually be replaced by health insurance that includes a full range of essential benefits, but at a higher cost.

NPR's Gregory Warner speaks with Renee Montagne about the scene near the family home of Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa, where people are gathered to mourn the former president's life.

The only person known to have been cured of AIDS got a bone marrow transplant, so when two AIDS patients in Boston appeared to be free of the virus after transplants, scientists hoped they were cured, too. But the HIV virus has returned in both.

While the company tries to work things out with regulators, it won't be telling people who buy its test if their genetic profiles predispose them to particular illnesses or predict their responses to prescription drugs.

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen continue to mine American pop culture in their latest film. It's 1961 in Greenwich Village, and a homeless folk singer is trying desperately to break out. Critic David Edelstein says the overarching tone of the film is snotty, condescending and cruel.

HBO's new TV special is part biography, part music-appreciation lesson and part performance piece. Critic David Bianculli says it's a superbly compiled work, overseen by two of the people most intimately familiar with the composer himself.

The founder of Pakistan's classic car club hops in his 1954 Austin-Healey and drives from one end of the troubled country to the other with his wife and friends. Why? Mostly because it's fun, but also as a statement of defiance to those causing havoc in Pakistan.

Mexico's congress is set to pass a controversial plan to open up the country's vast and sluggish oil industry to private investment. The move requires a constitutional amendment since Mexico forbids foreign involvement in the oil industry. Opponents of the plan say the president is selling out the country, but many experts say that without foreign investment, Mexico won't be able to tap all its oil and won't modernize.

The auction house Christie's sold a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster guitar Friday for a whopping $965,000. It's the guitar behind what some consider a watershed moment in music history — the moment that Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar on July 25, 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival.