By: Frank N. Carlson

Meet Jessica Beinecke, the writer, host and producer of "OMG! Meiyu," or "Oh My Gosh! American English." Each weekday the 25-year-old Voice of America journalist posts 2- to 3-minute videos explaining the hippest American English and culture to a Chinese audience; her many Chinese fans, in turn, tell her what they'd like to learn next.

But the show originated as an afterthought. Last July, she and her colleagues at VOA "were producing a monthly travel show that went around the country showing the coolest places in America, the most interesting American people and teaching American slang along the way," Beinecke said. "But we thought, this isn't online, this is only monthly, so are people seeing this? We had no idea."

By: P.J. Tobia

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army continues to blast away at the city of Homs and on Thursday we spoke with someone living in the middle of the conflict.

Lubna, a 27-year-old woman who wished to be identified only by her first name, lives just a few blocks from Homs' clock-tower, near the city center. For five days, she didn't leave her house because of the sounds of gunfire and explosions. On Thursday she ventured into her neighborhood for the first time all week. We spoke with her shortly after she returned home.

Lubna told us that she lives in between Baba Amr and Al Khalidiya, two neighborhoods that activists say have been under near-constant attack by mortars and bombs.

By: Gwen Ifill

Updated 5:30 p.m. Friday | One of the things we tell our children is that life is all about choices.

We celebrate this idea, because it is an essential part of the kind of ambition we want them to have. We want them to consider all the options, and then aspire to the best one.

In politics, the language of choice often comes loaded. School choice. Abortion rights. Public option. Proponents embrace these descriptions to put the best possible face on otherwise contentious issues.

This was one of the weeks where the politics of alternatives defined the debate. President Obama ended his week by pulling a compromise out of his hat on coverage for women's health care that sparked a surprisingly fierce pushback from the Catholic Church.

Should individuals pay for contraception? Should employers who object to birth control be required to pay? The tightrope solution from the White House -- make insurance companies pay. President Obama's decision to abandon his opposition to big-money super PACS was another painfully studied choice, since the president was on record in opposition to such spending.

Obama 2012 manager Jim Messina admitted as much in a campaign blog post.

"With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm," he wrote. The alternative, he suggested, was forced on them.

For GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, who saw his march toward the Republican nomination slowed by a trio of primary season losses, the week's choice was more of a pivot.

By: Kelly Chen

Photo by Max Wolfe via Creative Commons

When it comes to lowering the high school dropout rate, many school leaders have found that something fairly basic works: the ABCs -- Attendance, Behavior and Class.

And after President Obama's call-to-action to raise the legal dropout rate to 18 in this year's State of the Union, communities across the country are looking at their own attempts to crack down on poor attendance and searching for the most effective strategies.

In Washington, D.C., where 20 percent of students miss 15 or more days of school each year, parents and students soon will see individual success stories advertised on bus shelters, each sharing their own inspiration for good attendance. A radio commercial targeting parents also will be aired on local stations.

The strategy is the result of a truancy task force created by health and family services and law enforcement agencies.

By: Sarah Clune and Jason Kane

Under mounting pressure, the Obama administration today proposed an "accommodation" to a mandate that religious groups cover birth control free-of-charge.

President Obama made the announcement this afternoon in the White House Press room.

By: Paul Solman

Social Security cards. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Solman frequently answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Friday's query:

Gwynn Pealer: I thought I understood Social Security, but all this political [baloney] has me confused. I thought Social Security was like other pension funds where contributions were invested in a way so that it was not a Ponzi scheme. I understood that Social Security funds were invested in government bonds and that the taxpayers were expected to pay them back with interest. What else is the Social Security fund invested in?

Paul Solman: No, Gwynn, Social Security was originally designed as a "pay-as-you-go" system in which each succeeding generation of workers is supposed to take care of the last. But, of course, all workers are charged a "payroll" tax of 6.2 percent up to $110,100 in earnings (an increase of $3,300 from the 2011 max), as are their employers. (The employee half has been suspended again until Feb. 29.) That money is supposed to provide for today's retirees, as their Federal Insurance Contributions Act (or "FICA") taxes were supposed to pay for those who preceded them. To the extent that more money was collected than paid out in any given year, it was ostensibly set aside in a "fund."

By: Christina Bellantoni and Terence Burlij

Mitt Romney's book is for sale at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. Photo By Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call.

We are coming to you live from the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington, D.C., where Day 2 of the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference is underway and where Republican presidential contenders Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will speak Friday.

Four years ago this is where Romney ended his presidential campaign. Friday, he hopes to give his current White House bid a jolt after Santorum's sweep of the contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri zapped the front-runner momentum he gained after wins in Florida and Nevada.

Romney previewed his CPAC remarks in an interview Thursday night with Fox News. The former Massachusetts governor was pressed by host Sean Hannity to explain his inability to "close the deal" with conservative voters.

"First of all, I'd note that I won among conservatives in New Hampshire. I won solidly among conservatives in Florida, won among conservatives in Nevada, and have the most delegates in this race. So, I wouldn't say that I haven't been able to get good support from conservatives," Romney said.

By: Jason Kane and Saskia Chanoine

John Cassidy, who holds Guinness World Records for several balloon-related tricks, performs a balloon act for first lady Michelle Obama in the Diplomatic Reception Room. White House photo by Chuck Kennedy.

Michelle Obama may be spending her time these days dancing with Ellen and racing Jimmy Fallon through the White House, but all the fun began with a much more serious moment: "My pediatrician pointed out some changes in my kids' body mass index that he just sort of checked us on."

As the first lady told Jim Lehrer two years ago when her signature "Let's Move!" campaign launched, the typical American lifestyle got the best of the Obama family in their pre-White House days. "It was a life that most working parents are dealing with, where you're juggling jobs and trying to get kids to and from and you're trying to make life easier."

That's why the mother who once allowed her family to indulge in too much television and junk food became the national spokeswoman for nutrition and exercise: She knows how easy it is to lose control and what it takes for an entire family to get back on track. Two years after she launched a campaign against childhood obesity, it's time to take stock of the progress in implementing those same principles on a national scale.

But first, it's worth a look back to the very beginning. Watch Jim Lehrer's full interview here:

By: Paul Solman

Graphic by the PBS NewsHour, based on the cover of "The Spirit Level."

Paul Solman frequently answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Thursday's query:

John Naghshineh: Mr. Solman, could you please talk to Richard Wilkinson or Kate Pickett about income inequality? They wrote the book, "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger." According to them, social mobility tends to be stronger in more equal societies, which contradicts Richard Epstein's views about inequality being an incentive for growth. They also show greater equality correlates with higher life expectancy rates, lower crime rates, fewer dropouts, teenage births, educational outcomes and much more. You can guess how the United States fares on these charts up against other economically advanced nations. Their research couldn't be more relevant to our times!

Paul Solman: But we did. We've run two segments from our interview with Richard Wilkinson:

By: Jenny Marder

After decades drilling through more than two miles of ice in the coldest spot on Earth, Russian scientists announced this week that they reached their goal: a subglacial lake the size of Lake Ontario, which has been sealed off from the world for as long as 20 million years.

So much has been reported on the mechanics of the drilling, the grueling conditions the researchers faced, and the microbial life forms they hope to find submerged in Antarctica's Lake Vostok, we thought it was worth wrapping up some of the best coverage, using Storify after the jump: