NPR News

UPDATE 4:23 p.m.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has denied a call to ban the plastic additive BPA from food packaging. The action comes after government scientists found little reason to think people are being harmed by the chemical.

The FDA was responding to a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which called for the ban on BPA, also known as bisphenol A, from any use where it comes in contact with food.

The ethereal indie-pop band The Spring Standards makes its second appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. All three members of the group — James Cleare, James Smith and Heather Robb — began playing together in the Delaware/Pennsylvania area when they were students in high school. A few years later, they found themselves living within a few blocks of one another in New York City, and decided to pick up where they left off.

Mark Hemingway is a writer for The Weekly Standard.

Lisa Margonelli directs the New America Foundation's energy initiative.

As gasoline prices passed $3.50 a gallon nationally, the politicking predictably kicked into overdrive. "There's no reason we can't get gasoline down to $2 and $2.50 a gallon," said Newt Gingrich, who in February promised he would accomplish this via an agenda he called "Drill here, drill now, pay less." Two days later three prominent Democrats, including Representative Ed Markey, called for President Obama to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices.