Statistics released today by the Justice Department show that the number of violent crimes in the country continued their downward trend, dropping a surprising 12 percent in 2010.

The AP reports:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported there were 3.8 million violent crimes last year, down from 4.3 million in 2009. Experts aren't sure why. The expectation had been that crime would increase in a weak economy with high unemployment like that seen in 2010.

Nearly a decade ago, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez fired 20,000 striking oil workers, many in highly specialized areas who had years of experience.

Venezuelan oil production has since fallen, and those banished oil workers are helping boost oil production in other countries, including one new oil frontier, Colombia.

On a recent day on Colombia's southern plains, the oil fields run by Pacific Rubiales, the country's biggest private oil producer, were a hive of activity.

The most dramatic moment of the GOP debate in Florida last Monday revolved around Gov. Rick Perry and his 2007 executive order mandating that all 11- and 12-year-old girls in Texas get the HPV vaccine. The human papillomavirus vaccine protects women and teens against a sexually transmitted disease that causes cervical cancer.

During the debate, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann called Perry's executive order an example of crony capitalism.

The Davis-Monthan Air Force base in Tucson, Ariz. is on lockdown. The AP, as well as local news outlets, report the Air Force base has confirmed that it has stepped up security, but it refused to give details of the situation.

The AP reports:

Senior Airman Timothy Dunaway says traffic has been reduced to a single point entry but he refused to elaborate.

He says the Sonoran Science Academy on the base is on lockdown.

The U.S. Supreme Court has stopped a scheduled execution in Texas. The case raises questions about the role race played in the sentencing of Duane Buck. He had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday night. Buck's attorneys asked the Supreme Court to intervene because, during the original trial, a psychologist testified that black people were more likely to commit violent crimes.

Republican leaders in Pennsylvania's Legislature want to change how Electoral College votes in the state are allocated. Changing from a winner-takes-all system to a proportionate one based on congressional districts could help the GOP candidate gain a few extra votes in 2012. But the plan is controversial — even among Republicans.

In southwest Miami, a small subdivision is being called "ground zero" of an invasion by a destructive, non-native species.

"It's us against the snails," Richard Gaskalla, head of plant industry for Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

Lindsey Buckingham helped make Fleetwood Mac one of the biggest rock bands of all time. He works mostly solo today, and his sixth solo album, Seeds We Sow, just came out.

Buckingham takes the "solo" designation seriously: He wrote, produced and engineered the album himself, as well as playing most of the instruments. He tells Weekend Edition Saturday's Scott Simon that the effects of that approach come through in the music.

This week brought another slew of bad political news for President Obama. The Democrats lost two special elections: one in a Republican-leaning district in Nevada, and one in a Democratic stronghold in New York.

There are also new polls showing the president's support weakening among Democratic voters in blue states.

Kweku Adoboli, the 31-year-old rogue trader who lost $2 billion of Swiss bank UBS' assets, was the one who alerted the bank to what was going on, reports the BBC.

To catch you up on the story: Yesterday, UBS announced that it may have to post a quarterly loss because one man made a series of bad trades. As the AP reported, yesterday, Adoboli proved that banks remain vulnerable even after safeguards against rogue traders were put in place.