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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. A flight from Las Vegas to Phoenix this week was delayed and delayed, passengers stuck on the tarmac for four hours without air conditioning or water in 108-degree heat. A YouTube post said some passengers got sick, but, quote, to "avoid a mutiny," others joined together in song: R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly."

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) I believe I can fly.

(LAUGHTER)

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Marcine and Nita Lou Webb marked 65 years of marriage with a trip to Augusta, Maine, completing a mission to visit all 50 state capitals. Asked how Maine's capitol building compared to the others, Marcine gave it a medium, but high marks for friendly atmosphere. When they went to the gallery to see a debate, the House speaker recognized them and the legislators gave them a standing O.

It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne. The U.S. Senate has opened debate on a sweeping immigration bill. And President Obama says it's the best chance in years to fix what he calls a broken immigration system. The measure took a step forward yesterday when a big, bipartisan majority of senators voted to take up the bill. But it still faces serious obstacles, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

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And Google has announced it is buying Waze, a community-based traffic and navigation app, for a reported price of just over a billion dollars.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports it may change the way we travel.

WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Google hopes its latest acquisition will make your morning commute easier, faster and more social.

While other traffic apps are somewhat passive, Waze tracks mobile devices as they travel, and uses that information to help analyze traffic speeds and flow.

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Buying a light bulb it's not as simple as it used to be. You're not just choosing between 100 watts and 75 watts, between three-way and one-way. Now you can choose light bulbs that will save you quite a bit of money and use less power. There are now bulbs that don't get hot, and you can pick a bulb that might last longer than you do.

Technology columnist Rich Jaroslovsky, at Bloomberg News, has been trying out the new bulbs and will enlighten us. Good morning, Rich.

RICH JAROSLOVSKY: Good morning.

The day we arrived in Iran's capital, Tehran, billboards along the drive from the airport to the city center were already telling us something about what's happening in the country as it prepared for Friday's presidential elections.

We see typical highway signs for Sony Ericsson, but also billboards featuring the face of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. We also see and drive under giant signs that are from Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging people to vote.

Tyler Saladino is one of thousands of minor league baseball players hoping to make it to the major leagues. He plays in Alabama for the Birmingham Barons, the AA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. Last year, NPR profiled Saladino. But since then, maybe things have changed for the 23-year-old infielder.

Latin America is riddled with crime, and no place is more violent than Honduras. It has just 8 million people, but with as many as 20 people killed there every day, it now has the highest murder rate in the world.

It would be easy to blame drug trafficking. Honduras and its Central American neighbors have long served as a favored smuggling corridor for South American cocaine headed north to the U.S.

In the late 1950s, after the Soviet Union successfully put their satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit, American fears over the Communist threat reached a new height. The U.S. was trailing badly in a competition that would come to define the next decade – the race to space.

So on April 9, 1959, the U.S. kicked off its own space age by introducing the country to its first astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven. Their story is well known, but the story of their wives is often overlooked.

When Patrick and Sharon O'Toole began their ranching business on the Wyoming-Colorado border, they tended the sheep themselves. But eventually, the O'Tooles wanted to settle down and have kids, so they hired foreign ranch hands with H-2A, or guest worker, visas to work on the ranch for $750 a month.

Peruvian shepherds on guest worker visas tend thousands of sheep in Wyoming, but they only make about half of what agricultural workers elsewhere are paid.

Basketball offers its fans the ultimate contradiction. On the one hand, it's the sport that most depends on its stars. On the other, it's the most intimate — even organic — of all the team games, with its players more fundamentally involved with one another. Both of these opposing realities are rooted in the same base.

Hillary's first two followers were Bill and Chelsea. She hasn't posted much yet but her Twitter bio is getting lots of attention. Clinton describes herself as wife, mom, hair icon, glass ceiling cracker and pantsuit aficionado.

To promote the horror film Mama, the hotel has received a gory makeover. Rooms have blood soaked sheets and scary graffitti.

Cell phone rings. Loud talking. Candy wrappers crinkling. Even fights in the aisles. Have Broadway audiences gotten ruder?

