NPR's Weekend Edition on KUER 1

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Just two years ago today, the effort to change regimes in many parts of the Islamic world was just beginning. And President Obama was at the U.S. State Department talking about a new chapter in American diplomacy.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region and to support the transitions to democracy. That effort begins in Egypt and Tunisia where the stakes are high.

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That concern is reflected in the Arab media. Ramez Maluf, head of the Department of Journalism at Balamand University in Lebanon, has been tracking that reaction. He joined us from our bureau in Beirut. And I asked him how invested people in the region are in the conflict in Syria.

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I'm sure if I asked him, Will Shortz would probably acknowledge that the same people who really love words and word play also have a special affinity for punctuation. I would put myself in this camp. I have a lot of respect for a well-placed semicolon. But it's really the ellipsis that captures my punctuation imagination. To be honest, I've never much cared for the apostrophe. Maybe it's just too utilitarian.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

Earlier this month, three women held captive for nearly a decade came home. Amanda Barry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were rescued from a Cleveland basement where they had been held captive since early 2002. The case has generated worldwide attention, some of it fell on the Cleveland Police Department. Officers there had searched in vain over the years for the missing women. Following a case like this for years demands an emotional investment from investigators.

On-air challenge: Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word starts with H-A and the second word starts with T.

Last week's challenge: From listener Al Gori of Cozy Lake, N.J. Name a famous American man — first and last names. Change the first letter of his first name from T to H. The result will sound like a term for an attractive person. Who is it?

Answer: Ted Turner; head turner

Winner: Vernon Cole, Brownsboro, Ala.

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COLONEL JEANNIE LEAVITT: I was fascinated with flying. I loved everything about flying from the time I was a child. The more I learned about the more I just loved aviation and flying, and that's what made me want to be a pilot.

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NPR's Frank Langfitt and Gregory Warner have teamed up for a series about how myth and money are driving extraordinary slaughter of rhinos. They talk with host Rachel Martin about the issue, which has repercussions from the African continent all the way to Asia.

Three years ago, Navy corpsman Angelo Anderson was shot in his arm and leg in Afghanistan and he thought he was going to die. Sunday, he's competing at the fourth-annual Warrior Games in Colorado, along with more than 200 wounded service members. Eric Whitney of Colorado Public radio has this profile of Anderson, who credits the paralympic-style competition with restoring him physically and mentally.

Our perspectives on personal space — the distance we keep between the person in front of us at an ATM, the way we subdivide the area of an elevator — are often heavily influenced by the norms of the places we inhabit.

Jerry Seinfeld once focused an episode of his sitcom on the concept of personal space, giving us a new term: the "close talker."

President Obama traveled to Central America this weekend, to Mexico and then to Costa Rica, where he met with other leaders from the region. Host Rachel Martin speaks with Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who attended the meeting.

Planet Money's Zoe Chace reports that the immigration overhaul bill proposes doubling the number of skilled-worker visas available to companies that want to hire foreign workers. But the application process is a challenge in itself. (This piece initially aired May 2, 2013, on Morning Edition.)

Brooklyn-based keyboardist and vocalist Xenia Rubinos likes to play with syncopation. Her debut album, Magic Trix, is based around rhythms that sometimes are identifiable as Caribbean, and at other times veer into the experimental.

"It's something I have a lot of fun with — just taking one rhythmic figure and turning it around as many ways as I can," Rubinos says. "That's a huge part of my compositional process, just messing around with something very simple and seeing how far I can take it."

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Six months after Hurricane Sandy, nearly 1,000 New Yorkers are still living in temporary housing, hotel rooms paid for by the city.

DAPHNE MURPHY: My name is Daphne Murphy and I'm from Rockaway Park, Queens.

MARTIN: Daphne and her long-term boyfriend were living in a Rockaway Park bungalow when the storm hit.

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The 78th Annual National Football League players' selection meeting, what you probably think of as the NFL draft, well, it wrapped up yesterday. And NPR's Mike Pesca, who is our top pick, was monitoring as it played out over the last three days.

Hey, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Ah, thank you.

MARTIN: You're welcome.

PESCA: Its swell to be a top pick

MARTIN: It was close.

PESCA: I'm putting on the WESUN hat right now.

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We wanted to hear what younger people are thinking about when it comes to retirement and the viability of Social Security. Here's reaction from 20- and 30-somethings in Nashville, Tennessee.

ROD KELLY: I don't expect it to be there and I'm not planning on it to be there. I'm doing what I can right now to put into, like, IRA, you know, or Roth funds to make sure that I don't have to depend on it.

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Here in the U.S., the largest Korean population is in California. It's actually the largest concentration outside of northeast Asia. People in that community have been especially alarmed by North Korea's recent threats. But as Doualy Xaykaothao reports from Los Angeles, many Koreans living there think the North's provocations are mostly bluster.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

There's been a lot of talk about a red line this past week and whether the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has crossed it. After U.S. intelligence reports came out saying with varying degrees of confidence that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons on rebels and civilians, President Obama said he is still weighing America's response.

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The House was set to vote this week on a bill modifying the president's health care law. The Republican bill was supported by the leadership, but ran into trouble and was pulled from the floor before the scheduled vote.

It's an example of the kind of obstacles Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, faces in getting legislation through the House. In many recent cases, his problem hasn't been the Democrats as much as members of his own party, backed by proudly conservative outside groups.

Superstorm Sandy pummeled the East Coast six months ago, and, as with other natural disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was there from day one, finding people temporary shelter and later supporting rebuilding efforts.

FEMA also has a lesser-known role. It oversees the creation of flood maps, which model the risk of flooding in different areas during storms. These maps are also used to set building codes and flood insurance rates. In New York and New Jersey, FEMA is updating those maps, and so far many homeowners don't like what they are seeing.

From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler introduced us to a spunky kid who, bored with the Connecticut suburbs, runs away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Konigsburg wrote more than 20 other books for children and won two Newbery medals. She died Friday at the age of 83.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings remains hospitalized this morning. He's being treated for injuries sustained in a gun battle with police leading up to his capture. At the same time - the legal case against 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is taking shape.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

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MARTIN: We have officially begun the long, winnowing process known as the NBA playoffs. The first games were last night. NPR's Mike Pesca was watching. He joins us now. Hey, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hello.

MARTIN: So, let's recap the results for those of us who were not glued to our televisions last night. Who won?

As Lindsay Ess watched the events in Boston unfold last week, she wondered if she could help the victims of the Marathon bombing. When she found out that many had lost limbs in the explosion, she knew she could.

Ess is a quadruple amputee. In 2006, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. She underwent surgery for her condition, but it went terribly wrong. She developed septic shock, which lead to complete organ failure. She was in the intensive care unit for five months.

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In Boston and surrounding communities, things are getting back to normal after a frightening week. NPR's David Schaper found the mood of the city reflected by the people at yesterday's Red Sox game at Boston's iconic Fenway Park.

DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: The police and security presence here at Fenway Park is certainly greater than it usually is, but these Bostonians don't seem to mind at all because nothing says things are getting back to normal more than Red Sox baseball and...