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Americans' methods for commuting to work vary by city. Some drive alone or carpool, while others use mass transportation. Use this map to explore the geographic differences in how residents in cities with more than 100,000 workers get to work.

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Part 3 in a four-part series

Maybe you've agreed to be an organ donor. There might be something on your driver's license — a red heart, a pink dot or the word "Donor" — to show it. That also means you've very likely agreed — even if you don't realize it — to donate more than just your organs.

I know that I'm an organ donor. I signed up years ago, when I renewed my driver's license. But I had no idea that I'd also signed up to donate my tissue. That is, until Laura Siminoff, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's medical school, explained it to me.

From record-breaking temperatures to long droughts, extreme weather events are on the rise. Many meteorologists and climatologists say it's only going to get worse. Many cities are putting plans in place to prepare for a range of costly and deadly weather disasters.

Thursday morning, TV critics will report, with a little (in the case of east coast critics) or a lot (particularly in the case of west coast critics up at 5:00 in the morning) of grumpiness, who's gotten Emmy nominations. Some of my thoughts about the Emmys came out in a chat I recently had with several of my critic colleagues, graciously hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, which has posted the unedited chat.

With the addition of 29 counties in eight states today, there are now 1,297 counties across the nation so stricken by drought and heat that they've been declared natural disaster areas, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack just announced. That's about one-third of all U.S. counties, he said.

It grieves me to tell you something you might already know. The Pulitzer Prize-winning, much loved columnist William Raspberry passed away Tuesday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 76 years old.

If you followed his work — columns that cut to the quick of difficult issues but were never mean — then you don't need me to tell you why he's already missed. But if you didn't know his work — or him, for that matter — please give me the privilege of telling you what you missed.

Black gay and bisexual men now account for one in four new HIV infections in America, according to a new report by the Black AIDS Institute. Host Michel Martin speaks with director Phill Wilson about what's behind this alarming trend. Martin is also joined by Cornelius Jones, an HIV-positive artist.

After a 13-year hiatus, the Food and Drug Administration gave its OK to the second weight-loss drug in a month.

This time it's Qsymia, previously called Qnexa, from Vivus. The pill contains two active ingredients: topiramate, an anti-seizure medicine, and phentermine, a stimulant.

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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

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And I'm Renee Montagne.

We begin our program with two very different views of the economy. Two observers of the economy think the long-term looks very good, as we'll hear in a moment.

Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal and Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist, about the U.S. economy. What kind of a recovery are we looking at, and where is the growth coming from?

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And the nation's homebuilders are feeling more optimistic than they have since March, 2007, just before the beginning of the Great Recession. What's more, the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Market Index has posted its largest one month gain in roughly a decade.

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: David Crowe, the chief economist at the Home Builders Association says things are definitely looking up. It's a trend that began last September.

The city of San Bernardino, Calif., is expected to declare a fiscal emergency, and officially file for bankruptcy on Wednesday. The declaration would be the third by a California city in recent weeks. Some analysts believe San Bernardino's problems may be more about its dysfunctional local politics.