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The Department of the Interior is huge — more than 70,000 employees manage a half-billion acres of public land, mostly in the West. The department does everything from operate national parks to administer Native American social programs and manage wild horses.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

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In Afghanistan today, Taliban militants staged a brazen attack in the heart of Kabul. Their target was the headquarters of the National Directorate of Security or NDS - it's Afghanistan's equivalent of the FBI.

As NPR's Sean Carberry reports, the attack began with a suicide bombing, then five militants tried to storm the compound.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

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Algerian Islamists attacked an oil and gas field at dawn this morning in the desert on the border with Libya. They claim to have taken nearly 200 people hostage. In addition to Algerians, they claim to hold seven Americans, as well as French, British and Japanese citizens.

NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris reports the hostage-taking appears to be the first act of retaliation for France's actions in Mali.

Skin cancer? There's an app for that.

But the same smartphone that brings you Fruit Ninja might not be the best tool for diagnosing deadly melanoma.

Smartphone apps that evaluate moles for skin cancer risk missed threatening moles one-third of the time, according to a study by dermatologists at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Lucas Codognolla's hands shake as he waits in line at the Bridgeport, Conn., DMV for his turn to take the road test.

"I don't know if it's nerves or the excitement, you know?" he says.

The 22-year-old's family emigrated from Brazil when was just 9. When he turned 16 and wanted to get his driver's license, his parents sat him down and told him the truth: He was in the country illegally.

Initially, he lied to his friends about why he couldn't drive, he says. But then, as he got older, driving simply became necessary.

JPMorgan Chase reports that its profits were up 53 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 — but CEO Jamie Dimon's pay will be cut in half, after the bank lost billions of dollars on risky bets made in its London office. The incident tarnished the reputation of Dimon, who had successfully steered his bank through the recent financial crisis.

"This past year has been a bruising one for Dimon," as NPR's Steve Henn reports for our Newscast unit:

States aren't likely to prevent many shootings by requiring mental health professionals to report potentially violent patients, psychiatrists and psychologists say.

President Obama's historic plunge Wednesday into the politics and realities of gun control in America has mobilized advocates on both sides of the issue.

But though his major proposals, from banning assault rifles to more stringent background checks and ammunition limits, are being rolled out in the shadow of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., their Capitol Hill prospects remain highly uncertain given long-standing resistance to such efforts.

What began as a company's suspicion that its infrastructure was being hacked turned into a case of a worker outsourcing his own job to a Chinese consulting firm, according to reports that cite an investigation by Verizon's security team. The man was earning a six-figure salary.

He'll always be best known as "the kindly white adoptive father of two young African-American brothers in the TV sitcom Diff'rent Strokes," as The Associated Press writes.

Conrad Bain, 89, died Monday in Livermore, Calif., his daughter says.

Zach Sayne was 25 when he died earlier this month at the place that had been his home for 15 years — a children's nursing home in Alabama.

But that was too far away, 200 miles too far, for his mother in Georgia. Nola Sayne was trying to bring him back, closer to her home. The story of why she couldn't reveals the bureaucratic traps, underfunding and lack of choices that plague state Medicaid programs.

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This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.

Two high-profile cabinet nominations go before the Senate soon. Senator John Kerry is expected to face little opposition to become the next secretary of state. Former Senator Chuck Hagel may have more problems. But as mentioned earlier, his nomination as secretary of defense is also expected to win approval.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Rockefeller won't run again, Treasury kills the trillion dollar coin, and the president calls on Congress to pony up. It's Wednesday and time for a...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Deadbeat.

CONAN: ...edition of the Political Junkie.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDINGS)

SARAH PALIN: Lipstick.

A month after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Barack Obama announced his proposals for gun control policies during a White House ceremony. He issued 23 executive orders on gun control and urged Congress to pass laws that would tighten requirements on gun sales and assault weapons.

How evil is sugar? That's long been a hard question for researchers to answer. Most of the studies about sugar's health effects to date have been too small, too short-term, or too poorly designed to nail it one way or another.

At a White House event with children who wrote him letters after the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today said the nation cannot wait any longer to do what can be done to reduce gun violence.

Political insiders, celebrities and Washingtonians are busy preparing for President Obama's inaugural events, which are just days away. Native Americans are getting in on the action by hosting their own inaugural ball. Host Michel Martin talks with the organizers about this unique event.

Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama are touting new proposals aimed at curbing gun violence. Host Michel Martin learns more from Paul Barrett, author of 'Glock: The Rise of America's Gun' and Craig Whitney, author of 'Living With Guns, A Liberal's Case for the 2nd Amendment.'

Host Michel Martin isn't the only person who's been "under the weather" lately. She chats with NPR science correspondent Rob Stein about the nation-wide flu outbreak.

Lawmakers in New York are getting tough on guns. They passed a new law expanding the state's ban on assault weapons. It's also meant to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. Host Michel Martin speaks to Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times about the legislation.

Starting a small business hasn't been easy lately. People are now turning to their peers for funding after being denied credit from big banks. But that has its own set of risks and rewards. Host Michel Martin explores the future of small business in 2013.

After five days of airstrikes aimed at Islamist rebels, French troops are engaged in their first ground battles with those forces in Mali, according to several news outlets.

In December, the actor Dustin Hoffman sat in a box seat at the Kennedy Center as his old friend, Robert De Niro, saluted him at a celebration marking one of the highest accolades for an artist in the United States: a Kennedy Center Honor.

As supporters of President Obama prepare for his toned-down but glammed-up second inauguration over the long weekend of Jan. 19-21, the president's detractors are making other plans.

Across the country, disenchanted Americans are engaging in forms of protest — some public, some private — to signal their displeasure with November's election outcome.

How do they NOT love Obama? Let us count the ways.

Good morning.

Sorry we're late with the roundup. We've had quite a few things to post about already today, as you can see:

-- Before Obama's Plan Is Out, NRA Calls Him An 'Elitist Hypocrite'

-- Inflation Rate Slowed Sharply In 2012; Prices Were Flat In December

Consumer prices rose just 1.7 percent in 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. That's about half the pace of 2011 — when prices went up 3 percent.

In December, BLS says, prices were unchanged.