Morning Edition on KSTX

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm David Greene.

If you weren't finished with your taxes, you may have been buried in paperwork over the weekend. Not true for last-minute filers a century ago. While this year's 1040 tax form has 214 pages of instructions, in 1913 it was just one page. There was a section for how farmers should claim livestock including animal wool and hides. There was a line for losses sustained in firestorm or shipwreck. But sorry, the family account at the country store was not deductible.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

North Korea is celebrating the birthday of its founder, Kim Il Sung. The North's leader has been dead nearly 20 years but is treated like a god. And of course, his son; now, his grandson; have both succeeded him. As part of this year's festivities, North Korea sponsored a marathon in the capital, Pyongyang, that drew athletes from around the world; an event that came even though the North has been threatening a nuclear strike against the United States.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And our last word in business today is: The Cicada Index.

Every 17 years, these nasty, loud, little insects known as Brood 2 cicadas emerge in staggering numbers - as many as on billion per square mile from the Carolinas to Connecticut.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

They have a grinding song. They have an endless appetite for vegetation, and most people along the East Coast dread their arrival. But savvy investors know better.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Tensions have been increasing between the United States and Russia, and things unraveled even more over the weekend. Russia named 18 Americans who will be barred from entering Russia because of an alleged involvement in human rights violations. Here's NPR's Corey Flintoff.

The numbers are pretty grim: More than half of all 85-year-olds suffer some form of dementia.

But here's the good news: Brain researchers say there are ways to boost brain power and stave off problems in memory and thinking.

Same-sex marriage got huge headlines at the Supreme Court last month, but in the world of science and medicine, the case being argued on Monday is far more important. The lawsuit deals with a truly 21st century issue — whether human genes may be patented.

You may find a hint to the era in which you were born (as well as your taste in entertainment) in Linda Wertheimer's clarification that on the '80s nighttime soap Dynasty, actress Linda Evans played Krystle Carrington — Krystle with a K, that is. (And, she does not add, an L-E.) If that surprises you at all, you were almost surely not paying attention to the television of the 1980s, when Evans, John Forsythe and Joan Collins made up the wealthiest, nuttiest, most notorious and most rhinestone-covered love triangle ever bedazzled for prime time: Krystle, Blake and Alexis.