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What happens if you slash the price of oil, save Europe and force Congress to make a grand bargain? Not as much as you might think.

It was a deadly combination: Winter jet streams collided with warm and moist air. Twisters flattened subdivisions in Washington, Ill., and tore through farming communities. The destruction spread to other states across the upper Midwest. Six deaths have been reported in Illinois, two in Michigan.

Those opposed to taxes and big government are putting their money where their mouths are in the state. A food drive there was put together by libertarians and anarchists, and they say they privately funded, voluntary charity is superior to the welfare system.

Annual forecasts are brimming with good cheer for 2014: Jobs will come back, stock prices will keep heading higher, and consumer spending will continue to improve, economists predict.

The candidates are spending modestly, but the superPACs are out in full force in Ohio and elsewhere. They've already shelled out $12 million for ads — most of them negative — in Super Tuesday states.

The Midwest is home to the largest collection of grottoes, or man-made caves, in the world. And the mother of them all — encrusted in $6 million worth of semiprecious stones — is in West Bend, Iowa, the life's work of a priest after he survived pneumonia. It turns 100 this weekend.

Illinois' pension gap is estimated at $83 billion — and it costs $12.6 million more every day the state does nothing to address the crisis. The state can't readily come up with the money, and while politicians say they want to help, they're unlikely to act during an election year.

Sony is expected to cut about 6 percent of its global workforce in an attempt to return to profitability. Daisuke Wakabayashi, of The Wall Street Journal, talks to Renee Montagne about restructuring plans at Sony.

The typical first-time mother takes 6 1/2 hours to give birth these days. Her counterpart 50 years ago labored for barely four hours. That's a finding with big implications for current rates of cesarean sections.

Halal meat butchers have a reputation for quality in France. And with an estimated 6 million Muslims now living there, halal products are becoming increasingly popular, and sometimes political. Now one French-Algerian restaurant is trying to make French-Halal fusion food official.