Talk of the Nation

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Last Monday, an amateur astronomer in Wisconsin, Dan Peterson, was gazing through his telescope when he caught sight of a flash of white light in Jupiter's gassy atmosphere. Lucky for him, someone else also had a scope trained on Jupiter that night. George Hall, an amateur astronomer in Dallas caught that flash on video, hard evidence that an explosion had indeed happened on the giant planet.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.

After the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama said yesterday that the United States would "work with the Libyan government to bring to justice" the people involved.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

As the conflict in Syria rages on, an estimated 200,000 people have already fled to neighboring countries: to Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and most of all to Jordan. Jordan's foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, says the country can't absorb anymore and that the 85,000 already there have strained Jordan's limited means. Those arrivals include most of the high-profile Syrian defectors, including former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab. All this raises serious questions about Syria-Jordan relations and broader Middle East politics.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan at NPR West today. We'll bring you the latest on Libya and Egypt later this hour, after the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and an attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, where a mob took down the American flag.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and four other Americans died Tuesday after a mob attacked the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya in protest of a film that mocks Islam. In Egypt, protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo. These attacks raise concerns about U.S. policy in the region.

As tensions mount between China and several neighboring countries over control in the Asia-Pacific region, U.S. Sen. James Webb talks with NPR's Neal Conan about the role the United States can and should play in the growing disputes in the South China Sea.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. To many people, a teacher spanking a student for starting a fight or talking back in class might seem like a relic of distant times, but it's more common than you might think. Though the trend is down, as recently as six years ago, a quarter of a million students were spanked at school, and laws in 19 states allow corporal punishment.