NPR News

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

And as police begin to piece together a picture of the gunman, Adam Lanza, they will also be looking at possible motives. Here in the studio with me is NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam.

And, Shankar, you have reported in the past about building profiles of these kinds of assailants. I mean, usually, we're talking about men. We're talking about often about white men. Does what we know about Lanza fit that profile of a mass shooter?

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

We're going to turn to other news for a moment and a story out of Egypt. Voters in that country began to turn out for the first phase of a controversial constitutional amendment. Opponents of that Islamist back draft constitution have been mounting protests for weeks. Some of those clashes turned deadly. Reporter Merrit Kennedy is in Alexandria, and she sent this report.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. Fred Rogers, better known as Mr. Rogers, was often asked by parents how to explain death to children. And so on his program one day, he decided to try and deal with that challenge. And here's how he started:

FRED ROGERS: When I was very young, I had a dog that I loved very much. Her name was Mitzi. And she got to be old, and she died. I was very sad when she died, because she and I were good pals. And when she died, I cried.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was recovering Saturday after surgery to remove gallstones, the government said. There was no indication when the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader would be released from the hospital, though the government said he was recovering well.

Mandela was admitted to the unnamed hospital in the capital, Pretoria, a week ago. As the BBC's Karen Allen told our Newscast Unit, there's been much concern about his health and limited detail about his medical condition.

At a news conference Saturday afternoon, Connecticut's Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II released a list of the victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who earlier this week canceled a trip to Morocco and the Middle East because she was ill with a stomach virus, is at home recovering from a concussion she suffered in a fall, her spokesman says.

According to an email that State has sent to reporters, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines says that:

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

We continue to follow the tragic news from Newtown, Conn., about Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school.

There is, of course, other news:

-- "Some Polling Issues As Egyptians Vote On Draft Constitution." (NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson)

President Obama focuses on the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., in his weekly radio/Web address. His message echoes the emotional comments he made to the nation Friday afternoon.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

As we watch U.S. congressional leaders lob charges back and forth during budget negotiations, some may wonder if there was once a time when politicians played nicely together.

(APPLAUSE)

SIMON: In October of 1986, Democrats and Republicans joined to pass a comprehensive tax reform bill and presented it to President Ronald Reagan.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: I'll be sitting at that desk, taking up a pen, and signing the most sweeping overhaul of tax code in our nation's history.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The right-to-work legislation that was passed, and signed into law, in Michigan this week has been called a staggering blow to organized labor. Such laws allow workers to refuse to join a union and pay union dues, even if they're employed in a unionized workplace. Twenty-four states now have similar laws but Michigan, as the home of the U.S. auto industry, is considered one of the foundries of the American labor movement.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And this morning, of course, we are reporting the story from Newtown, Connecticut; where yesterday, a young man named Adam Lanza shot and killed some 26 people at an elementary school - 20 of them, small children. Connecticut state police have briefed residents of Newtown, and reporters, on the latest from the crime scene at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, and at second crime scene.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson joins us in the studio for more on the investigation. Carrie, thanks for being with us.

CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.

SIMON: What do we know about the shooter, and is anything developing on what I noticed Lieutenant Vance carefully called - he didn't use the word motive, he said the how and the why of the shooting?

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The Sandy Hook Elementary School joins a sad and lengthening list of names in recent U.S. history. Since 12 students and a teacher were killed at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999, there have been scores of other school shootings - so many it may be hard to recall all the names: Red Lake, Nickel Mines, Virginia Tech and Chardon High School are just a few of the names that have become branded by tragedy. Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio spoke with Frank DeAngelis, the principal of Columbine High School.

Chicago's $1.6 billion "Plan for Transformation" envisioned public housing in a way that would deconstruct an image of the city's poor all concentrated in huge housing silos.

The idea was to mix public-housing residents with market-rate condos and subsidized rentals or homes, with one-third of each in these new communities.

In the gymnasium of a South London technical school, site of this year's World Memory Championships, Norwegian Ola Kaere Risa checks his stopwatch.

Risa is Norway's only contestant this year.

"I hope to defend the glory of my country," he says, laughing.

The 21st World Memory Championships are under way in London this weekend. About 75 competitors from some two dozen countries are vying to see who can memorize the most numbers, faces, playing cards or random words in a set amount of time.

Congress has barely two weeks to agree on a deficit-cutting deal to keep the nation from going over the "fiscal cliff" in the new year. The problem is that right now there is no such deal to agree on.

Republicans reject the higher tax rates for top incomes that President Obama demands. And they also insist on more austere entitlement programs, which has Democrats digging in their heels.

Update at 2:54 p.m. ET: Voting Hours Extended:

Voter turnout on the first day of a referendum on Egypt's controversial draft constitution was so high in Cairo and nine other governorates that election officials decided to extend poll hours from 7 until 11 p.m. local time.

Newtown, Conn., is a white-collar community an hour and a half northeast of New York City. It's the kind of place where crime is rare and the biggest thing that happens each year is the Labor Day parade.

Now the peace and quiet has been shattered, and residents are trying to make sense of what's happened.

Hours after the shootings that left so many people dead, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church opened its doors for a prayer vigil. People filed through the streets and past houses decorated with Christmas lights.

You know the old joke: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice." Myrlie Evers-Williams took a different route.

Her late husband, Medgar Evers, was the Mississippi head of the NAACP; he was assassinated for his work in 1963. Evers-Williams wound up moving to Southern California, where she became an educational, corporate and political leader and, in the 1990s, chairwoman of the NAACP.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

According to federal law enforcement sources, Adam Lanza, the gunman, one of his victims, was his own mother, which has led to much speculation about the Lanza family and relations within it. Well, Adam Lanza's parents were divorced. And reporter Maggie Gordon of the Stamford Advocate is now going to tell us about Mr. Lanza's father. Where did you come across him?

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

We begin this hour with the tragedy in Connecticut. This morning, around nine o'clock, a young man walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and began shooting. Federal law enforcement officials now tell NPR the gunman was 20-year-old Adam Lanza of Newtown.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

We begin this hour with tragedy in Connecticut. This morning, around nine o'clock, a gunman walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He was armed and, at some point, began shooting.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Many residents of Newtown are gathered this evening at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church for a prayer vigil. NPR's Quil Lawrence is outside the church and he joins us now. And, Quil, what's going on inside the church this evening?

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And joining us now from Newtown, Connecticut is Craig LeMoult of member station WSHU. And, Craig, what's the latest on the investigation?