NPR News

Update at 12:26 p.m. ET. Launch Scrubbed:

NPR's Mark Stencel, who is at Cape Canaveral, reports NASA has scrubbed Endeavour's launch for at least 48 hours. On its twitter account NASA said it was working to fix two heaters associated with the shuttle's Auxiliary Power Unit 1.

Since the economy went sour and school budgets withered, school administrators and parents have been scrambling to come up with cash.

Many of them are putting aside the buckets of cookie dough and pails of caramel corn in favor of glitzy, high-dollar auctions to raise thousands — even hundreds of thousands — of dollars.

Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, says school fundraising has reached an unprecedented level of sophistication.

I watched the royal wedding processional from behind a woman with a sequined Union Jack cocktail dress, flag-themed sunglasses, high-heeled boots, a flag she wore like a cape, and a plastic cup that she kept clarifying she was filling with vodka schnapps, not vodka.

Incidentally, I highly recommend watching every highly anticipated international event in the company of someone who merrily promises that she is not an alcoholic.

Sometimes an older and cheaper drug beats the shiny, newer competition by being just as effective for a fraction of the cost. But it takes a lot of time and money to prove it.

While there was a solid-sounding 0.6 percent gain in personal spending in March from February, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says most of that increase was not "real."

That's because higher prices, especially on gasoline and food, were behind most of the rise. Adjusted for inflation, spending grew a much more modest 0.2 percent.