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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.

We ask the artist behind "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding" three questions about hilarious instances of human kindness. (You can also hear songs Lowe performed live at our taping.)

To an African-American coming of age in the late 1970s, there seemed two certainties: Nelson Mandela would die in prison in apartheid South Africa and no black person would become U.S. president in his lifetime. So much for youthful predictions.

Fissures in the Republican Party have drawn a great deal of attention over the last year. But this week, the Democrats' economic disagreements came into full view. When it comes to Social Security, not all Democrats think expanding the program is a good idea.

The cold killed four people in California and an ice storm turned North Texas into a skating rink. More of the same is expected during a second round of storms this weekend.

Director Alexander Payne talks about his new film Nebraska. Alexis Madrigal explores the best way to share photos of his new baby. And Ben Bradlee Jr. talks about The Kid, his new biography of baseball player Ted Williams.

Newman was deported by North Korea on Friday, days after he appeared on state TV reading an apology for alleged war crimes.

Amid the flurry of retrospectives prompted by Nelson Mandela's death, writer Kevin Roose reminds readers not to forget the social context within which Mandela struggled. Roose suggests reading the novel, Cry the Beloved Country, to understand the systematic racial oppression of South Africa under apartheid.

South Africa's official period of mourning for former President Nelson Mandela will culminate in his funeral a week from Sunday. Mandela's death left South Africans with "a sense of profound and enduring loss," says the nation"s president, Jacob Zuma. His compatriots, as well as foreign visitors, are flocking in homage to the Mandela homes in Soweto and Johannesburg.

U.S. civil rights leaders were among the first Americans to shine an international light on apartheid in South Africa. But calls for economic sanctions eventually led to wider actions, from college campuses to Wall Street. Richard Knight, project director of the African Activist Archive, remembers the role the U.S. indirectly played in South Africa's struggle.