NPR News

Three years ago, President Obama was rolling out an ambitious vision for high-speed rail in America. "Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 mph," the president said at the time.

Today, there are a few Amtrak trains going that fast, but for the most part, the president's plans for high-speed trains have slowed considerably.

On-Air Challenge: The word "mother" has a surprising property. If you move the first two letters to the end, you get "thermo," the prefix for "heat." Every answer today is another six-letter word that, when you move the first two letters to the end, you get another word or phrase.

Last Week's Challenge from listener Gary Witkin of Newark, Del.: Using only the six letters of the name "Bronte," repeating them as often as necessary, spell a familiar six-word phrase. What is it?

Answer: "To be or not to be"

President Obama's support for same-sex marriage has been a hot topic this week. After he announced his position during an ABC News interview Wednesday, it's been difficult for pundits, the media and the public to focus on much else, especially since the news came on the heels of North Carolina's approval of a ban on same-sex marriage.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

From NPR News, it's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.

For three days now, Mitt Romney's campaign has tried to steer the national conversation back to the economy. But the pressure to respond to President Obama's announcement in support of gay marriage has been intense. And this morning at a speech to students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Romney definitively spoke out.

MITT ROMNEY: Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

Football is a violent game, but a century ago it used to be a lethal pastime. NPR's Tom Goldman explains how President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and forced the establishment of new rules that made the game safer.

In one of the most talked-about moments from the hit TV show Glee, Blaine declared his love for Kurt and then — they kissed.

Glee is just one of many popular shows on television right now that feature gay characters. Those characters aren't just entertaining us, they're changing Americans' attitudes toward homosexuality.

In five separate studies, professor Edward Schiappa and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota have found that the presence of gay characters on television programs decreases prejudices among viewers.

Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval first met Dizzy Gillespie in Havana in 1977, when the American jazzman came to Cuba to play a concert. Sandoval showed him around the city, where the two men listened to the sounds of rumba music echoing through Havana's black neighborhoods. That night, Sandoval managed to play his trumpet for Gillespie — and blew him away.

Transcript

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

Transcript

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

We want to remind everybody they can join us here most weeks at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago. For tickets and more information go to wbez.org, or you can find a link at our website, waitwait.npr.org. Right now, panel, time for you to answer some questions about the week's news, of course.

Mo, interesting study this week about climate change. Some scientists are suggesting that 150 million years ago, what contributed to global warming?

MO ROCCA: Sort of gassy dinosaurs.

SAGAL: Yes, that's exactly right.

Transcript

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing his week with Mo Rocca, Tom Bodett and Amy Dickinson. And, here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl. Thank you everybody.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: It is, of course, time again for the WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME! Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

Transcript

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Tom Bodett, Amy Dickinson and Mo Rocca. And, here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

Transcript

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Now, panel, what surprise will Biden blow next? Tom Bodett?

TOM BODETT: He gets out over his skis on this Mother's Day thing and tells Michelle she's just going to love the necklace Barack and the girls got her for Sunday.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Amy Dickinson?

AMY DICKINSON: Next week at the John Edwards trial, Joe Biden will reveal that he is really the father of Rielle Hunter's child.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And Mo Rocca?

Transcript

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Coming up, it's Lightning Fill in the Blank. But first it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-Wait-Wait. That's 1-888-924-8924, or you can click the contact us link at our website waitwait.npr.org.

There you can find out about attending our weekly live shows here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago and our upcoming shows in Cleveland, Ohio and Portland, Maine. Tickets for those shows go on sale this week. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

Transcript

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Now, on to our final game, Lightning Fill in the Blank. Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill in the blank questions as he or she can. Each correct answer is worth two points. Carl, can you give us the scores?

CARL KASELL: Tom Bodett has the lead, Peter. He has four points. Amy Dickinson has three. Mo Rocca has two.

SAGAL: Mo, you're in third place. You're up first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank.

Musings on attachment parenting abound in response to the most recent issue of Time magazine, powered by a controversially candid cover featuring a mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is always a work in progress. Although it's more than a century old, and is being repaired from damage caused by last year's earthquake, it always makes room for new statues and carvings of people who inspire.

REVEREND DR. FRANCIS WADE: May God bless the eyes of all who see the likeness we dedicate this evening.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The British have been holding a public inquiry into press ethics for the last few months. The government is responding to the outcry over the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. The inquiry's investing the way newspapers, the police and politicians may feed off each other and that means shining a light into the secluded world, in particular, of the prime minister's social set. NPR's Philip Reeves has been watching the questioning.

(SOUNDBITE OF INQUIRY)

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

Republicans in Wisconsin are gathered this weekend for their annual political convention. The delegates could make an endorsement in a key Senate race this year. It is the contest to replace retiring Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl.

Now, many believe that George W. Bush's former Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson, might essentially breeze through a four-way Republican primary.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

From Wisconsin, we head over to Indiana, where this week, six-term Republican Senator Richard Lugar lost by a landslide to State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who was supported by the Tea Party.

Now, Senator Lugar was known for working with senators on the other side of the aisle to pass legislation. That may not be the political flavor of the month in his party or his state.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Are you calling 911 or you just glad to sit down? Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a study this week that shows that 38 percent of the calls received by New York's emergency services are mistakes - mobile phones that dial 911 when a user jostles a phone in their purse or pocket. The popular term for such calls is pocket or butt calls.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

President Obama made a personal statement in a TV interview this week. He didn't call for any new laws or initiatives. But many Americans seem to hear his statement as a truly significant moment in American history. Novelist and screenwriter Armistead Maupin joins us. Mr. Maupin is best known for his breakthrough "Tales of the City" series. He joins us from member station KQED in San Francisco. Thanks so much for being with us.

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN: Oh, it's a pleasure, Scott.

SIMON: How do you feel about what the president said?

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This morning we remember a man who stood up to George Wallace before the eyes of the world. Nicholas Katzenbach became attorney general in the Johnson administration and played a pivotal role in much of the civil rights history of the 1960s. He died this week at his home in New Jersey at the age of 90. NPR's Debbie Elliott looks back at his life.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. You didn't think we were going to get through this week without talking about sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Both New York and L.A. host big game sevens tonight - hoops on the West Coast, pucks on the East Coast. NPR's Tom Goldman can open a can of bean dip, sit on the couch, watch the TV and say, hey, don't bother me, I'm working. He joins us from an undisclosed location.

Morning, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi. I wake up eating bean dip.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and a professor at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia has a gift idea. She has set up a booth on campus to craft custom haiku.

From member station WVTF, Sandy Hausman reports.

SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: Fifteen students took turns at a long table outside the dining hall, notebooks and pens poised to honor mothers in that spare Japanese style. The haiku is 17 syllables - total. But University Registrar Scott Ditman was confident a small poem could hit big with the mother of his children.

Is black pepper the new secret weapon against fat? A recent paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry claims that the piperine, an ingredient in black pepper, has the power to stop the body from making new fat cells, and could be used to treat obesity.

School nurse Sherry Medrano has more than Band-Aids stored in her cabinets. She has an armory of birth control options: condoms, the pill, the patch, the ring and emergency contraception.

The teen pregnancy rate in the United States is the lowest it's been in nearly 40 years. However, in some communities, the number of young girls getting pregnant remains stubbornly high.

Planned Parenthood On Campus