Morning Edition

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Here's another reminder that a fast-moving news story can completely change. Prosecutors have dropped the charges against Paul Kevin Curtis. He's the Elvis impersonator first arrested in the case of ricin being sent to U.S. officials, as we reported last week.

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The massive swath of Boston that has been closed for more than a week is getting closer to reopening. City officials yesterday brought victims of the marathon bombings and their relatives in for a private visit and allowed neighborhood residents back home for the first time in over a week. Businesses also began the process of cleaning up and preparing to reopen.

The hardest-hit shops and restaurants remain boarded up. As NPR'S Tovia Smith reports, others are hoping to reopen today or tomorrow.

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How you like them apples? Apple is at the start of our business news.

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Even al-Qaida gloats about what's possible under U.S. gun laws. In June 2011, a senior al-Qaida operative, Adam Gadahn, released a video message rallying people to take advantage of opportunities those laws provide.

"America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," Gadahn says, explaining that "you can go down to a gun show at the local convention center" and buy a gun without a background check.

Then a faint smile crosses Gadahn's face. "So what are you waiting for?" he asks.

Coffee is a powerful beverage. On a personal level, it helps keep us awake and active. On a much broader level, it has helped shape our history and continues to shape our culture.

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Good morning, I'm David Greene.

It was just a whimsical idea back in the '70s. David Chan and his co-workers decided to try every Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. Now, the 64-year-old Los Angeles attorney has visited more than 6,000 Chinese eateries around the world. The L.A. Times says he once hit 300 restaurants in a single year. You'll find Chan using a fork. He's not a chopsticks guy.

He often gives advice to restaurant critics. Chan says he's always just been a collector - stamps, records - now dumplings.

The Senate Judiciary Committee turned its attention back to the immigration overhaul proposal Monday, even as opponents began to use the Boston bombers' journey to the United States as a cautionary tale.

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Now here's a change. Earlier this year, the worst drought conditions seen in the Midwest in decades threatened to close the Mississippi River to barge traffic. Now, communities along the river in Missouri and Illinois are bracing for flooding.

St. Louis Public Radio Maria Altman reports.

MARIA ALTMAN, BYLINE: The threat of flooding on the Mississippi River came on quickly after last week's storms dumped rain across the Midwest. The town of Clarksville, Missouri didn't even have time to erect its metal flood wall.

Last week, the New York Post ran a front page photo of two teenage runners under the headline "Bag Men," implying that they had something to do with the Boston Marathon backpack bombs.

It turns out those kids had nothing to do with the attacks. But they came to the public's attention after their images were scooped up and pored over by hundreds of online amateur sleuths.

Steve Inskeep talks with Karen Greenberg, Director of Fordham University's Center on National Security, about defining terrorism, what it means to call an act domestic versus international terrorism and the political ramifications.

Portland and Seattle may take coffee very seriously, but San Diego can boast a newspaper devoted entirely to coffeeshops and all the news that's fit to print about them. John Rippo is the publisher of The Espresso, and he's convinced that coffeeshops are the place to catch juicy moments of the human experience, as they happen.

Inspired by European periodicals written for the cafe intelligentsia, Rippo curates local news in his monthly paper to inspire his fellow San Diego residents to social or political action.

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One of the most startling aspects of Friday's bombing investigation was the shutdown of most of a major metropolitan area. That's rarely, if ever, happened in quite this way. The people around Boston affected Juliette Kayyem, who will talk with us about what this means. She's a former top Homeland Security official from Massachusetts and for the Obama administration. She is now a columnist for the Boston Globe, and her family was locked down on Friday in the Boston area. Welcome to the program, Juliette.

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Good morning. I'm David Greene. As Boston begins healing, they are getting a little help from man's best friend. Five Golden Retrievers: Addie, Isaiah, Luther, Maggie and Ruthie. They're comfort dogs sent by Lutheran Church Charities in Illinois. One of their jobs: just be ready if someone needs a friend to hug.

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Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

Running can be good for you but apparently, is bad for animals. People who like to run through the Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge were stunned by a new sign. According to the Statesman Journal, the signs at a trailhead there say: No Dogs, Horseback Riding and No Jogging. Hiking is apparently fine. Wildlife officials warn that running people can stress out the animals, and might even interfere with their breeding.

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OK, lets me a couple of guys who are big fans of Ghostface Killah.

MAHBOD MOGHADAM: The best Ghostface song, I think, is "a Nutmeg." That's all of his...

GREENE: That's Mahbod Moghadam. He and his friend Tom Lehman co-founded a Web site called Rap Genius.

MOGHADAM: Tom is here looking up...

TOM LEHMAN: These are my favorite lie of Ghost. It's from "Buck 50" where he says: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, docialiexpilisticfragicalsuper Wu-Tang Chamber. Cancun catch me in the a room eating grouper...

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Now solar power has had its problems in recent decades. For years, solar panels were too expensive to compete. More recently, as we heard earlier in the business news, solar panels got so cheap that manufacturers ran into trouble. But solar energy had a signal achievement in March, and that is our last word in business today.

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Members of Congress are already expressing how they think the suspect in the marathon bombing case should be questioned and tried. Some lawmakers are also using the attack in Boston to argue both for and against overhauling immigration and gun control.

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Good morning. I'm David Greene. Earlier this week we told you about a Michigan judge who held himself in contempt when his cell phone went off in the courtroom. He said judges are not above the rules. An Oregon judge this week showed that jurors are not above the rules, either. During a trial in the town of Salem, the judge noticed that a juror's pocket was glowing.

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Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

If you think this has been an unbelievable week of news, try telling it to Joe Berti. Mr. Berti traveled to Boston for that city's marathon and crossed the finish line seconds before the first bomb exploded. He was OK and he went home to Texas, where he was close enough to a fertilizer plant to see it explode on Wednesday night. Some people might feel star-crossed at that point, but Mr. Berti considers himself lucky.

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