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Sprouts have taken one step closer to culinary oblivion, with the big grocery chain Kroger saying that as of this week, it's banishing sprouts from its 2,425 stores because they pose too big a food safety risk.

The crunchy green microplants have long been touted as raw food chock full of nutrients. But that very freshness is also why they've caused more than 54 disease outbreaks since 1990, including a mega-outbreak of E. coli in Germany in 2011 that killed 53 people.

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CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Celeste Headlee. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, we'll take a look at how some Muslims are celebrating a big holiday in big ways. That's in a few moments. But first, imagine if the members of the U.S. Congress got together once a year and spent just one week discussing the issues that were important to their constituents.

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CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

Now, we turn from a story about privilege to one about poverty. Forty-six million Americans now live with poverty. That's according to the latest figures available from the Census Bureau and, while the poor have been talked about on the campaign trail, how often have they been talked with?

What would President Obama do with a second term?

It's been a bit of a mystery throughout the campaign. The president seems to devote at least as much time criticizing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney as he does explaining what he'd like to do if returned to office.

Obama has taken some heat for his silence and sought to answer such complaints this week. But even as he's made his priorities more clear, he hasn't answered what may be the biggest outstanding question: how he'll get congressional Republicans to go along with his agenda.

Political history was made last night when President Obama's campaign, including affiliated Democratic Party committees, announced that it has raised in total more than $1 billion this election cycle, NPR's Peter Overby reports.

The number turned up as Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney made their final campaign finance disclosures before Election Day.

"We're not trying to hype it," National Weather Service meterologist Paul Kocin tells Bloomberg News. "What we're seeing in some of our models is a storm at an intensity that we have not seen in this part of the country in the past century."

If proposals calling for rights for animals are on the table, why not rights for other living things? Plants, for instance.

Democrats and Republicans are on track to spend about $1 billion each on television advertising in the presidential race. Most of it is negative, and almost all of it is concentrated in nine battleground states.

If you live in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia or Wisconsin, you cannot get away from the ad blitz being waged by both sides. For the folks who track political advertising at Kantar Media CMAG, these commercials tell a story.