In another indication of the gathering strength of the insurgency, Taliban militants have taken control of a gateway district close to the Pakistani capital. The district of Buner, home to almost one million, is just seventy miles from Islamabad and leads to speculation that the Taliban could be making plans for a move on the city. This increases concern that the government is unprepared to fend off the strategic advances of the Taliban. Now, U.S. officials are questioning the government's willingness to take on the insurgents. Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have warned of the consequences, Secretary Clinton went so far as to call it an "existential threat". So is Pakistan fighting for its very existence?

To help us understand the Pakistani point of view of the Taliban insurgency and the government's reaction, we turn to Ambassador Munir Akram. Ambassador Akram was Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations from 2002-2008.

**UPDATE: Pakistani officials and international press outlets are reporting that Taliban militants have begun withdrawing from the Buner district.**

Watch Secretary of State Clinton's comments on the situation in Pakistan below.

Cap and trade, it’s not a breakfast cereal or an off-season NFL strategy. Yes even though the NFL draft starts tomorrow, but no, it is not some new football strategy or rule. So what exactly is cap and trade, and why are some Republicans predicting that it’s going to cost each household in the United States over $3,000 if this Democrat-sponsored global warming proposal gets approved?

To answer these questions, The Takeaway is joined by John Reilly, an MIT Environmental Economist. He is the man behind the curtain who actually calculated the cost of the proposed cap and trade. And he says that the GOP has misrepresented his data.

Tomorrow while most of us will be sleeping in, Iceland will be holding it’s first elections since the collapse of the Independence Party-led coalition government last October. In the face of the worst financial crisis in the nation's history, the Social Democrat /Left-Green alliance is expected to win the elections, and this could be the beginning of the end of the Independence Party, which has held power in Iceland for the past 18 years. Joining The Takeaway is Bjorn Malmquist, a reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, to tell us more about what can be expected from these elections.

Bjork is still the most well-known Iceland native, and it's Friday, so enjoy:

The day of reckoning is at hand for banks required to undergo government "stress tests." Today federal regulators will meet with the leaders of the nation's biggest banks to tell them how they did. Banks have until early next week to dispute the results, which will be released to the public on May 4. Eric Dash, who writes about banking for the New York Times, joins The Takeaway with a look at what the tests are likely to reveal and what the results will mean for the recovery of the economy.

For more, read Eric Dash's article, U.S. to Tell Big Banks the Results of Stress Test, in today's New York Times.

International intrigue and Latin America have long been partners in crime. So when Bolivian security forces killed an Irish man, a Romanian, and a Hungarian in a hotel room in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in a half-hour shoot out, it sounded like it was ripped from the pages of a high-flung spy novel. Now, Bolivian President Evo Morales said that this alleged assassination attempt by foreign mercenaries could have been backed by the U.S. Government reports say that the group was linked to rightist opposition groups against Morales’ leftist regime, but they have not released the details of their report to the Irish or Hungarian governments who have been seeking answers.

Naomi Daremblum who teaches about Latin American issues at New York University joins The Takeaway to talk about the alleged assassination attempt on President Morales.

It gets in your shoes, in your eyes, and your mouth and your hair and don’t get me started on when it gets in your space capsule. We're talking about lunar dust and any astronaut who has been to the moon will tell you: it sticks to everything. This incredibly stickiness is a hindrance to equipment and space armor and until now no one knew why. Now as NASA says it wants to make another lunar visit a priority, the solution may be at hand. Just yesterday details of a new study by Australian scientist Brian O’Brien came out giving some new facts on moon dust.

Joining The Takeaway to help us understand the sticky situation is Miles O'Brien, longtime intergalactic reporter, joins us to tell us all about it and everything else going on in outer space.

For months, if not years, the plight of the newspaper industry has been well documented. We've certainly covered it on numerous occasions. Circulation is down, reporters are being laid off, papers are being merged. So why is the life of the hard boiled, gritty, grizzled and determined journalist still so intriguing? Two films out now, The State of Play and The Soloist, have newspaper reporters as the central figures. Hollywood is still depicting newspapers as heroes on screen in a year when the industry's struggles have come to a full boil. The Takeaway is joined by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott to ask if these films are suddenly an anachronism.

State of Play opened in theaters last week:



The Soloist opens this weekend:

It’s become a familiar story. People who pay their credit cards on time every month are seeing their interest rates go up, their monthly due dates changed without warning, and are watching all sorts of new fees pop up on their monthly statements. Well, President Obama (and Sen. Chris Dodd) is fed up with those stories. Yesterday the President met with representatives of the credit card industry at the White House and recited the many ways he would like to see their business model change.

Here at The Takeaway we've been asking our listeners to call in with their stories of credit card woes and the occasional victory. We turn now to two of our listeners to tell their story and make their suggestions on how they'd improve the credit card industry. We are also joined by The Takeaway's personal finance guru Alvin Hall for his take on the President's makeover of the credit industry.

The news is full of Detroit's woes. Chrysler is drawing up bankruptcy papers, GM is shuttering its plants for nine weeks, and just this morning Ford posted a $1.4 billion first quarter loss. Some critics blame the U.S. auto industry's current problems on the ghosts of cars past. Boring design led to weak car sales that led to the financial crisis. So how should Detroit plan for the future?

This week the arts and culture radio program Studio 360 visits Los Angeles to look at the kind of innovative ideas about car design coming out of that city. Host Kurt Andersen spoke with hot rodders, low riders, and car designers freed from the constrictions of working inside the Detroit system to see where the American car industry could be. He also took a ride in an electric car on three wheels that's straight out of The Jetsons. He joins The Takeaway with an account of what he learned about the future of cars.

Recently on The Takeaway we’ve been following people’s credit card stories and following up on the calls that our listeners have made on the subject. One man’s story really caught our ear. Don Merrill, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was frustrated with just one small aspect of his credit card company—they wouldn’t stop sending those convenience checks in the mail and he wanted them to stop. But after a year of trying, he found a way to make them. He joins us now with his tale of victory.

In the third attack in two days in Iraq, simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers targeted the most important Shiite shrine in Baghdad, killing at least 60 people and injuring close to 125 others as they gathered for Friday prayers. This bombing comes a day after nearly 80 people were killed in three separate suicide attacks in Baghdad and Baquba, which was the single deadliest day in Iraq in more than a year. Is this a sign of widespread civil unrest? Or a temporary but dramatic upsurge in violence? Joining us now is the New York Times Baghdad correspondent Stephen Lee Myers.

For more, read Stephen Lee Myers' and Timothy Williams' article, Two Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 60 in Baghdad, in today's New York Times.

For footage of some of the recent attacks, watch the Associated Press video below.