Business

If you shopped recently at 63 Barnes & Noble stores in nine states and used a credit or debit card there's a chance that thieves got hold of data about your accounts and your PIN.

As the company has announced:

In coming months, Congress will begin an epic struggle to get the federal budget deficit under control. One tax break almost certain to come into play is the mortgage interest deduction.

Both President Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, have suggested ways to scale back the deduction's value for wealthy taxpayers. And many economists are cheering them on, saying that now — when interest rates are low — would be a great time to reduce or even phase out the deduction.

A startling new report finds freshly graduated college women will likely face this hurdle when entering the work world: they're worth less than equally educated men.

The American Association of University Women is releasing a new study that shows when men and women attend the same kind of college, pick the same major and accept the same kind of job, on average, the woman will still earn 82 cents to every dollar that a man earns.

Surely you've heard of crowd funding sites like Kickstarter that have helped thousands of filmmakers, musicians and painters leverage Facebook and Twitter to raise money for creative projects.

Thanks to the success of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, lots of people now know about the indulgent eating habits of Hobbits. And as the Lord of the Rings prequel movie, The Hobbit, comes out in December, restaurants that think they see some kindred spirits among their customers are serving up special menus.

There's a palpable anxiety in mountain resort towns this fall. After last season's abysmal skiing and snowboarding revenues, these towns are counting on heavy snow this year to make up for the loss. Now, analysts say without early snow, resorts may suffer a "hangover" from last year's disappointment. Luke Runyon reports for Aspen Public Radio.

Facebook beat analysts' expectations, posting solid sales in the third quarter Tuesday. Most important to the company's future, 14 percent of its revenues came from mobile advertising. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to "dispel the myth that Facebook can't make money from mobile." Still, Facebook's mobile partner, game maker Zynga, is in trouble and announced it is laying off 5 percent of its workforce.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

OK. Let's talk a little more about a small screen. Of course, Apple has dominated the tablet computer market with its iPad. The company says it's sold 100 million of them, but it's had some competition from smaller rivals - smaller screens, that is. Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus can easily fit in a purse, or even a jacket pocket. So, as expected, yesterday, Apple introduced a smaller version of the iPad - bigger than an iPhone, smaller than the iPad, the iPad Mini. NPR's Laura Sydell reports.

The AP reports new drilling methods have boosted U.S. oil production 7 percent this year. And next year, the Energy Department sees American output falling just shy of Saudi Arabia's 11.6 million barrels per day. Industry analysts predict that by 2020, North America could be "the new Middle East."

Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets, and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places.

Luc Vincent — who runs Google's Street View — met up with a small group of reporters on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon this week.