State and National News

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

For more on the politics of the anniversary of bin Laden's killing, we turn to NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. And, Mara, while President Obama was flying to Afghanistan, you had Mitt Romney spending the day in New York City. He appeared at a firehouse with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, so obvious connection there between bin Laden's death and the site of the 9/11 attacks.

News Corp. executives Rupert and James Murdoch can give a small sigh of relief, perhaps, that U.K. lawmakers investigating the tabloid hacking and bribery scandal did not conclude they misled Parliament in earlier testimony.

But that may be just about the only relief the Murdochs receive.

The scathing report accuses the company and several of its former top British executives of lying to Parliament and of seeking to cover up widespread phone hacking, computer hacking and bribing of government employees.

The latest skirmish in the so-called war on women has to do with, of all things, interest rates on student loans. More specifically, the effort by House Republicans to offset the cost of a federal student loan bill by cutting funding from a $15 billion preventive health fund included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

A suicide bomber killed seven people, including three Somali lawmakers in Dusamareb today. Reuters reports that al Shabaab — the Islamic militant group — took responsibility.

Reuters adds:

"While suicide bombers sent by al Shabaab militants have struck government targets and African Union troops in the capital Mogadishu often in recent years, such attacks are rare in central Galgadud region.

There's a new superstar pianist on the horizon: Behzod Abduraimov. Haven't heard of him yet? That's not surprising — at just 21, this native of Tashkent, Uzbekistan has kept a very low profile so far. He's spent the past five years in the U.S., but not at a big-name school like the Curtis Institute (like Lang Lang or Yuja Wang, for example) or at Juilliard, where he was accepted as a student. Instead, he went to study with Stanislav Ioudenitch Park University in Salt Lake City Parkville, Missouri, where he's still enrolled.

Have you signed up to donate your organs if something happens to you? Are you willing to share that information online with your friends, family and acquaintances?

Facebook execs think you might. And they reckon shared stories about the decision to become an organ donor might spur others to do the same.

One year to the day after announcing to the world the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama is in Afghanistan, the nation from which the al-Qaida leader and his followers planned and organized the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The news of the president's unannounced trip was confirmed just before 3 p.m. ET. Obama is scheduled to deliver a televised address aimed at Americans this evening at 7:30 p.m. ET.