NPR News

Eleven years after being held hostage for several days by a militant group in Kyrgyzstan, a professional rock climber is heading back to the Kyrgyz cliffs.

In August 2000, photographer John Dickey embarked on a trek with three other avid climbers. Using minimal equipment, they planned to scale cliffs in the Karasu Valley of southeastern Kyrgyzstan. They were assured that aside from the several-thousand-foot free falls, the region otherwise posed no threats to their safety.

America's largest rivers have wreaked havoc on the Midwest this spring, inundating towns and farmland from South Dakota to Louisiana. Nature is responsible for most of it — huge snow packs in Colorado and Wyoming, and historic levels of rain. But some of the flooding isn't natural; it's controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers.

At least seven Republicans have joined the presidential race, and a couple of others seem almost ready to jump. Guest host Laura Sullivan talks with James Fallows, national correspondent with The Atlantic, about this past week's GOP debate, about possible candidate Jon Huntsman's puzzling ad campaign and about the kiss seen around the world between two fans caught in a hockey riot.

When Jill Scott came on the music scene a little more than a decade ago, she wanted to let the world know who she was — so much so that she named her debut album Who Is Jill Scott? Since then, the Philadelphia native has won three Grammys, sold 5 million records worldwide, and starred in a number of movies and TV shows — from the Tyler Perry film Why Did I Get Married? to the HBO series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

The biggest story in the Big Apple by the end of this week may not have been Weinergate, but The Diva vs. Doc smackdown.

A judge in Manhattan Criminal Court acquitted Marcella Caprario, an opera singer, of assaulting Dr. Catherine London, a family practitioner, over a vegan tofu pad-Thai frozen dinner in the aisle of a Trader Joe's market on the Upper West Side.

According to testimony, last Jan. 9 Ms. Caprario's husband, Bill Hobbs, leaned forward to reach for the vegan entrée in the freezer section. He found his route interrupted by Dr. London's 13-year-old son, Noah.