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Now Marco Rubio happens to be one of those regularly mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice for Mitt Romney. And that's where we pick up our discussion with Cokie Roberts, who joins us most Mondays. Cokie, good morning.

COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.

INSKEEP: So is the vice presidential choice an opportunity for Romney to appeal to Hispanics?

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.

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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.

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Next, we have a tale of globalization, how a single fire at a company in Germany could affect business in Detroit or Shanghai.

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The company is a chemical plant in a town called Marl. An explosion there killed two people. It was a tragedy, but did not seem to have global significance.

MONTAGNE: Until car companies realized that Marl is vital to their business. NPR's Sonari Glinton explains.

The conservative group that has seen some corporate donors flee because of its involvement in pushing for voter ID and stand-your-ground gun laws, has new troubles. Common Cause has filed a complaint with the IRS that the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, violated the limits of its charity tax status.

Sebastian Vettel won the Bahrain Grand Prix over the weekend, but in a larger sense the winners were the race organizers. They managed to hold the race which was canceled last year by political unrest, which was part of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Bill Law, of the British Broadcasting Corporation, talks to Steve Inskeep about the weekend's events in Bahrain.

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When John Paton Davies died, he left some unfinished business. His daughter, Tiki Davies, knew he had signed a contract to write a memoir but never finished it. One of her sisters had a carbon copy of the manuscript, which Tiki Davies started typing into a computer.

TIKI DAVIES: What was interesting to me about retyping it is that it's very much in his voice. He was very funny and an elegant speaker as well as a writer. And so I felt as though I had him back for the couple of months I did this.