NPR News

The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) is known for its high-energy ensemble productions, with repertoire ranging from art song and opera to Broadway and the blues. Reporter Jeff Lunden recently caught up with the group's artistic directors and singers to find out more about the 23-year-old New York institution.

The violent sexual assault on CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo last week has highlighted a huge problem in Egypt.

According to one recent report by a women's rights group, some 80 percent of Egyptian women and 90 percent of foreign women visiting the country have been sexually harassed. And the former government did little to stem the problem.

But Egyptian women hope the revolution will change all that.

The easy analogy is to the crimes of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, who stole billions of dollars from the investors who trusted him with their money.

But the story of Monroe Beachy, a 77-year-old Amish man from Ohio who over about 25 years lost nearly half of the $33 million that 2,600 people entrusted to him, has both sharp similarities with and huge differences from the Madoff saga.

It all started with the 88 keys of an old organ. Frontman Michael Fitzpatrick recalls his ex-girlfriend hurriedly phoning him about the instrument for sale next door, and when Fitzpatrick finally got it home that night, the first pieces of the soon-to-be single "Breaking the Chains of Love" began to form. As he put it, "sometimes, the music gods just give it to you."

During the social-media-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, many Americans discovered the social network Twitter for the first time.

One of the most popular and prolific Twitter reporters is Sultan Al Qassimi, who tweeted minute-by-minute updates of the events in Egypt and Tunisia.

Qassimi is in constant motion. His body language matches the pace of his tweets. The 33-year-old businessman wrote the first draft of Middle East history in short sentences tapped out on his computer and his cell phone.