NPR News

Two cabinet ministers in Norway are off the job, and the prime minister couldn't be happier. That's because the justice minister and family affairs minister are both men on parental leave. The prime minister has been pushing fathers, as well as mothers, to take time off for newborns.

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in January from December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Higher food and energy costs accounted for much of the increase. Excluding those sectors, prices were up 0.2 percent.

Over the past year, BLS adds, prices rose 1.6 percent.

Two quick updates on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who continues to recover from the severe injuries she received in the Jan. 8 shooting rampage at an event she was holding in Tucson, Ariz.:

(Note: Scroll down to see updates on the news from Bahrain.)

From a hospital in Bahrain this morning, NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that "grief is turning to anger very rapidly" after a government crackdown on protesters overnight that left several people dead and some demonstrators now vowing that "we will never stop" until the regime that rules the nation is toppled.

Bahrain's foreign minister defended a bloody crackdown on protesters Thursday, saying the government's decision to send anti-riot police to dislodge thousands of people in the capital had pulled the country back from the "brink of sectarian abyss."

Khaled bin Ali Al-Khalifa, speaking at a news conference, called the opposition uprising a "rebellion against the government and against the nation" and said the pre-dawn assault had preserved the "people's right to express themselves."