State and National News

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, it's June, the beginning of the summer wedding season and a lot of couples are tying the knot, but what happens when your plans for a dream wedding in your hometown are the subject of - well, let's say - opinions of complete strangers?

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, immigration is back in the news right now, in part because of a new move by the Obama administration to stop deporting young people who came here illegally as children. And now there's also new information about just who is coming here and why.

The Irish sisters in Henry Girls make their first American appearance on this episode of Mountain Stage. From Inishowen in County Donegal, Ireland, Joleen, Lorna and Karen McLaughlin create a seamless mix of folk, bluegrass and traditional Irish music, framed by their chilling three-part harmonies.

Of Monsters and Men is an Icelandic sextet specializing in catchy folk-pop. The group came together in 2009 when singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir began recruiting backups for her acoustic solo act. In 2010, Of Monsters and Men gained national fame when it won an annual Icelandic battle of the bands; since then, the buzz has only grown.

Scottish school girl Martha Payne is just nine, but she caused a national kerfluffle last week when she was told she could no longer publish photographs of her school lunches on her daily food blog, NeverSeconds.

Martha began blogging in April about the quality of her school lunches, with the help of her father, David. Each day she posts a clear photograph of a meal, and rates each one on its taste, health, price and number of pieces of hair that turn up in the food (mostly none).

The battle between the Obama administration and the House Oversight and Government over the Fast and Furious operation just ratcheted up another notch. There's word that the White House is exerting executive privilege over documents that the committee's Republican majority has subpoenaed.

Who doesn't wonder what happens when someone falls into a black hole? I'm sure some of you, dear readers, have lost many hours of sleep on this one. Especially now that we know that there is a black hole at the center of most of the hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, including a behemoth in our own Milky Way with a mass of about 4 million suns.

Steve Levine is a blogger and foreign correspondent for Foreign Policy.