Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

U.S. intelligence analysts are just beginning to analyze the trove of computer files taken from Osama bin Laden's compound. The government did release five videos over the weekend that showed bin Laden doing routine things at his home. One of them shows him wrapped in a blanket watching news coverage of himself. For more on the material that was confiscated from the compound, we contacted Steve Coll. He's author of "The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century."

Good morning.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro profiles a council member in rebel-held Misrata, Libya. The man's father was killed recently in shelling. And, rockets keep his daughter up at night. But he says trying to establish a new government is his most important work.

The Los Angeles Lakers have won the last two NBA championships. They won't add to that this year. The Lakers were swept by the Dallas Mavericks 122-86. Renee Montagne talks with NPR's Tom Goldman about the game.

The Mississippi River and its tributaries continues to rise. In Memphis, Tenn., hundreds of homes already are underwater and thousands of people have moved to higher ground. Floodwaters there are expected to crest Tuesday just under the record level set in 1937.

If you open up your mobile phone, or laptop, or iPad, you'll find a lithium battery. If you own a hybrid or electric car, it's likely powered by a lithium battery as well. Lithium is a metal that's light and cheap, and it is increasingly the material of choice for battery makers.

An exhaustive study of autism in one community has found that the disorder is far more common than suggested by earlier research.

The study of 55,000 children in Goyang, South Korea, found that 2.64 percent — one in every 38 children — had an autism spectrum disorder.

"That is two and a half times what the estimated prevalence is in the United States," says Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at The George Washington University and one of the study's authors.

To handle all the water flowing down the Mississippi River, the Army Corps of Engineers is opening the floodgates on a spillway, north of New Orleans.

Opening the Bonnet Carre spillway diverts some of the floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain and from there to the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly every flood control action taken by the Corps is not without controversy.

Winners And Losers

In the deep waters off Cuba's north coast, a Chinese-built oil rig is due to begin drilling this fall in an area geologists believe may have huge beds of undersea crude.

A significant find could transform Cuba's economy and possibly alter relations with the United States, but it may also present new environmental threats for the Florida coast.

Mariel — the town 30 miles west of Havanna that was a departure point for more than 100,000 Cubans who left the island in the 1980 Mariel boatlift — is being remade into a servicing hub for the Cuban oil industry of the future.

First in a three-part series

For years, the United States has been trying to stop Iran's nuclear program and change what it says is Iran's bad behavior in the Middle East and beyond.

The United States has used economic sanctions, censure by the United Nations, diplomatic engagement and the threat of military action to accomplish these goals — all with little or no success.

Tattoo history reaches back thousands of years, to Egyptian mummies and even ancient ice men. Interest has waxed and waned over centuries, but now, it's fair to say, tattoo body art has reached a pinnacle. By some estimates, nearly half of all adults under 40 sport at least one tattoo.

But federal health officials are concerned that not all inks are safe. And they worry that some tattoo salons are mixing their inks with other, unsafe products.