Morning Edition

Pakistani workers at an Air Force factory are making a low-budget tablet computer. With Pakistani engineering and Chinese hardware, they make their version of Apple's iPad. The copy is the PACPAD.

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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)NPR's business news starts with lower European markets.) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

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Rhythm in music is about timing — when notes start and stop. And now scientists say they've found a curious pattern that's common to musical rhythm. It's a pattern also found in nature.

There area a lot of bad movies out there. Some movies are so bad that they're good. For some reason people love them. Is there an art to making films that are deliberately bad? Can a company be successful by producing bad movies?

The March issue of the medical journal Pediatrics features an editorial looking at gender identity disorder in children. Pediatricians apparently are seeing more young patients who express an interest in changing their gender.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Some new research throws into question things we say all the time about the Internet. The research focuses on Twitter, the service that lets many millions of people send short messages to each other from computers or cell phones. It's commonly said that social networking like this is revolutionary, that it's created new communities, even that it's obliterated geography. You can connect with people who share common interests, not just people who happen to live nearby. NPR's Shankar Vedantam is here to explode all that. Hi, Shankar.

Steve Inskeep has the Last Word in business.

The film Saving Face is nominated for an Oscar. It chronicles the lives of acid-attack survivors in Pakistan. Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy talks to Renee Montagne about what happens to some of the victims.

Tension has been high in the Maldives after Mohamed Nasheed resigned as president earlier this month. He later claimed that he was the victim of a coup, but his successor denies this. Nasheed talks to Renee Montagne about his situation, and what it means for the Indian Ocean islands.