A NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend has brought U.S.-Pakistani ties to a new level of strain, but experts say it's unlikely to produce a permanent rift in the relationship.

Barely a month ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad hoping to cement greater Pakistani cooperation to eliminate Taliban safe havens inside its territory. After Saturday's attack, that kind of cooperation appeared to be on indefinite hold.

The Associated Press and The New York Times report that Lana Peters, Josef Stalin's only daughter and his last surviving child, died last week at age 85. Peters was mainly known as the daughter of the Soviet tyrant, but her life was anything but simple: The evolution of her name says much about her efforts to escape the ignominy of her father. Peters was born Svetlana Stalina then changed her last name to Alliluyeva and later became Lana Peters.

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio — pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jamie Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson — will celebrate its 35th anniversary as one of the world's finest chamber-music ensembles this January. For the past 25 years, one of the group's frequent partners has been Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. She says it's always great fun to hand over a new piece.

Visitors to the grave of the Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde won't be able to leave a permanent mark on his tomb anymore. Since the '90s, mostly women started leaving lipstick kisses on his tomb in Paris' Père Lachaise cemetery, a gentle memento for a writer who didn't show much regard for women.

The problem was that cleaning off those kisses was damaging the stone. The Guardian reports:

Sun. 12/04  8p: Ijah interviews social activist, civil rights icon, comedian, and author Dick Gregory.

Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank says he decided not to seek re-election to a 17th term in 2012 because congressional redistricting would have given him a slew of new constituents and a difficult, expensive campaign.

"I think I would have won," Frank, 71, said during a Monday press conference in Massachusetts announcing his retirement. "But it would have been a tough campaign."

Added Frank, who has led financial reform efforts on Capitol Hill: "I don't like raising money."

In the mid-'90s, the big banks set up the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, to track mortgages as they're traded by investors in mortgage-backed securities. It's a system set up to let banks skip the process of paying recurring filing fees at county courthouses each time a mortgage was bought or sold. Now, many cash-strapped local governments, big and small, are filing lawsuits against MERS. Politicians contend their communities are owed millions of dollars.

Egyptian voters in Cairo, Alexandria and several other major cities are voting Monday in the first stage of the country's parliamentary election. Turn out is heavy and so far there has been no major violence. Melissa Block talks to NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.