NPR News

As our colleague Liz Halloran writes this morning, "New York Rep. Peter King's hearings on what he has characterized as the 'radicalization of Muslims in America' open Thursday amid a clamor of outrage from many quarters."

We've posted about the hearings and the controversy surrounding them several times:

A few of this morning's developments related to the crisis in Libya:

-- "Members of the rebel Libyan National Council are 'valid interlocutors', Britain's Foreign Office said on Thursday after France recognized the [rebel] council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. 'The U.K. recognizes states, not governments. The interim national council are valid interlocutors, with whom we wish to work closely,' a spokesman for the Foreign Office told Reuters."

A suspected Italian drug trafficker is behind bars after a decade on the lam, and his wife's lasagna is to blame. Acting on a tip, police watched the homes of Giancarlo Sabatini's relatives. When they saw the daughter carrying a tray of lasagna, they burst into the house and arrested Sabatini.

Biologists have never understood how a kangaroo, which is so big, can be so springy. The BBC reports scientists are using infrared motion-capture technology to find the answer.

Republican state senators in Wisconsin figured out how to pass controversial budget repair legislation without the help of missing Senate Democrats. In a sudden move Wednesday evening, GOP senators stripped all of the financial proposals from the bill but kept the language ending many collective bargaining rights for nearly all public sector unions.

It's no longer a budget repair bill.