NPR News

There's a lot of innovation in grilling — everything from fancy briquettes to gadgets that help grill veggies to perfection.

But according to survey data from the NPD Group, one thing that's not changing is who's firing up the grill.

Hundreds of volunteers have come to Moore, Okla., to help the community following Monday's tornado. Some are helping clear debris, others bringing out water and supplies to people whose homes were damaged or destroyed, and whose lives are in disarray. One group of volunteers is cooking more than 10,000 meals a day.

The congressional hearings about the IRS's handling of Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status raise the question of why and how tax-exempt groups engage in politics in the first place.

When Raymond Sokolov began writing about food, it was considered a specialty portfolio. Today, celebrity chefs abound in the U.S. and Britain, with cookbooks, TV shows and groupies. Host Scott Simon speaks with Sokolov about his new book, Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food.

In his national security speech Thursday, President Obama discussed drone warfare and the Guantanamo detention camp. But a third controversial issue went largely unmentioned: the use of interrogation methods that are tantamount to torture.

Will teaching English in France's universities undermine the French language? That's up for debate in the country now, and the arguments are heated.

The lower house of the French Parliament approved a measure Thursday that would allow courses to be taught in English, something that is currently against the law.

Those in favor of the proposal say it will attract more international students and improve English language skills of French students. But opponents say the move will only impoverish and marginalize the country's tongue.

A U.S. district court has ruled that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's department has violated the rights of Latino drivers by racially profiling them as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration and issued an injunction to halt the practice.

The decision on Friday marks the first time that the hard-line Maricopa County sheriff's office has been found to be engaging in systematic racial profiling.

It's difficult for an American president to govern through nuance, especially when it's necessary to persuade a majority of the people that certain actions are essential for national security. And effective persuasion usually requires clarity.

That's how you arrive at President George W. Bush's stark formulation "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" after Sept. 11, and much of what sprang from it.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he doesn't smoke crack cocaine and isn't an addict, in response to a video that surfaced recently purporting to show him using the illegal drug.

Last week Ford called the cellphone video obtained by The Toronto Star "ridiculous" and blamed the newspaper for "going after me."

Friday's comments from Ford were more emphatic.

Melissa Block talks to Jeff Semple of the CBC about the video that appears to show Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.

In the days since a tornado ripped through Moore, Okla., talk of constructing safe rooms in public schools has become commonplace.

In southwest Missouri, officials have built a few of them already, and they are seeking funding to build more.

'A Sense Of Peace'

Karina O'Connell is preparing dinner tonight under the pavilion at Phelps Grove Park in Springfield, Mo., where she's eating with her 9-year-old twin sons, Samuel and John Patrick.

They were just little girls when they were killed in 1963, in what came to be known as the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. And now Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley have been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, nearly 50 years after the attack in Birmingham, Ala.

President Obama signed the legislation Friday to award the girls — all of them 14, except for McNair, who was 11 — with the highest honor Congress can bestow upon a civilian.

Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones is back-peddling from remarks he made at a symposium last month that motherhood causes women to lose the necessary focus to be successful traders.

"As soon as that baby's lips touched that girl's bosom, forget it," Jones told an audience at the University of Virginia on April 26.

There are two things you can always count on: public radio pledge drives and the local blood bank asking for a donation of a very different sort.

Both kinds of giving can fill you with a sense of goodwill. But, let's be honest, the tote bags help, too.

When it comes to blood donations, though, ethical concerns and risk have led to limits on incentives for donors in many places. The World Health Organization has set a goal for governments around the world to reach completely voluntary and nonremunerated donations of blood by 2020.

Celine and Jesse are sporting a few physical wrinkles — and working through some unsettling relational ones — in Before Midnight, but that just makes this third installment of their once-dewy romance gratifyingly dissonant.

It's been 18 years since they talked through the night that first time, Julie Delpy's Celine enchanting and occasionally prickly, Ethan Hawke's Jesse determined to charm; their chatter then, as now, scripted but loose enough to feel improvised as captured in long, long takes by Richard Linklater's cameras.

Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo has been extradited to the United States, where he faces charges of laundering tens of millions of dollars through U.S. banks.

Portillo, who served as president from 2000 to 2004, was snatched from a hospital bed in Guatemala City, where he was recovering from liver surgery. He was placed on an airplane bound for New York, according to his lawyer, Mauricio Berreondo.

This is one of those "good news, but" medical stories.

New treatments for heart failure have made it much less likely that people with this chronic condition will die suddenly.

But an analysis by researchers at UCLA finds that the death rate for people with advanced heart failure remains stubbornly high, with 30 percent of people dying within three years.

The Federal Trade Commission is in the early stages of opening an antitrust probe into how Google runs its online display advertising business, according to a report by Bloomberg News, citing sources who want to remain anonymous because the FTC has not announced the probe.

A lot of things about grilling can ignite a fight, including the meaning of "barbecue." And with the proliferation of fancy equipment — from gas grills to pellet smokers to ceramic charcoal cookers — amateur cooks are growing more knowledgeable, and opinionated, about how to best cook food outdoors.

Media empire News Corp., parent of Fox and The Wall Street Journal, will be cleaved into two businesses starting June 28: a publishing arm and one for entertainment.

The plan was first announced a year ago. As we reported at the time: