Morning Edition

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

General Motors is making a bigger effort in what's become the world's biggest car market. At the Beijing Auto Show this week, GM said it plans to open 600 new dealerships in China this year. GM is trying to grow Chinese sales while they still can.

NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from Shanghai.

Misaki Murakami and his family lost everything in last year's tsunami in Japan. Waves carried his soccer ball — covered in notes from third grade friends — to a beach in Alaska. The ball is being returned.

In the 1990's, a Panthers' player earned a place in pro hockey lore when he found a rat in the dressing room, and whacked it with his hockey stick. Fans are encouraged to litter the ice with plastic rats after a win. In a playoff game Saturday, a player from the opposing New Jersey Devils raced for the puck, and kicked a toy rat instead.

As a part of Earth Day celebrations, performance artist Alison Knowles took salad making to the extreme in New York City. Knowles chopped romaine lettuce, carrots and cucumbers to the beat of live music. She then tossed the avalanche of salad off a balcony into a giant tarp, where the salad was served up to audience members.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Later this week, we get some key data to help judge the state of the nation's housing market. There are some early signs of recovery, but home prices are still falling in many areas, as NPR's Chris Arnold reports.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Tomorrow, we'll get the latest word on home prices from what's called the S&P Case-Shiller index. That keeps showing price declines in many areas. Though those price drops have been leveling off, so things definitely aren't as bad as they were.

In its heyday, the textile industry employed 40 percent of North Carolina's work force. Now that employment number is less than 2 percent. But Raleigh Denim has found a way to thrive in North Carolina by making blue jeans the old-fashioned way.

The denim store in Kobe, Japan, sells jeans for $350. The store is able to sell a pair of jeans for that price because it's tapped into a Japanese subculture that is obsessed by 1950s Americana.

Swiss food and drink giant Nestle announced a deal Monday to acquire Pfizer Inc.'s infant-nutrition business for $11.85 billion in a bid to boost sales in emerging markets. Before the announcement, Nestle already had the largest share of the global baby-formula market at just under 20 percent.

Unlike the United States, Germany never had a housing bubble. Its mortgage market is too tightly regulated. But some German banks did lose a lot of money in the financial crisis, and they're still paying a big price for it.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist challenger Francois Hollande will face off next month in a presidential runoff. Anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen came in a surprisingly strong third place.