The gap between what America brings in and what it spends is at its least terrifying level in 5 years. There’s news the deficit has dropped below $1 trillion, which hasn’t happened since 2008. The deficit is now $680.3 billion. If you see a headline reading “Nigeria’s Economy Will Grow by 40 Percent on December 10,” it’s not inaccurate — technically. Nigeria is overhauling the way it calculates gross domestic product to make it more up-to-date. But will it help the businesses and people of Nigeria? Some big name tech companies plan to jump into the renewed push to overhaul American immigration law. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech big wigs are part of something to be called the “DREAMer Hackathon.” It’s an event designed to connect people who came to the U.S. illegally as children with technology tools and projects to help them push for changes to immigration law.

Spain’s very fragile economy has just limped out of recession after two years — but just barely. The country’s National Statistics Institute detected a .01 percent growth during the third quarter. But that wouldn’t tell the whole story of one of Europe’s top five economies, 13th in the world overall just behind Australia. And, the lawsuits are flying after a black college student says he was stopped by New York police after buying a $350 Ferragamo belt at Barneys. In a separate incident, actor Rob Brown says he was searched after buying his mother a $1,000 Movado watch at Macys. Marketplace Morning Report looks at how people of color are sometimes treated while shopping at high end stores.

British Prime Minister David Cameron will announce an official, government bond on Tuesday that’s approved under Islamic finance rules. What’s called “Sharia-Compliant Finance” is rich in the vein of capitalism and involves certain filters, such as not investing in companies that gamble or sell alcohol. But it’s also about not charging interest, prohibited under Islamic law. Connecting the continents of Asia and Europe across the Bosporus River via rail has been a dream of Turkish leaders for a 150 years. Today the fantasy becomes reality.  Turkey is opening an underground rail line that will connect the two sides of Istanbul. And, have you seen signs for “dental spas” cropping up in your area and wondered, “What the heck is that?” It’s what it sounds like — think cucumber-scented eye pillows and a massaging dental chair. But can you make a dreaded appointment with a dentist into a treat?

The federal government shutdown. The down-to-the-wire debt limit debate. Claims that the U.S. has been spying on its allies. If America was a company, and not a country, it would be hard to deny that the American brand has taken quite a beating recently. Marketplace Morning Report talks to one of the world’s most successful marketing and ad men, Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, about how to fix the U.S.’s tarnished image. And, starting this week, users of Instagram will begin to see ads in their feeds. Some who see Instagram photos as fine art may look askance at the intrusion of marketing into their personal galleries. But Instagram promises the ads will be creative and fit nicely into your photo feed. So what is the “Instagram aesthetic” anyway?

Inflation in Japan is near a 5 year high — up 0.7 percent. That’s actually a positive headline. The world’s third largest economy has been trying to climb out of a fifteen year hole of sputtering growth, and prices so low that they hurt the currency. And, roughly half of the kids who head off to public school this morning will qualify for free or reduced-price meals. For a family of four, that means living on less than $44,000 a year. Every fall, schools scramble to make sure as many eligible kids as possible are signed up for those lunches. Now, some schools are trying out a new approach.

A new report from German magazine Der Spiegel claiming that the U.S. monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone is overshadowing a gathering of European leaders in Brussels today. By now, you’ve heard about the sloppy — some say disastrous — debut of the federal health insurance exchanges. Representatives of the four lead contractors who designed and built that system will be on Capitol Hill today for the first of many hearings on the flawed roll out of the Affordable Care Act. And, some colleges in the South are unhappy with the U.S. military. The Pentagon wants to put more of its ROTC recruiting programs into urban areas and plans to pull out of some more rural Southern campuses.

The debt ceiling debate is back. But don’t worry, this time it’s in Australia. The newly elected conservative government there needs to raise its limit on new borrowing, and there are echoes of the debate that brought the U.S. to the brink of default last week. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest of banks, is reportedly close to paying $6 billion to settle claims by big institutional investors that they were sold bad mortgage-backed securities. That’s not to be confused with the other settlements JPM is confronting, including the possible $13 billion one with the federal government. And, tonight is game one of the World Series. In an era of TV that’s easy to time-shift, people watching live is a big deal for advertisers.

The U.S. government put out its long delayed employment report for September on Tuesday morning. The report, which usually is released on a Friday, was supposed to be out nearly three weeks ago, but furloughed Department of Labor statisticians weren’t allowed to crunch the numbers in a timely fashion. The International Labor Organization and the government of Bangladesh are launching a campaign starting Tuesday to improve working conditions at clothing factories. It will use money from British and Dutch governments to boost worker’s rights and make factories safer, about six months after a factory collapsed killed 1,100 people. And, looking to train for the job of the future? Hope you like the cold, because the latest ice-breaking technology could spark a new era of commerce in the far north. 

The British government has given the go-ahead for the U.K.’s first new nuclear power plant in 20 years. The announcement is controversial — not only because nuclear power still has many critics — but because two Chinese state-owned companies will be involved in building and running the new facility. And, in many places, the luxury home market has come back strong after the Great Recession. The wealthiest Americans have mostly recovered from the real estate downturn. But industry watchers say tastes are changing. And, in a lot of places, a different kind of mansion is coming into vogue.