NPR Blogs

Former Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman says NBC Universal's editorial decisions made him look like a racist when the network covered the shooting and killing of teenager Trayvon Martin.

A prank call by two Australian DJs pretending to be Queen Elizabeth has ended in tragedy this morning: The nurse who transferred the call that led to the divulging of information about a pregnant Kate Middleton was found dead in an apartment today.

The Guardian reports that the woman, Jacintha Saldanha, worked at the King Edward VII hospital, where Middleton was admitted, suffering from severe morning sickness.

Our first topic on the show this week follows indirectly from a correction we received about the current status of Andrew McCarthy: we talk about second acts (they do exist in American lives, you know), from child actors who now make cool videos and write great books to the complex question of whether going from

The White House just released a picture by Pete Souza that shows President Obama taking a concession call from Gov. Mitt Romney on election day.

It shows Obama taking the call on a cellphone from the Presidential Suite at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park.

The bottom line on the fiscal cliff negotiations on Capitol Hill is that things seem far from resolved. As Politico put it, the last we heard is that White House congressional liaison Rob Nabors went to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers that President Obama is not budging.

If Congress does not come to an agreement, the country is facing steep spending cuts and tax hikes that economist warn could send the economy back into recession.

For the first time since his exile in 1967, the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, returned to the Gaza Strip today. He arrived through the border with Egypt, kissing the ground in celebration and as NPR's Philip Reeves reports, Meshal received a hero's welcome as well as military one.

The unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. That's a four-year low.

The economy added 146,000 jobs, beating expectations. Surprisingly the BLS said that Hurricane Sandy "did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November."

The BLS adds that employment increased "in retail trade, professional and business services, and health care."

Good Friday morning - here are our early stories:

Strong Earthquake Strikes Japan, Triggering Small Tsunami.

And here are more early headlines:

Skittish Investors Waiting For Latest Unemployment Rate News. (MarketWatch)

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake stuck the Japanese coast that was battered by 2011's 9.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered a devastating tsunami.

According to NHK, the state broadcaster, the tremor was felt from the coast all the way inland to Tokyo and at least 10 people were injured.

Friday marks a not-so-happy anniversary for some of President Obama's biggest supporters: It's exactly one year since Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decided not to lift the age restrictions on availability of the so-called morning-after pill, Plan B.

Cuba has no shortage of fertile farmland, but the country spends $1.5 billion a year importing about 70 percent of its food.

The communist government's chronic struggle to get farmers to produce more is forcing authorities to grudgingly accept a greater role for market principles and the profit motive.

Now authorities seem willing to go another step further, tolerating the rise of what might be described as Cuba's "free-est" market.

This kind of thing rarely happens. But today during the United Nation's COP 18 climate change conference in Doha, the lead negotiator for the Philippines broke down.

He delivered an emotional plea for action on the issue of climate change that was made even more dramatic because his country is just now starting to pick up the pieces from a typhoon that has killed hundreds.