NPR News

The real estate market has turned around in some parts of the U.S., but many buyers aren't seeing true bargains anymore. Investors are driving up prices, and inventory is low, especially for homes priced under $250,000. That's not great news for anyone hoping to buy an affordable house to live in.

Arizona is home to one of the nation's extraordinary turnarounds. The Phoenix-area median home price rose 20 percent over the past year — 6 percent in March alone. And Tucson was recently named the nation's best market for investors. But the easy money has already been made.

A year ago Tuesday, Navy SEALs attacked Osama bin Laden's secret compound in Pakistan and may have fundamentally changed al-Qaida as we know it.

The Obama administration's top counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, spoke Monday in Washington, D.C., and seemed on the precipice of talking about the terrorist group in the past tense.

Electropac, a firm that makes printed circuit boards in New Hampshire, once had 500 paid employees. Today, it has 34. But thanks to a state program for the unemployed, it also now offers unpaid internships.

Across the country, unpaid internships are on the rise for older adults looking to change careers or rebound from layoffs. In New Hampshire, a state-run program encourages the unemployed to take six-week internships at companies with the hope of getting a permanent job.

More than 10 years ago, Norah Jones hit the national stage with her melancholic love song "Don't Know Why," in the process selling millions of copies of her debut album and becoming a Grammy winner.

But Jones' new album is different. She may sound like a fragile performer, but don't get her wrong: At 33, she's recorded a breakup album with attitude.

A collection of activists — from labor unions to immigrant rights groups — are planning protests across the country tomorrow to mark May Day.

Of course, the highest profile organization is Occupy Wall Street, which has called for a "general strike" and says events are planned in 135 U.S. cities.

Here's how the movement describes its plans on its website:

More than 100 people are dead after an overcrowded river ferry sank in India today. The AFP reports the ferry sank after being split into two by a storm.

The AFP adds that about 100 others were missing:

"As rescuers struggled in heavy rain to find survivors weeping relatives lined the shores of the fast-flowing Brahmaputra river in Assam state, desperate for news of family members on board the vessel.

As the U.S. and China seek a solution to the case involving a prominent Chinese activist, it's worth remembering this isn't the first time the two countries have waged this kind of negotiation.

Chen Guangcheng, an activist who's been blind since he was a small boy, escaped house arrest in an eastern Chinese village and was taken to Beijing, where he's believed to be under U.S. protection.

A similar, high-profile case took place in 1989, when astrophysicist Fang Lizhi and his wife took refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Should women in their 40s routinely get mammograms to detect breast cancer?

Two studies released Monday aim to help resolve that question, which is one of the most intense debates in women's health. The studies identify which women in their 40s are most likely to benefit from routine mammograms.

For years, the mantra was that regular mammograms save lives. So many people were stunned in 2009 when an influential panel of experts questioned that assumption.

Kids love robots.

When the Obama administration proposed new restrictions on teens working on farms last year, labor leaders and child welfare advocates cheered.

Throughout the Republican primary campaign, opponents of Mitt Romney have handed President Obama lots of potential general-election fodder in their attacks on the front-runner.

And now that Romney is the presumptive GOP nominee, he's dipping back four years to the 2008 Democratic primary battle for some ammunition of his own.

The legal defense team for George Zimmerman, the man accused of second-degree murder in the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, has created a website, Facebook page and Twitter account to protest his interests.

Although he did not directly address the whereabouts of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, President Obama said when the United States talks to China, it always brings up "the issue of human rights."

"We think China will be stronger if it opens up and liberalizes its own system," the president said.

Since Arizona passed SB 1070 in 2010, five other states signed similar legislation into law: Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and Indiana. Some of those laws are on hold pending court rulings, but lawmakers in say they've already seen successes, as well as unforeseen consequences.

Former President Jimmy Carter was no doubt minding his own business, which these days usually means being some place in the world doing good works, when his name came up in the 2012 presidential campaign, and not in a good way.

Talking to reporters Monday in New Hampshire, the unofficial GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, uttered Carter's name in defending himself against Democratic attempts to raise doubts about whether Romney, like President Obama, would have ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Some of the world's most renowned musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO, the U.N.'s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music's significance and potential as a unifying voice across cultures.

In spite of the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has struggled to connect with younger generations.

As Syria continues its violent crackdown, Hoover Institution senior fellow Fouad Ajami argues that the U.S. has forsaken Syria and its people and provided the regime with a lifeline. In the Wall Street Journal, Ajami writes that "everyone is waiting on Washington's green light and its leadership."

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

For weeks now, war has been simmering along the world's newest border between Sudan and South Sudan. Both countries blame the other as the aggressor in a conflict that includes disputes about contested territory and about access to oil reserves. Before an American sponsored peace agreement, what's now South Sudan fought a long war for independence that killed an estimated one and a half million people. Now less than a year after separation, the two states stand on the brink of full scale war.

A horrible car accident Sunday in the Bronx, which killed seven people from one family, happened on a "cursed" section of the Bronx River Parkway where six people died in a terrible 2006 accident, New York's Daily News reports.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez may be once again headed to Cuba for cancer treatment.