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In his State of Union address this week, President Obama pointed to a successful manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio, as a model for other programs.

On Thursday, President Obama unveiled some of the details of his proposal for universal pre-K education. Robert Siegel talks with University of Chicago economist James Heckman, who's studied the benefits to society of early intervention.

Bravado, body checking and broken bones are all surprisingly commonplace in sled hockey — a sport designed for people with mobility limitations.

Lidia Jean Kott is an intern at NPR Books.

As the Carnival Triumph drifted for days in the Gulf of Mexico, we wondered: Instead of undertaking a slow, arduous tow to Mobile, Ala., wouldn't it have been easier — and more comfortable for passengers — to send an empty cruise ship to the area and evacuate the 3,143 passengers?

President Obama will cap off a busy week of politicking with some R&R in Florida.

Obama plans to travel to the West Palm Beach area for what his spokesman called "some well-deserved downtime."

"He's going to spend Presidents Day weekend relaxing with some friends," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "There's no work on the schedule."

In a federal court today, prosecutors said former San Diego Mayor Maureen O'Connor misappropriated $2 million of her late husband's charitable foundation because of a gambling addiction.

During a period between 2000 and 2008, reports the San Diego Union Tribune, prosecutors say O'Connor gambled away more than $1 billion.

The paper reports:

Today we got more troubling news for the world economy: Germany's GDP slipped 0.6 percent in the final quarter of 2012, sending the Eurozone deeper into recession.

The Guardian spoke to Carsten Brzeski and analyst for ING, who said:

Apparently, the undead aren't even welcome in the ever polite Great North.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. You can soon add US Airways to a long list that includes TWA, Pan Am, Eastern, Western, Braniff and so many others. US Airways will merge with American. The new American Airlines will be the world's largest, and after decades of consolidation, one of just four major airlines in the U.S.

A future without weeds would be a kind of farmer utopia, but currently, herbicide-resistant "superweeds" are part of today's reality. Some researchers, though, are looking for a solution that seems ripped from science fiction: weed-seeking robots.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

NASA calls it a "small near-Earth asteroid."

Delicate phrasing, with both voice and guitar, has always made Richard Thompson a musician worth hearing — and sometimes even liking on a personal level. For a man who can make such pretty music, it's to his credit that he prefers to show his thorny, stubborn, cranky, even mean side in many of the songs in his solo career.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the new U.S. and International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, commander in Afghanistan, has only been in charge for a few days, and already he's been summoned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office for what looks like a dressing down, according to a press release from the president's office.

Dunford was called in to discuss what was initially reported as an ISAF airstrike in Kunar province that killed 10 civilians late Tuesday night.

The English rock group Depeche Mode owned a chunk of the '80s and '90s with glossy electro-rock hits like "People Are People" and "Personal Jesus." These days the band doesn't have much to prove, and its members, who appear in this new video for the song "Heaven," seem to find themselves at peace, bathed in the radiant glow of light and love.

Whitney Young spent most of his in the civil rights movement, but he focused on changing business as much as changing law. As head of the National Urban League, he had the ear of some of the nation's most powerful leaders. Host Michel Martin speaks with Young's niece, filmmaker Bonnie Boswell, who chronicles her uncle's story in the documentary, "The Power Broker."

President Obama visits Chicago Friday to talk about gun violence. But some of the people most affected say their voices aren't being heard. Host Michel Martin speaks with Aisha Truss-Miller and Chris Buford of the Black Youth Project, the group whose petition led to presidential visit.

Host Michel Martin continues the conversation with Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton. Her 15-year-old daughter was shot to death in Chicago last month, and President Obama highlighted the tragedy in his State of the Union address. Cowley-Pendleton talks about what she would like national leaders to think about when debating gun control policy.