Music

Other news from this past week:

• Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, a cornerstone band for the New York Latin jazz community, are profiled briefly in the New York Daily News.

Think "grass-roots politics," and what's the first thing that comes to mind?

How about two dozen multimillionaires with open checkbooks?

That's what an NPR analysis of annual IRS filings by Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies shows. Despite its name and the repeated use of the word "grassroots" in those documents, nearly 90 percent of the $77 million raised by the Karl Rove-founded group in its first 18 months came from donors who gave at least $1 million.

"I started singing in bars when I was still in high school," says Kelly Hogan. "It's not the easiest thing to do if you like to eat something besides ramen noodles and have insurance."

Today at about 4 p.m., Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney filed his public financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission. The report outlines the former Massachusetts governor's assets and liabilities.

We'll embed a copy of the report at the bottom of this post and we'll add more details to this post as we work through them.

The sputtering U.S. economy isn't just bad news for America, it's a drag on the global economic outlook as well.

"What matters to the rest of the world is the amount of demand the United States is going to generate," says economist Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell.

"Weak job growth translates to weak domestic demand in the U.S., and that concerns all of the U.S.'s major trading partners," he says.

Cancer is everywhere.

And, before long, cancer will be a major cause of death in every part of the world, not just a big factor in what's now the developed world.

In 2030 the world's population is expected to hit 8.3 billion, up from 7 billion today. By then, new cases of cancer cases are expected to nearly double to 20.3 million from 12.8 million in 2008, according to an analysis in The Lancet Oncology.

In just a few weeks, a decision is expected from the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law. Some legal analysts expect the justices to strike down the law, or at least the controversial individual mandate. And whatever the court decides, it could come in a 5-4 decision.

A few of these analysts discussed the implications of a split decision in this high-profile case with NPR's Neal Conan Thursday on Talk of the Nation.