NPR News

Sen. Jim Webb is among a group of four Democratic senators not seeking re-election next year. A total of 23 Democratic-held Senate seats are up for re-election in 2012.

The 65-year-old former Navy secretary said that after much thought, he had decided to return to the private sector. He offered no additional details about his plans, but said he has "every intention of remaining involved" in national issues.

Webb has spent over half of his professional career outside of government and says after 6 years in the Senate this is a good place for him to stop and reflect.

A hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, similar to an earlier blast at a different unit of the facility, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday.

Edano said people within a 12-mile radius were ordered inside following Monday's explosion. Associated Press journalists felt the blast 30 miles away.

Edano said the reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods was intact, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public.

Over the years, legions of journalist have come to the Middle East looking for the big story. Most bring back tales of war, political intrigue, religious conflict and human suffering, but journalist Annia Ciezadlo brought back something else as well: recipes. Ciezadlo covered the wars in Lebanon and Iraq for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, and also used her time in the region to gather recipes and the stories behind them

There's nothing new about studying animal sounds; biologists have been doing that for centuries. After all, if you want to understand birds, you need to understand how they communicate.

But Bryan Pijanowski is now asking his colleagues to take a huge step back and, metaphorically speaking, listen not just to the trees, but to the forest.

On-Air Challenge: You are given a sentence that contains two blanks. The word in the first blank contains a J sound. Change that to a CH sound to get the second word and complete the sentence. For example, given: "___ ___ in a person's popularity leads to many a Google ___"; the answer would be: "A SURGE in a person's popularity leads to many a Google SEARCH."