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Holly Brooks made the switch from coach to world-class athlete in 2009, after an epiphany on a hospital gurney. Now she's hoping to compete in the Winter Olympics for a second time. She says she has something many of her younger competitors lack: perspective.

For the first time in five decades, the Cuban government has begun selling new and used vehicles to anyone who can afford them. But with used Volkswagen Passats priced at $70,000 and a 2013 Peugeot sedan priced at $250,000, it's pretty clear the Castro government doesn't really want to sell them. Why?

The marriages of more than 900 couples have been put on hold as courts weigh in. But "those families should not be asked to endure uncertainty regarding their status as the litigation unfolds," Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday.

If a person loses all brain function, he or she is considered legally dead. But the cases of Jahi McMath and Marlise Muñoz have shown that even though doctors can declare someone dead, families and the courts might not always agree with that definition.

A new film explores the affair between Dickens and a young actress for whom he left his wife, but who for years never showed up in biographies of Dickens. It's the second film directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also plays Dickens.

The actress takes on Mary Poppins' acerbic creator, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. and David Bianculli says two new miniseries are worth special mention — and couldn't be more different.

In Duty, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates writes that the Obama team was always "suspicious" of the military and never trusted senior leaders. The memoir is a case study in a long-standing cultural divide between the White House and the military.

The al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has played a key role in the war against Syria's government but now faces a major onslaught from other rebel forces. ISIS militants are also under fire in neighboring Iraq. NPR's Scott Simon and correspondent Deb Amos discuss how ISIS arose and what it wants to achieve.

Israel's former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a devastating stroke in 2006 at the height of his political power, died Saturday after spending eight years in a coma. NPR's Scott Simon remembers Sharon with former ambassador Dennis Ross, who has played a leading role in shaping U.S. policy on Israel.

Nearly 20 percent of Americans still smoke, in spite of what we know about the dangers. Part of the reason is the allure of a cigarette, so elemental to classic scenes in movies, television shows and books. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Richard Klein, author of Cigarettes are Sublime, about smoking and American culture.