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Without directly saying so, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert all-but-confirmed last night that he was off the air for two days last week because his 91-year-old mother Lorna has been ill.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. A couple who met working in a bookstore in Denver have spent their marriage amassing books about their passion - nature. Tales of birds and bees and literature like "The Mad Farmer" poem spill out of every corner of their home - 30,000 volumes. Now the house is up for sale and they're scrambling to find storage. One admirer joked to the Denver Post, it's a thin line between collecting and hoarding, but this collection is the best. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. A look at a factory in Pakistan tells you a lot about how the country works. The high security air force complex makes jet fighters and weapons systems and consumer electronics. The military is deeply involved in the economy, so its workers are making a low budget tablet computer. With Pakistani engineering and Chinese hardware, they make their version of a popular American product. The original is Apple's iPad. The copy is the PACPAD. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who famously faced a sexual assault charge in New York City last year — a charge that was later dropped — is now being questioned by police in France about whether he was a customer of an alleged multinational prostitution ring.

His attorney, though, says Strauss-Kahn has a defense.

The top of the news today about the ongoing financial crisis in Europe is that:

"Greece won a second massive financial bailout early Tuesday morning when its partners in the 17-country eurozone finally stitched together a $170 billion rescue, meant to avoid a potentially disastrous default and secure the euro currency." (The Associated Press)

As February began, Rick Santorum's presidential bid was polling in the mid-teens among Republicans. Now, we find ourselves two weeks deep in the Santorum Era. His national polling number has doubled since he won the Trifecta Tuesday events in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

Those were small contests with few participants and zero delegates at stake. But Santorum threatens to win far larger and more meaningful tests in Michigan and Arizona a week from now, and in Ohio a week after that.

The film Saving Face is nominated for an Oscar. It chronicles the lives of acid-attack survivors in Pakistan. Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy talks to Renee Montagne about what happens to some of the victims.

Tension has been high in the Maldives after Mohamed Nasheed resigned as president earlier this month. He later claimed that he was the victim of a coup, but his successor denies this. Nasheed talks to Renee Montagne about his situation, and what it means for the Indian Ocean islands.

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Here in Washington, a new branch of the Smithsonian will highlight the African-American experience. It will be called the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Tomorrow, President Obama speaks at the groundbreaking on the National Mall - that great stretch of open space that is lined with museums for much of its length.

This newest museum is scheduled to open in 2015, and NPR's Allison Keyes has a preview.

Rhythm in music is about timing — when notes start and stop. And now scientists say they've found a curious pattern that's common to musical rhythm. It's a pattern also found in nature.

There area a lot of bad movies out there. Some movies are so bad that they're good. For some reason people love them. Is there an art to making films that are deliberately bad? Can a company be successful by producing bad movies?

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The March issue of the medical journal, Pediatrics, features a striking editorial. It begins with the following sentence: A new pediatric problem is in town. That new problem, according to the editorial, is gender identity disorder in children. Pediatricians are apparently seeing more young patients who express an interest in changing their gender. NPR's Alix Spiegel reports.

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Some new research throws into question things we say all the time about the Internet. The research focuses on Twitter, the service that lets many millions of people send short messages to each other from computers or cell phones. It's commonly said that social networking like this is revolutionary, that it's created new communities, even that it's obliterated geography. You can connect with people who share common interests, not just people who happen to live nearby. NPR's Shankar Vedantam is here to explode all that. Hi, Shankar.

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And today's last word in business follows up on the business of Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American sensation for the New York Knicks. You know, if you had a dollar for every news story that has used puns on his name, like linsanity, you would be lincrediably wealthy, but we would never lindulge in such things. So let's go straight to the way people are making money.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.

One more Arab nation is changing a longtime leader. Yemen's president for 33 years was Ali Abdullah Saleh. Today, millions of Yemenis vote. And they're being asked to ratify a plan under which Saleh's vice president will replace him. NPR's Kelly McEvers is in Yemen's capital Sana'a.

And, Kelly, where exactly are you in the capital city?

Europe is still a continent that looks over its shoulder at a long and sometimes dark past. That extends even to the protracted Greek bailout negotiations, where Germany's dominant role has scratched at some historical wounds.

Germany occupied Greece during World War II, committing atrocities that some older Greeks can't forget. This history defines the pretty village of Distomo in central Greece, where Nazi soldiers killed 218 men, women and children in June 1944.

Forty years ago Tuesday, President Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit China. Renee Montagne looks back on that day in 1972.

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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)NPR's business news starts with lower European markets.) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is facing his most important challenge yet — winning Georgia on Super Tuesday. Georgia is considered Gingrich's home because he represented parts of the state in Congress for 20 years, but he hasn't lived there for more than a decade.

Over the weekend, Gingrich held several rallies, including one in Peachtree City, south of Atlanta, where he stressed that this area has long supported him.

"It is great to be home," Gingrich told the crowd. "I believe that I carried Fayette County in every single election, including the two that I lost."