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dust on government shelves.
• Right now, congressional negotiators are struggling with a way to head off another looming government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis that could strike early next year. A 29-member bipartisan panel faces a Dec. 13 deadline and daunting odds.
• A bipartisan "supercommittee" tasked with finding ways to cut the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years crashed, burned and expired last November.
• A 2010-2011 deficit-reduction panel led by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and Democrat Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, produced a comprehensive deficit-cutting plan that was widely praised but mostly ignored, even by President Barack Obama, who created the group.
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• TIAOHUASHAN Village, China (AP) -- Mu Zhengwu scanned the tiny room of his childhood, part of a wood home built over a shed where cows once sent earthy odors through the floorboards. Wood planks were missing from a bare bed frame. The walls were shedding a kind of wallpaper made from pages of school notebooks.
• Seven Chinese characters, written in bold brush strokes, remained intact above a dusty desk: "The fragrance of winter blossoms comes from bitter chills."
• "These words have prodded me along and kept me going," Mu said on a recent visit to his family's home in Tiaohuashan village. The words accompanied him on his arduous journey from Guizhou, China's most impoverished province, to a prestigious Beijing law school.
• At first glance, the bespectacled 25-year-old might look like proof that China's education remains a powerful social equalizer.
• But a closer examination of Mu's path shows the field of education heavily tilted away from rural students and toward the wealthy urban elite, part of the widening economic and social inequalities in modern, rapidly growing China. Supposedly socialist, China has compulsory education through grade 9 but not without costs for rural families. Some endure heart-breaking sacrifice to educate their children.
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• HERNANDO, Miss. (AP) -- Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham wants to force Mis

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