News from NPR

Remember McAllen? It's the Texas border town that became synonymous with wasteful medical spending during the nation's big health care debate. Even Barack Obama was talking about it.

Russia's newly reinstalled President Vladimir Putin will be too busy with affairs at home to make a planned visit to the United States this month, where he was to have a high-profile tête-à-tête with President Obama and attend the G8 summit.

In his place, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who swapped places with Putin in recent elections, will go to the global economic summit.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng says his family is being hounded by local authorities in his Shandong, his home province, with his brother and sister-in-law placed under house arrest and his nephew detained.

Chen's flight last month from house arrest and his request for refuge from U.S. diplomats has caused considerable embarrassment for Chinese authorities and threatened to damage U.S.-Sino relations. Since then, Beijing has agreed in a face-saving move to allow the blind, self-taught legal activist and his immediate family to study in the United States.

A pair of powerful explosions ripped through Syria's capital, killing at least 50 people in the deadliest attack in the country's 14-month uprising. Some 170 people were wounded, according to state television.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but local TV reports called the attacks "terrorist bombings".

The explosions damaged a military intelligence building and left blood and human remains in the streets, according to The Associated Press.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A report says in 2010, 38 percent of 911 calls in New York City were accidental calls lasting just seconds. Most, according to the New York Daily News, appear to be calls made from pockets or purses. There were actually more of these calls than calls that warranted a response by a police car.

Some voters in Colorado are not happy about President Obama's decision to come out in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Gays and lesbians have been largely supportive of the Obama administration due to the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act. But some had felt the president was moving too slowly on the issue of same-sex marriage.

It was Friday, April 27, when a car bomb exploded in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan. Syrian state television showed soldiers and civilians running from the smoke of the explosion under a bridge. Then the camera closed in on streams of blood and body parts.

The Syrian regime's narrative is that the uprising that has gripped the country for more than a year is not a case of people protesting and sometimes fighting for their rights; the official stance is that it's terrorism.