Weekend Edition

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Weekend Edition Sunday Host Rachel Martin talks to Michael Young, the opinion page editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut, about the spillover of Syria's conflict into Lebanon.

Middle East analyst Andrew Tabler talks to Weekend Edition Sunday Host Rachel Martin about the U.S.'s decision this week to arm the Syrian rebels.

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There are a lot of things that get a bad rap and then will never shake said bad rap no matter what: canned beanie-weanies come to mind, for example. They're never going to be thought of as high cuisine, let's face it. The song "Escape" by Rupert Holmes - though it has a kicking chorus - probably will not become a better song with time.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ESCAPE")

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF THEME MUSIC)

MARTIN: Time for sports, and we're talking baseball this morning because it is an important time of year for aspiring major leaguers - time when the biggest stars from the minor leagues get called up to the big leagues. But, like most things in baseball, it's full of complicated twists and crazy rules, which means we need to call in Mike Pesca to explain. Hi, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for the call-up.

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Colorado is often the site of devastating forest fires, but the city of Colorado Springs has been hit particularly hard as of late. In the span of just one year, more than 800 homes have been destroyed from wildfires in and around the city. This time last year, it was the Waldo Canyon fire, and now it's the Black Forest fire. NPR's Kirk Siegler spent the week in Colorado Springs and sent this report.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

President Obama leaves tonight on a quick trip to Europe. He'll attend a G8 Summit of industrialized nations in Northern Ireland. He'll also pay a visit to Germany, where his plans include a public speech at the historic Brandenburg Gate.

NPR's Scott Horsley will be traveling with the president. He joins us now. Hi, Scott.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Rachel.

Google scientists have been testing a way to link computers to the internet in rural, war torn or disaster areas where high speed internet does not exist. We hear from Steven Levy, a senior writer with Wired magazine who was embedded with the Google team.

Weekend Edition Sunday Host Rachel Martin speaks with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to learn more about new Iran's president-elect, cleric Hassan Rouhani.

County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland is hosting this year's G8 Summit. To spruce up the recession-hit area, the county has created some fake storefronts. Host Rachel Martin speaks with District Council member Brendan Hegarty.

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We've started hearing from some of the Internet companies implicated in the NSA data collection scandal. On Friday, Facebook and Microsoft disclosed for the first time that last year they received thousands of requests from the government to hand over information about their users. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency is still on the defensive. The agency's head spoke on Capitol Hill last week in an effort to reassure lawmakers that the NSA is not spying on Americans.

Weekend Edition Sunday Host Rachel Martin talks to Baghdad businessman Haider al-Jumaili about the growing violence in Iraq, where more than a thousand people died in May.

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

Ryan Crocker is a long-time U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador in six Muslim countries. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award, from President George W. Bush.

Born into a military family, Crocker says he was drawn to the foreign service because he grew up overseas and spent time traveling in the Middle East.

On-air challenge: Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word starts SI and the second word starts with T. For example, given "unadorned set of facts," you would say, "simple truth."

Last week's challenge: Name a movie in two words — five letters in each word. Both words start with vowels. Take one letter in the first word, move it two spaces later in the alphabet, and rearrange the result. You'll get the second word in the movie's title. What movie is it?

Answer: After Earth

Turkey's protests come at a sensitive moment for the country's economy, long considered a regional bright spot.

If there is a jewel in the crown of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decade in power, it's the enviable record of growth that has tripled the average Turk's per capita income and brought in a flood of foreign investment.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

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Time now for sports.

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MARTIN: Every once in a while, the intrepid Mike Pesca has to take one for the team, go out in the field for a tough assignment. You know, watch some basketball, work on his tan. He is in Miami covering the NBA finals.

Hi, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: I don't work on the tan. It just comes to me.

(LAUGHTER)

MARTIN: You know, it's no work. It's just easy.

PESCA: It's just the sun remembers my Mediterranean the roots and, bam, I'm dark.

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In Colorado, the recreational use of marijuana is now legal. Those statutes which were approved by voters last fall were just signed into law. Voters in Washington state also approved recreational pot and that state is now in the process of formulating just how the drug will be regulated.

Mark Kleiman is a professor of public policy at UCLA. And he's heading up the team advising Washington on implementing its marijuana laws. He says that state's rules will be based on its alcohol and tobacco laws.