Morning Edition on Wyoming Public Radio

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Aiming to get more children to play outdoors, Britain's National Trust created a list of the 50 Things To Do Before You're 11 3/4. Things like climb a tree and cook on a campfire. Enough finished the 50 that the trust used social media to gather more ideas for getting kids away from social media.

Some are quite poetic: Catch a falling leaf. Jump over waves. Hold a scary beast. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm David Greene.

How much do you love your employer? Probably not as much as some employees at Rapid Realty in New York. Their boss offered a 15 percent raise to anyone willing to get a tattoo of the company logo, and 40 people took him up on it. We have something similar at NPR. For a marketing campaign, I got a mean MORNING EDITION tat on my forearm. There's a photo of it at our Facebook page. No raise involved. I do feel pretty cool, though that might last as long as the tattoo, which is temporary.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

The Guantanamo Bay detention center had more or less faded from the news until this week, when President Obama called it unsustainable. He and others are paying attention now because of an ongoing and growing hunger strike of at least - as of this morning - 100 prisoners. More than 20 are being force fed to keep them alive.

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Our last word in business today, is austerity at the French presidential palace.

President François Aland has already enacted several cost-cutting measures since being elected last year.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

He's cut a fleet of presidential and government cars and reduced ministerial salaries, and now he's raiding the wine cellars for which the presidential palace is famous.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne. Mexico's agonizing war on its drug cartels is about to change and President Obama is about to hear it personally from Mexico's new president. On a trip to Mexico that begins today, Mr. Obama will also focus on trade and economic opportunities between the two countries.

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NPR's business news starts with profits for Facebook.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: Facebook announced its latest quarterly results, reporting revenues just under $1.5 billion.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The company showed a profit of nearly $220 million for the quarter but this fell short of analysts' expectations. CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed the missed target on higher costs. Company spending is up 60 percent this quarter over the previous one due to hiring and new developments.

The U.S. role in the civil war in Syria has been limited to humanitarian aid and nonlethal equipment for the rebels. But that may change with recent revelations about the use of chemical weapons.

Polls show that Americans are still not paying close attention to the conflict, but there is a reluctance to intervene — a byproduct of the experience in Iraq.

President Obama says he's weighing all options. Whatever he decides, he'll have to make a case to the U.S. public.

If you're under 21, you may soon have a hard time lighting up in New York City. Public health officials in New York want to raise the minimum age for buying cigarettes.

The initiative is one of three proposed tobacco regulations the City Council will debate at a hearing Thursday afternoon.

"We think if we can prevent people from taking up the habit before they're 21, we might just be able to prevent them from taking it up at all," says New York Health Commissioner Thomas Farley.

Of the many things made in Michigan that have become part of the fabric of American culture — the auto industry, Motown — punk rock is often overlooked. In 1967, years before The Sex Pistols performed incendiary anthems, Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges created an explosive new sound in Detroit that would influence generations of musicians.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm David Greene. If you're like me you remember some great birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese. The mascot at the pizza joint, an oversized rodent, gave the best birthday hugs. But these days Chuck E. is just not himself. It looks like he's been on a major diet. The restaurant chain has had a few tough years.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne.

Prom is the high school highlight for many teens. But maybe not for 400 students from Bloomington High here in Southern California, who showed up for their prom a week early. The invitations had the wrong date. Faced with students in gowns and rented tuxes, the venue managed a makeshift party complete with DJ and chicken strips. One mother wasn't impressed. Those chicken strips, she said, were the most expensive the kids would ever eat.

Investigators in the Boston Marathon bombing case are still trying to determine whether the suspects — Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar — worked alone. DNA that appears to belong to a woman was found on a bomb.

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Proof of Martha Stewart's ongoing commercial appeal has been on display in a New York courtroom. Yesterday, an appeals court decided that department store J.C. Penney can continue selling a new line of housewares designed by Stewart. But the ruling keeps Macy's from having the exclusive rights to the brand.

NPR's Sonari Glinton reports.

SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: There is one reason why both J.C. Penney and Macy's want Martha Stewart.

MARSHAL COHEN: She's had a history of having success.`

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Here in the United States, this is a big day for many high school seniors. It is College Decision Day, May 1st. It's when many seniors have to send in their deposits to college to secure a place in next year's freshman class. For many, this decision caps a long college application process. And to find out what it's been like, we visited a high school here in Washington D.C.

NICK VITALE: My name is Nicholas Vitale. I'm 18 years old and I'm a senior here at Gonzaga College High School. And I applied to six colleges.

Consumer groups are stepping up pressure on animal producers and their practice of giving antibiotics to healthy animals to prevent disease. In two new reports, the groups say they're worried that the preventive use of antibiotics is contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which get harder to treat in humans and animals over time.

On cable TV, there's a whole truckload of reality shows that make fun of working-class, white Southern culture. They are some of the most popular and talked about new shows, too, such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

MTV tried cashing in on the redneck TV trend with its own hyped-up platform for young Southern kids behaving badly, Buckwild. It played like a Southern-fried version of Jersey Shore. Its stars were a dimwitted crew of young people in West Virginia drinking hard and riding pickup trucks through ditches filled with mud.

My friend the Sports Curmudgeon called me the other day: "Hey, Frank, I got a few things to get off my chest." He was about to take off on a Fantasy Fan cruise, where devoted sports buffs are drafted as fans for desperate losing teams, but he promised to text me his complaints once the ship got out to sea.

Sure enough, here came the Sports Curmudgeon's latest rants.

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This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Let's talk about President Obama's news conference this morning on the 100th day of his second term. NPR's David Welna has been listening in this morning. Hi, David.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.

INSKEEP: The president was immediately asked about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. The day after British jigsaw puzzle maker Dave Evans finished his 40,000-piece puzzle, it was leaning on a wall and suddenly had a great fall. This biggest ever hand-cut wooden puzzle is a montage of images form the queen's jubilee and it's due to be displayed in one of the queen's ballrooms next week.

So Evans is asking for help, hoping that some of the queen's men and women can help him put it back together again. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

The debate over taxes now extends to pot. Colorado voted to legalize marijuana but lawmakers have been debating how to tax it, and that debate is partisan. Democrats want taxes high, saying consumers will gladly pay. Republicans want lower taxes, saying otherwise a black market will develop. But to their credit, lawmakers took a deep breath, inhaled, and let the system work. After considering a 30 percent tax, the State House trimmed it to 25.

As outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood prepares to hand off the baton to President Obama's nominee, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, Morning Edition reflects on Lahood's legacy. What have he and the president accomplished? What's still to be done?

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There's a high profile congressional race going on in South Carolina and last night the two candidates met in their first - and only - debate. For the Republican, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. This is an attempted political comeback, but it's being hindered by new allegations by his ex-wife that reminds some voters of how Sanford left office in the first place.

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The billionaire Richard Branson is happy this morning. His Virgin Galactic spacecraft successfully completed its first rocket-powered test flight.

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Branson's high flying endeavor has been plagued with delays and technical problems, but on Monday, after an early morning flight from the California desert, the often flamboyant billionaire said history was being made.

A suspected drug kingpin from the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau was captured on the high seas by agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency earlier this month, brought to Manhattan and is now awaiting trial.

The dramatic sting operation sheds light on what officials say is a growing national security threat: criminal networks teaming up with extremist organizations.