Morning Edition

The Occupy protest movement was out in force Tuesday. May 1 is traditionally a day for labor demonstrations. For the most part, the demonstrations were noisy and theatrical but restrained.

The Lebanese classical musician and composer Marcel Khalife is often compared to Bob Dylan — not for his music, but for his politics. The Middle Eastern musical and political icon sings about freedom and nationalism.

Khalife is famous for translating poetry into music. For years, he collaborated with the nationalist Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

"It began when I graduated from the music conservatory in Beirut. The civil war started in Lebanon — I wanted to change the world with music," says Khalife.

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South Sudan is the country that voted to break away from Sudan. They've been jostling for control of border zones, including oil fields. And just as the two sides were sitting down to negotiate, fighting broke out.

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The president's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, made another statement yesterday. He argued that drone strikes to kill militants are legal.

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Brennan's remarks were unusual. It's rare that the administration mentions drones at all. Yesterday, Brennan chose to say that the missile strikes by unmanned aircraft which take place in countries like Yemen and Pakistan fit within international law.

Two stories out of China — the escape of a blind dissident from house arrest and the corruption scandal involving a top politician and his family — have attracted international attention. But inside China, the picture is different. The government has successfully suppressed the story about the dissident, Chen Guangcheng, such that most Chinese have never even heard of him. The Communist Party has waged a smear campaign against the fallen official, Bo Xilai, whom citizens see as a loser in a power struggle, a corrupt politician or both.

In the second part of his interview, Steve Inskeep talks to author Robert Caro about the process he goes through in writing his biographies of Lyndon Baines Johnson. The Passage of Power is the fourth volume of Caro's massive biography of Johnson.

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

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And I'm David Greene. Over the course of more than 60 years in the media business, Rupert Murdoch has earned a reputation as a blunt-spoken businessman who comes out swinging. Well today, British parliamentarians didn't pull their punches against him. They released the findings of an investigative panel that spent months looking into the illegal phone-hacking practices at Murdoch's News of the World, the now-closed British tabloid.

More than 10 years ago, Norah Jones hit the national stage with her melancholic love song "Don't Know Why," in the process selling millions of copies of her debut album and becoming a Grammy winner.

But Jones' new album is different. She may sound like a fragile performer, but don't get her wrong: At 33, she's recorded a breakup album with attitude.

Clive Palmer says he wants to build Titanic II to sale from London to New York. Like the builder of the original, Palmer says, "It is going to be designed so it won't sink."

Peggy McAlpine wasn't happy when she lost her world record. The Scottish woman was 100 when she became the oldest person to paraglide. That title was recently taken away by an American woman. So at age 104, McAlpine took the the skies again and regained the record.

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And let's turn now to Africa and a story we'll be following this week. Sudan has declared a state of emergency along its border with South Sudan, the new country there, further raising fears that these two nations are heading toward all-out war. Earlier this month, South Sudan invaded and briefly occupied Sudan's main oil field. This followed aerial bombardments of South Sudan's border regions by the Sudanese air force.

Saudi Arabia is considering Egypt's request to restore diplomatic ties after the kingdom recalled its ambassador over the weekend. Relations between the two Arab countries are at their lowest point in three decades.