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In Vancouver four years ago, athletes who grew up in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York accounted for about 1 in 10 medals won by the U.S. In this region, the Olympics don't seem like a pipe dream, and they don't seem like ancient history — they're just sort of what people do.

History is being made Tuesday in Sochi, as women's ski jump makes its debut as an Olympic event. While men have competed in ski jumping for nearly a century, women have not been included in Olympic competition. They've been seeking equality in their sport for more than a decade. Tamara Keith was on hand to report on the day's events.

Agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have spent months testing new plastic weapons, and report that the guns can be lethal and hard to detect. The findings come just as a federal law that requires guns to be composed of at least some metal to help people in schools and airports detect them is set to expire.

Janet Yellen cleared a key hurdle in her path to become the next chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, after a Senate Banking Committee hearing went smoothly Thursday. The most difficult questions centered on the Fed's stimulus efforts.

Bobsled used to be an all-male sport until 2002. Even now, the women only race two-man, not four-man bobsled. Team USA features 2 summer Olympians as brakemen. Lauren Williams is a gold and silver medalist in the sprint. Lolo Jones did the hurdles in Bejing and London.

No state has seen as steep a drop in teacher salaries over the past few years. Legislators also halted a salary bump for teachers with master's degrees and cut a cap on class size. "Teachers are really questioning why they want to teach," says the head of a state advocacy group.

An anti-vice crackdown in China has targeted mistresses and sex workers as part of a social problem, but mistresses have been an open secret in China for years.

PlayStation 4 is out, and next week, the new Xbox is released. These systems do a whole lot more than just play video games. Microsoft in particular is selling non-gamers on its system's television features. For more, Steve Inskeep talks to Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of the video game website Polygon.

The World Cup begins Thursday in Brazil. The U.S. team has its first match against Ghana the following week, the start of the so called "group of death."

Brazil and Croatia face off in the first game of the 2014 World Cup. Organizers hope the start of the tournament directs attention back on the field and away from the problems in preparation.