NPR News

With huge crowds expected in Washington, D.C., dozens of pedicab drivers have come to town to take advantage of the president's swearing in. Mike Kowalczyk of Newport, Rhode Island, told WTOP he's a little worried about directions. He said he got lost his first night in the nation's capital.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep.

President Obama took the oath for a second term yesterday, on January 20th, as the Constitution requires. The public ceremony takes place today at the Capitol, and we'll have live coverage all day long.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The dead are still being counted from last week's attack and hostage drama at a natural gas plant in the remote desert of Algeria. Among those killed are dozens of foreign workers from Britain, Japan and elsewhere, with at least one from America. To get a better understanding of what is unfolding in the region and America's role in it, we're joined by Vickie Huddleston.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The president of the United States, as his title suggests, is the leader of this country, but in many ways is also the leader of the world. And so we're looking at how other countries see the next four years on this Inauguration Day. India enjoyed strong relations with the Obama administration in its first term, but in a second term, NPR's Julie McCarthy reports, the South Asian giant is concerned about the uncertainty seen in American policy toward China and Afghanistan.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

In his first term, the president sometimes had prickly relations with Israel. Tomorrow, Israelis vote in a new government. That election comes amid the revolutions of Israel's Arab neighbors and soon after an armed conflict with Palestinians in Gaza. And when David Remnick recently visited Israel, he found, in his words, the vivid and growing strength of the radical right.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Nearly four years ago, President Barack Obama was a new face with new promise and a middle name Hussein that resonated throughout the Muslim world. In a speech at Cairo University, he promised a new beginning for relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world. But as Obama begins his second term, the hope that so many in Egypt had for a new direction under Obama is largely gone. NPR's Leila Fadel reports from Cairo.

The widow of a slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evars will help open the inaugural ceremony Monday. President Obama has selected activist Myrlie Evers-Williams to deliver the invocation. She's the first woman and lay person to have the honor.

See what you know about the wonkier points of the quadrennial festivities. Scroll to the page bottom for answers and explanations.

1) The Constitution says that a presidency ends and a new one begins on:

a) Jan. 20
b) Jan. 21
c) The third Monday in January following an election
d) It doesn't specify

2) How many presidents have chosen to affirm (rather than swear) to "faithfully execute the office ... "?

a) None
b) One
c) Two
d) Three

One of the chief expectations of those who voted for President Obama is that he moves assertively to pass climate change legislation, whatever the political climate in Washington.

"We have a bipartisan common interest in moving away from fossil fuels towards clean energy," says Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. "The sooner that members of both parties in Congress realize that and develop solutions, the better off we'll all be."

For years, British environmental activist Mark Lynas destroyed genetically modified food (GMO) crops in what he calls a successful campaign to force the business of agriculture to be more holistic and ecological in its practices.

His targets were companies like Monsanto and Syngenta — leaders in developing genetically modified crops.

Earlier this month he went in front of the world to reverse his position on GMOs.

"Contact with nature is not some magical elixir but the natural world is the substrate on which we must build our existence," writes Stephen Kellert in his new book Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World.

In it, he tells stories of the environment's effect on us, and ours on it. His writing builds on the traditions of Thoreau, John Muir and Rachel Carson. Modern society, he argues, has become adversarial in its relationship to nature, having greatly undervalued the natural world beyond its narrow utility.

A recently-published menu for Abraham Lincoln's lavish second inaugural ball in 1865 provides an interesting look at how different the nation celebrated its new president just seven score and eight years ago.

Smoked tongue en geleé and blancmange (a firm custard) shared room on the buffet table with roast turkey and burnt almond ice cream.

As Yale food historian Paul Freedman told Smithsonian Magazine writer Megan Gambino, the cuisine could best be described as "French via England, with some American ingredients."

Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko, is drawn to musical collaboration and repelled by hydraulic fracturing.

The 37-year-old just released two albums: the improvisational project Mystical Weapons and the score to the independent film Alter Egos.

Writing For Film

Lennon only appears in Alter Egos for a few seconds; the majority of his efforts went into writing the music, which he had to do twice. He describes the film as a "kitsch comedy about superheroes," and his first attempt at the music took a similar vibe.

More bodies have been reported found at the gas plant in Algeria where a four-day standoff with Islamist militants came to a bloody end on Saturday. An Algerian security official tells the AP that the state of the bodies makes it difficult to tell whether the dead are hostages or attackers.

Algerian security forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert Saturday, bringing to an end a four-day siege by Islamist militants who took dozens of foreigners hostage.

Any American president hoping to stake a claim to being viewed by future generations as great and transformative — or at least very good and effective — would be wise to choose his predecessor well.

To that end, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan probably couldn't have done better than to follow, respectively, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.

Similarly, President Obama no doubt benefited from comparisons to George W. Bush, who's unlikely to make many historians' lists of the presidential greats.

Host Rachel Martin speaks with NPR correspondents Ari Shapiro, Scott Horsley and Michele Kelemen about President Obama's likely second-term agenda, from handling debt and the deficit to gun control and next steps in the country's relationship with Iran.

Among the sentiments of love of country and national unity, presidential inaugurations also have a religious element. Host Rachel Martin talks with Stephen Prothero, professor of American religion at Boston University, about how the role of faith in inauguration ceremonies has changed over the years.

The national group WATCH D.O.G.S. organizes fathers to volunteer to provide security in their children's schools. After Sandy Hook, the group's strategy didn't change. Some Watchdogs say they've just become even more vigilant.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The way that Israelis vote and the policies that motivate those decisions will be watched closely from this country as well.

For more on what this election and events in the Middle East mean for the United States, I'm joined by Aaron David Miller. He's a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He's also a former Middle East negotiator. He joins us now.

Mr. Miller, thanks so much for being with us.

AARON DAVID MILLER: A pleasure, Rachel.