Morning Edition

Steve Inskeep talks to John Peet, Europe Editor of The Economist about eurozone economies, and the backlash against austerity measures.

The structure will open in Tokyo next month. The building is nothing but a tower of steel and concrete — no offices, no apartments.

Robert Caro writes obsessively about power. Fittingly, it's Lyndon Johnson — catapulted suddenly into the presidency "in the crack of a gunshot" — who consumes him.

The Passage of Power, the fourth volume of Caro's massive biography of Lyndon Johnson, is released this week. Caro has dedicated decades to meticulously researching Johnson's life, and the previous books in the series have been almost universally hailed as a significant achievement in American letters.

A fad that has been sweeping through middle-class India might look familiar to some Americans — it's a craze for fancy gym equipment. But when commentator Sandip Roy visited India's first Mr. Universe (who is known as the "Pocket Hercules") he found that the body builder has little patience for the new trend.

Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are no strangers to D.C. politics. The two of them have been in Washington for more than 40 years — and they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions.

But now, they say, Congress is more dysfunctional than it has been since the Civil War, and they aren't hesitating to point a finger at who they think is to blame.

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest players in basketball history, has one more record. It's not likely a record he wanted. He's the owner of the NBA's worst team ever. The Charlotte Bobcats have seven wins and 59 losses.

William Lawlis Pace died in California this week. He holds the record for the person alive the longest with a bullet in his head. Back in 1917, his brother accidentally shot him with a rifle. Doctors left the bullet in place, feeling it would do more damage to remove it.

Lawmakers in the House plan to vote Friday on a measure that would prevent a doubling of the student loan interest rate on July 1. The House would pay for the decreased revenue by raiding the new health care law's fund for preventive care.

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NPR's business news starts with impressive earnings for Amazon.

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INSKEEP: Amazon released its first-quarter earnings for 2012, which far exceeded Wall Street expectations. As NPR's Steve Henn reports, that sent Amazon's stock price soaring.

A controversial biography of TV and music impresario Simon Cowell came out on both sides of the Atlantic this week. Cowell showed up at the London launch of the unauthorized biography entitled, Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell.

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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

Seems like only a month or two ago that some pundits saw almost no way that Mitt Romney could easily sew up his party's nomination, and they spun out elaborate scenarios of a contested convention. Actually, it was only a month or two ago that some pundits were saying that. But now Romney's nomination is assumed, especially after he won five primaries this week. And that leaves him a full half year to make his case against President Obama.

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Now f or Jessica Evers Jones, the anniversary of the LA riots is also a birthday. Jessica entered the world dramatically. On that first day of the riots, her pregnant mother, Elvira Jones, was shot in the stomach outside her home. Elvira was rushed to the hospital and Jessica was delivered by emergency C-section. Surgeons removed a bullet from her elbow. She was famous before she was a week old.

Stop motion animation, where physical objects are manipulated literally frame by frame to give the illusion of movement, is one of the oldest movie techniques, but it's being used in a brand new film called The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

Sales of previously owned homes are up more than 10 percent from last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, the number of homes for sale is at the lowest levels in years. The result, say many real estate firms, is that most of the offers being made these days come with competing bids.

Government regulators take up a rule with wide political implications Friday. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on a proposal requiring TV stations to post online information about the campaign ads they air.

Stations are already compelled to keep those records in public files. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says it's time to make that information available on the Internet. But TV stations are resisting.

Four years ago, Marco Ferreira was riding his motorcycle down an isolated road in Los Angeles when he hit some grout and had an accident.

Though he was wearing a full helmet, leather pants and jacket, Ferreira suffered a traumatic brain injury.

When he woke from a six-week coma, his wife, Wendy Tucker, was there.

"You didn't walk, you didn't talk, and you couldn't feed yourself for seven months," she says during a visit with the 48-year-old Ferreira to StoryCorps in San Francisco. "Since then, it's just been getting better all the time."

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Pakistan faces even more political uncertainty. The country's supreme court today found the prime minister guilty of contempt of court. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani had resisted demands by the court that he press authorities in Switzerland to pursue money laundering charges there against his boss, the president of Pakistan. NPR's Julie McCarthy has been following this story. She was at the court in Islamabad.

Hi, Julie.

JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.

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As we just heard from Jackie, most drone strikes are in areas along the border with Afghanistan, places overrun in recent years by the Pakistani Taliban and other radical groups. And our next guest is using a form of soft power to fight terrorism there: mothers. Mossarat Qadeem is deploying mothers to pull their sons back from militancy.