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In a courtroom in Jacksonville, Fla., on Thursday, prosecutors and the defense laid out different versions of how 47-year-old Michael Dunn, who is white, came to shoot and kill Jordan Davis, a black 17-year-old.

Cutting the national debt and deficit used to be the most divisive political debate in Washington. These days, not so much. Both parties have agreed to move on and focus on issues they largely agree on: income inequality and social mobility. But there's not much they can do without a sustainable budget.

The stray dogs roaming Russia's Olympics venues have already become the unofficial mascots of the Winter Games. Olympics officials say no healthy dogs will be destroyed, but animal rights groups worried about the fate of the dogs are taking in as many as they can.

A convoy of nearly 500 vehicles full of Muslim families filed out of the capital of Central African Republic on Friday, watched closely by crowds of cheering Christians. Two months of sectarian violence preceded the exodus, which Associated Press photographer Jerome Delay witnessed firsthand. Melissa Block speaks to Delay about the situation.

In order to understand and to mourn the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon recommends reading The Night of the Gun by David Carr.

At $1.4 billion, romance is by far the biggest sector of the publishing industry. Harper's editor Jesse Barron looked into the business of romance and its peculiarities for this month's issue. He says the key is copying the elements that made other authors successful — down to the cover model's pose.

Today's political polarization makes it seem harder than ever to tackle climate change. Republican Bob Dixson says the goals of going green aren't only for liberals. His town of Greensburg was hit by an unusually strong tornado, and now he's working on a White House task force to prepare communities like his.

When the bipartisan budget deal was announced in December, supporters heralded cuts that would balance spending increases — among them, a slight reduction to the pensions of working-age military retirees. But a bipartisan consensus emerged to undo it — calling into the question whether Congress has the political will necessary to make any cuts that reduce the long-term debt.

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor Cox has spent most of his career getting rid of bizarre, unwanted sounds. But in The Sound Book, Cox turns up the volume on those sonic oddities. The book explores weird echoes and unexpected noises from around the globe — including "whisper galleries" and a chirping pyramid.

Much of the attention on the Olympic slopestyle events has focused on snowboarders, but the downhill event is also done on skis. Devin Logan enters Tuesday's competition as the world's top-ranked female freestyle skier. And at 20, she'll compete before she can legally celebrate with a beer.