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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Moving on to another billion dollar tech deal, Microsoft has agreed to pay AOL over $1 billion for hundreds of patents. Microsoft outbid several rivals, including Amazon and eBay, in a deal which saw AOL's stock price jump by over 40 percent. The over 800 patents include internet search, email and customized advertising and are seen as a push by Microsoft into the lucrative smartphone and tablet market.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Facebook likes Instagram. That's the top of our business news.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: And they did more than just click the little thumbs up. Facebook is buying the photo application Instagram and the price is higher than it has ever paid for an acquisition - $1 billion; this for a company with only around a dozen employees. As somebody joked yesterday, why didn't they just download it?

As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, some analysts say the purchase is a defensive move.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Thanks to the new GI Bill, which went into effect in 2009, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans have the opportunity to go back to school. For many veterans, heading to college or university often involves a difficult transition. Sean Bueter of member station WBOI in Fort Wayne, Indiana explains how one university is helping veterans succeed.

Government regulators in the U.S. and Europe are putting pressure on the online advertising industry to adopt a new Web browser option called "do not track." The option is designed to let people request more privacy from the websites they visit.

But there's no consensus yet on how much privacy users should expect. An Internet industry task force convenes Tuesday in Washington to try to hash that out.

Some browsers, like Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox, already come with a "do not track" button. Other browsers are expected to add the feature soon.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And one of baseball's better-known characters, with a knack for testing the boundaries of free speech, has created a controversy in the very first week of the season. Ozzie Guillen, new manager of the Miami Marlins, is holding a press conference today in Miami to apologize. It's all about some comments he made about Cuba's Fidel Castro. Joining us now is NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Good morning.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Renee.

MONTAGNE: OK. What did he say?

This is a story about what can happen when no one is looking. For the patients at Universal Pain Management, a medical clinic in northern Los Angeles County, Dr. Francis Riegler is always looking.

Riegler huddles with the clinic's nurse practitioner over a computer printout. The one-page report from the state's drug-tracking system shows that a patient was on the hunt for more Vicodin, a powerful pain reliever that he was already getting from Riegler's clinic.

The recession brought widespread unemployment across the U.S., but it also prompted a spike in the number of freelance or independent workers.

More than 30 percent of the nation's workers now work on their own, and the research firm IDC projects the number of nontraditional office workers — telecommuters, freelancers and contractors — will reach 1.3 billion worldwide by 2015.

Scientists who created mutant forms of bird flu want to see their research published, and an influential advisory committee recently gave them the green light after a debate that lasted for months.

But one of the manuscripts is now being blocked from publication because of Dutch legal controls on the export of technology that could potentially be used for weapons.

It's just the latest example of how complicated international export control laws have affected the debate over what to do about two studies on bird flu.

In Greece, more than 21 percent of the working-age population is jobless. For Greeks under age 25, the rate is more than double that.

Some young Greeks are frightened that the economy, now in free fall, will take years to recover, so they're leaving for jobs abroad. A few entrepreneurs, however, are trying to start businesses during the worst recession in decades.

A magnet for these young entrepreneurs is CoLab, a business incubator in a weathered building near the Athens Cathedral in the city center. CoLab opened in 2009, with just one occupant — a Spanish travel writer.

The question of how far the government can go in forcing a business — in this case cigarette makers — to warn consumers about its product is before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration wants large, graphic warning labels to scare smokers, but tobacco companies say that violates their right to free speech.