Jillian Weinberger

The Republican candidates kicked off their Florida campaigns at last night's debate in Tampa. Florida is the first Republican presidential battleground with a significant Latino population, and as Mitt Romney battles Newt Gingrich for the lead in the Sunshine State, Latinos across the country are taking note. How the candidates position themselves on immigration and court the highly influential Cuban-American vote remains to be seen.

Over the past ten months, Syrian Security Forces have killed more than 5,000 protestors across the country. But this weekend, two key voices announced their calls to action: the Arab League will seek U.N. Security Council approval to peacefully end the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that would block financial aid and create trade sanctions against Syrian leaders involved in the crackdown.

This week, President Obama delivers the State of the Union, then travels to five states that promise to be key battlegrounds for this year's election: Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan. As the President begins his swing state tour, Republican candidates will be setting up camp in Florida, preparing for two debates in the next primary state.

Last week, The Takeaway reported that student loan debt is rising along with the college tuition rate. According to the College Board, the average cost per year of tuition is up more 8.3 percent for public four year colleges and up 4.5 percent for private schools. The average college student now finishes school with between $22,000 and $28,000 of debt. While President Obama announced a new program that the White House says will help lower student loan interest rates, some students refuse to take on the burden of debt. Celeste is in Los Angeles this week and she spoke to one such student, a UCLA undergraduate who is so concerned about debt, he's decided to finish his education homeless.

Sgt. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been imprisoned by Hamas since 2006, was released on Tuesday in Egypt as part of a prisoner trade between Israel and Hamas. In exchange for Shalit's release, Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, the first group of what will be more than 1,000. "I very much hope that this deal will advance peace," Shalit told Egyptian television before he was released. The deal is seen as a major political victory for Hamas, which Israel considers to be a terrorist organization. While Shalit may be on his way home, what the prisoner swap means for the future of the Palestinian leadership and the Middle East peace process is far from clear.

The 2012 Election is more than a year away, but the president and Republican presidential hopefuls are already campaigning, and setting their sights on potential swing states. Tuesday night, the Republican presidential candidates will debate once again, this time in the swing state of Nevada. Meanwhile, President Obama is traveling through the swing state of North Carolina, hoping to rally support for his jobs bill.

The movie "Contagion" swept the box office this fall. While the film featured an ensemble cast of famous faces — from Kate Winslet to Matt Damon to Gwyneth Paltrow — the real star of "Contagion" was the virus that murdered millions throughout the movie. Biologist Nathan Wolfe served as a consultant on the film. And while the movie is fiction, Wolfe’s new book warns of the very real threats posed by global pandemics.

How people move on planet Earth affects everything about the quality of their lives. Humans have always thought of motion collective or otherwise as extensions of their individual physical bodies. Transportation involves people and machines interacting intimately. Think of it as putting on and taking off a "car suit" to drive, or a much larger "airplane suit" to fly. Thinking of transportation in this sense, how humans conduct their day-to-day lives seems much less efficient.

Two activists, separated by a generation, examine the impact of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, 20 years later. 

A new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides follows three college students graduating in the midst of an economic downturn. With unemployment around 10 percent, the characters try to find ways to cope — moving home, busing tables, applying to graduate school. One flees the country entirely, running from the recession at home to volunteer in India. It sounds like a novel set in 2011, until Eugenides' characters start calling each other from land line phones and writing letters home from abroad. 

One in six Americans are poor, which means 50 million people are living in poverty in the United States. Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, hosts of PRI's "Smiley and West," went on "The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience," an 18-city tour of the United States in August, to speak with Americans living in poverty and get a sense of what it's like to be poor in America today. This week, PBS will air the first of five episodes of "The Poverty Tour."

Chuck Klosterman has his finger on the pulse of contemporary American life. His essays and novels examine not only sports and pop culture, but also what the most popular athletes, music, movies and Internet obsessions say about who Americans are. Klosterman’s new book, "The Visible Man" is a novel about a therapist and her extraordinary patient, a man who claims he’s perfected the art of invisibility.

Partisan politics, brinkmanship, periodic threats to shutdown the government over seemingly routine matters — it is easy to see why so many Americans have grown disillusioned with the political system. "If there's too much cynicism, then the Constitution won't work, it can't," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer tells The Takeaway. A Clinton appointee who has spent 15 years on the nation's highest court, Breyer warns that a jaded, disfranchised electorate is perilous to a functioning democracy in the U.S. under the Constitution.

Season Two of "Boardwalk Empire" premieres this Sunday on HBO. The series, starring Steve Buscemi in a Prohibition-era Atlantic City, won eight Emmys this year -- most of them for c...

Jennifer Granholm was the governor of Michigan from 2002 to 2010. Those eight years were some of the most turbulent in the history of the state. Governor Granholm led Michigan through a number of factory shut-downs, a serious recession with skyrocketing unemployment, and, of course, the auto bailout in 2008. Governor Granolm and her husband, Dan Mulhern, describe these challenges and much more in their new book, "A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future."

Common rose to fame as a rapper in the 1990s, and his childhood and teenage years clearly influenced his music. He's also found success as an actor, and now as a writer — his new memoir, "One Day It'll All Make Sense," which shares the title of his 1997 album, came out yesterday.

Most of us think of opera as a traditionally Western art. Historically, the best composers wrote in French, Italian, German or English — until now. Over the past decade, the Chinese government has devoted millions to new opera houses, opera festivals and music education. The Chinese investment in opera has piqued the interest of classical music students here in the U.S., where budget-cutting has sapped funding for the arts.

East Coast Prepares for Hurricane Irene

It's been a whirlwind week in Libya. On Monday, Libyan rebels stormed into Tripoli, effectively taking over the capital city and inciting celebrations and battles with Gadhafi loyals. Gadhafi's forces were holding foreign journalists under lock and key in the Rixos hotel, but finally freed them on Wednesday, as rebels surrounded Gadhafi's compound. As the rebels continue to search for the missing leader, the Transitional National Council is preparing to govern a post-Gadhafi Libya. What’s next for Libya?

Pat Summitt has had a successful career, leading the University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols to eight NCAA championships. Yesterday, the 59-year-old legendary coach announced that she has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. WNBA player Tamika Catchings played for Coach Summitt at the University of Tennessee for four years. She said she was shocked by the news, but, she explained, "When you think about all of the things Pat’s been able to accomplish, a lot of it has come from her determination and she’s had so many trials and tribulations throughout her life, but look at her. You know, she’s still standing strong." Despite her fighting spirit, Summitt's diagnosis raises questions about Alzheimer's disease, particularly because Summitt is younger than most who suffer from Alzheimer's.