NPR News

Steven A. Cook is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Seattle songwriter Damien Jurado was one of my first guests when I started doing the Morning Show more than a decade ago. He's also the man behind the show's opening theme song, which I've been playing since those early performances. With each new record, Jurado comes by to perform, either solo or with a different lineup.

James Harkin is a London-based writer. His latest book is Niche: Why the Market No Longer Favours the Mainstream.

On a Monday in late February, I received a Facebook message from a Syrian activist notifying me that a demonstration was due to start in half an hour in a heavily guarded section of Damascus. The occasion was a funeral, and so the protest was likely to be large. "Two of the five martyrs are children, and funeral processions for children are always big," the message explained.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was released this morning from the Fairfax, Va., hospital where he received a heart transplant on March 24.

NPR's Don Gonyea forwards us this statement from Cheney's office:

As the Census Bureau was reporting earlier this morning about a 1.3 percent gain in orders for manufactured goods in February from the month before, automakers were saying that March was perhaps their best month in almost four years, The Associated Press says: