Next week, McDonald's will become the largest fast-food chain in the country to display calorie counts on its menu boards. Won't that make you think twice when asked: You want fries with that?
NPR's Allison Aubrey has been reporting on McDonald's announcement this week. She joins us in our studios. Allison, thanks for being with us.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Hi, Scott. Glad to be here.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. There have been unexpectedly violent protests across much of the Arab world this week. The first was in Cairo. Then, of course, in Benghazi, Libya, protesters attacked and killed four U.S. embassy staff there.
Since then, protests have broken out across the region, again in Egypt, in Tunisia and in Yemen. NPR's correspondent in Benghazi is Leila Fadel. She joins us now. Leila, thanks for being with us.
We turn now to Egypt where, as we mentioned earlier, the protest started this week. More than 250 people have been reported injured in clashes there that began when protesters scaled the embassy wall in Cairo and tore down an American flag. Many of them are demonstrating against a film, which portrayed the prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and a religious fraud.
President Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in March. Netanyahu and the Obama administration clashed openly this week over the issue of Iran's nuclear program.
The Obama administration often talks about its strong bonds with Israel, but relations between the two leaders don't look that way at all.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration openly clashed over Iran this week. The White House also announced that President Obama would not have time to meet Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister is in the U.S. later this month.
The two men did have a lengthy phone conversation, but some say what they really need is a marriage counselor.
A portrait of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens is placed along with a condolence book at the U.S. Capitol on Friday. Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday.
When former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker heard about his colleague's death in Libya, his first reaction was disbelief. He had known Christopher Stevens for two decades.
"I ... just felt that punch in the stomach. He was a good friend. We're a pretty small tribe," he tells Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.
Facing their country's worst recession in a half-century, many young Greeks are leaving for jobs abroad. But Apostolos Sianos, a 31-year-old Athenian, decided to buck the trend.
Two years ago, Sianos quit his lucrative job designing websites in Athens to help establish an eco-commune, called the Telaithrion Project, in Aghios, his family's ancestral village on the island of Evia. The idea was to teach people to be self-sufficient at a time when both money and opportunities are drying up.
In this election, Christian conservatives seem to be more against President Obama than they are for Mitt Romney. But they do like GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who used a speech Friday to vouch for Romney.
At the annual gathering of religious conservatives in Washington, D.C., there was also talk of this week's violence in the Middle East.
The Values Voter Summit got under way first thing Friday morning, with a speech from Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council organizes this event.
Afghan soldiers (right) patrol with U.S. troops in the Panjwai district of southern Afghanistan in May. The two armies have been working together for years, but Afghan attacks against U.S. and NATO forces have been rising recently.
As we approach the presidential election in November, Weekend Edition is seeking your questions about issues and candidates in a new segment called Reporter Hotline. This week, we answer inquiries about foreign policy and U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Protesters march outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Saturday. Tension escalated, sometimes to violence, in cities across China after Japan bought the disputed islands from a private Japanese owner.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Cartons of "free rage eggs" were given to protesters to throw at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.
Originally published on Sat September 15, 2012 5:56 am
It has been a day of rage on China's streets. The road outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing was transformed into a sea of protesters, waving national flags, screaming invective.
For a metro area of only about 3.5 million people, the Twin Cities region is unusual in the way it supports not one, but two world-class orchestras. Now, with looming deficits on the horizon and musicians' contracts at both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra expiring Sept. 30, the Twin Cities may have two orchestras on strike.
At 11 a.m. on a weekday, Calexico rehearses for its upcoming tour in a cramped studio on the south side of Tucson, Ariz. The stereotypical musician would just be getting up, but lead singer and songwriter Joey Burns has been up since dawn with his twin baby girls.
Trumpet player Jacob Valenzuela arrives late to the rehearsal — and that's because his washing machine broke and he had to deal with a small flood. Valenzuela grabs his trumpet as the band launches into "Splitter," the first single from Calexico's new album.
Reviews of the new film The Master have ranged from acclaim to disdain. Almost all the critics, though, seem to admire the film's music, composed by Jonny Greenwood.
Greenwood's story begins in the early 1990s, when he was playing the viola at Oxford University and not making much of an impression — even on himself.
"I was headed for the back of the viola section in some orchestra," Greenwood says. "If I practiced hard enough."