While some jobs are coming back in this economy, the market for many architects remains tough. There were nearly 220,000 people working in the field in 2008. Today, more than 25 percent of those jobs are gone.

When surveillance laws were revised in 2012, Congress expressed great concerns that without proper oversight intelligence agencies would engage in the sort of monitoring that has been uncovered in recent days. Congress put a number of safeguards in place, but rejected others that would have guarantee more public discussion about what the NSA does.

Some churches have said they will end their affiliation with the Boy Scouts after its decision to allow openly gay members to join. Others, including Southern Baptists, are considering their next move. Another group plans to hold a meeting in Louisville later this month with parents who say they want a more Christian organization for their children.

In recent decades, a quiet revolution has been transforming the way Washington works.

Because the U.S. government does not have the workforce to complete all of its tasks, it employs private companies like Booz Allen Hamilton to do the work for it. Booz Allen is the company where Edward Snowden, who said he leaked secrets about the National Security Agency, most recently worked.

Over the past 25 years, this contract workforce has grown and plays a major role in the U.S. government, says Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

The administration had been trying to appeal a judge's ruling to make the morning-after birth control pill available over the counter with no age restrictions. The Justice Department said it would obey the order — sort of. The FDA may soon approve the over-the-counter sale of Plan B One Step without a prescription.

The Senate voted Monday to approve its version of the farm bill, a massive spending measure that covers everything from food stamps to crop insurance and sets the nation's farm policy for the next five years.

The centerpiece of that policy is an expanded crop insurance program, designed to protect farmers from losses, that some say amounts to a highly subsidized gift to agribusiness. That debate is set to continue as the House plans to take up its version of the bill this month.

As we head into the summer months, NPR is looking back to the summer of 1963, a momentous year in civil rights history. As part of NPR's partnership with The Race Card Project, which asks people to distill their thoughts on race to six words, Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris is asking people who were on the front lines of history to share their memories and their thoughts on race in America today.

Twenty Feet from Stardom, filmmaker Morgan Neville's new documentary, is a reminder that most of pop music's catchiest hooks, riffs and refrains were sung by voices harmonizing in the background. Neville says he wanted to put backup singers — black, female and honed in church — front and center.

"I was really more interested in people who were voices for hire," he says, "who were able to walk into sessions never knowing what they had to do and could bring it."

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Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. In Stockholm, engineers on the Swedish commuter rail line have found a new way to skirt a dress code. The drivers were told no more shorts, even though the heat in the cab can top 95 degrees - just long pants or skirts. So many of the male engineers are now wearing skirts. Women are allowed to, so the company says it will not discriminate. Something tasteful in an A-line, or pleats, perhaps? It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Sheriff's deputies on patrol in the Florida Keys spotted a deer on the side of a road with an empty bag of Doritos stuck on its head. "It must have wanted the last chip in the bottom," a deputy told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The story of Venezuela's Eloisa Barrios is especially revealing because so many of her relatives have been killed. Revealing because of who she believes pulled the trigger.

Some weeks ago, Barrios climbed into our van for a drive to a cemetery. The burial ground is outside a village in the Venezuelan countryside. We went there to visit the Barrios family dead.

She told us nine relatives had been killed in shootings over the past 15 years. All nine were young men.

Winners of 14^th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition were announced Sunday night in Fort Worth, Texas. The competition was held over 17 days.

Vadym Kholodenko, 26, of Ukraine, won the top prize of $50,000, but he said the rankings don't mean that much.

"It's kind of fun for audience, for press. It's interesting to put first, second, 10^th and so on. But in life, not so important," Kholodenko says.

And, he says, so much of life involves competing no matter what you're doing.

City life can be harsh on people. For example, it pushes people to work longer and sleep less. A new study suggests that city life can have a somewhat similar effect on birds too. It shows urban blackbirds wake up earlier and go to bed later than their forest dwelling cousins.

In Sanford, Fla., Monday, jury selection begins in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer charged with shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Police at first declined to charge Zimmerman after the shooting because of Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which gives immunity to people who, fearing for their lives, use deadly force in self-defense.