From NPR News

Women planning to have a baby at home will probably be helped by a midwife.

Doctors only deliver about 5 percent of babies born outside the hospital, according to figures released last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Depending on where you live, though, finding a licensed midwife can be tough.

Pop super star Whitney Houston's funeral will be held at the Newark, N.J. church where she sang as a little girl. Citing the owner of Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, the AP reports her funeral will take place at the New Hope Baptist Church on Saturday, Feb. 18.

A day after the United Nations' chief human rights official offered a tough rebuke of Syria, government forces continued their assault on the restive city of Homs. According to the AP, the city has sustained the heaviest shelling in days.

Good Morning!

Our early headlines:

-- Drop In Auto Sales Leads To Smaller-Than-Expected Gain In U.S. Retail Sales

-- Rick Santorum Faces Off With Occupy Movement At Campaign Event

Retail sales rose by 0.4 percent in January, the Commerce Department reported today.

While that's better than December's flat number, it's less than the 0.8 percent expected by economists. The AP adds:

"When excluding autos and gasoline station sales, retail spending jumped 0.6 percent the best showing in three months.

"Consumers spent less on cars, the report showed, even though automakers have previously reported higher sales in January. That suggests dealers offered discounts in order to boost sales.

As has happened to many of the Republican presidential candidates before him, Rick Santorum was "mic checked" at a campaign rally in Washington, yesterday.

As the Bellingham Herald reports it, Santorum was speaking at a venue right next to the Occupy Tacoma encampment and was met with chants almost as soon as he started talking.

For the second time in recent weeks, the USS Abraham Lincoln has passed through the Strait of Hormuz. If you remember the strait has been central in the diplomatic rift between Iran and the United States.

Reacting to sanctions imposed by the United States and approved by the European Union, Iran has threatened to close the narrow strait through which about 20 perent of the world's oil exports passes through.

A man thought to be Iranian blew off his legs, when he tried to lob an explosive at police in Bangkok. Shortly before that happened, two other explosions were reported in the commercial district of the city.

The AP reports police found a passport that identified the man as Saeid Moradi from Iran.

Two decades of anger, apologies and agreements have failed to keep the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from ending posthumous Mormon baptisms of prominent Jews and holocaust victims.

In the latest incident, the parents of the late Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of a Nazi death camp and an advocate for holocaust victims, were baptized in a Mormon ceremony.

Today marks a year since an uprising started in the Gulf Nation of Bahrain. And over the course of the year, we saw lots of protests, and we saw the Gulf Cooperation Council send troops into the country to quash the rebellion. We saw the monarchy dismantle the Pearl Roundabout, which had become symbolic of the uprising and later commission a report about what went wrong at the height of the protests last February.

On this day 50 years ago, first lady Jackie Kennedy offered a Valentine to America: A televised tour of the newly-restored White House. She had been shocked at how little of the past was in the White House. So she threw her heart into bringing that history back. A record number of Americans tuned in to watch the tour.

The museum's collection includes a wedding dress from a marriage gone wrong. It also includes a shattered garden gnome that a wife had hurled at her husband's car. And then there's an axe a woman used on her ex's furniture.

China's Vice President Xi Jinping visits the White House Tuesday. While in Washington, Xi will discuss a broad range of bilateral, regional and global issues. He'll also travel to Iowa and California. Xi is widely expected to become China's next president.

The natural gas boom in Pennsylvania has new workers flooding into the state. That's causing a housing crunch in some communities, as locals get priced out of the rental market. One rural county in the northern part of the state has opened its first homeless shelter.

About 40 percent of TV households have digital video recorders. Once you have one, you may think differently about the shows you watch. TV critic Eric Deggans of the Tampa Bay Times has found some hidden meanings in the TV series his DVR tapes week after week.

Democrats and Republicans don't agree on much. But they do agree that voter registration lists across the country are a mess.

A new report by the Pew Center on the States finds that more than 1.8 million dead people are currently registered to vote. And 24 million registrations are either invalid or inaccurate.

There's little evidence that this has led to widespread voter fraud, but it has raised concerns that the system is vulnerable.

The Senegalese are known for campaigning loudly, musically and enthusiastically, yet the country's reputation for democracy and stability in turbulent West Africa has taken a knock as it prepares for elections on Feb. 26.

When Senegal's top court gave its blessing last month to President Abdoulaye Wade's third-term ambitions, his opponents angrily took to the streets to demonstrate their disapproval.

Senegal was tense as police clashed with protesters demanding that the president withdraw his candidacy.