From NPR News

There are water fountains, park benches, churches and expensive restaurants and then there are presidential candidates' headquarters, now making the list of places to take wedding photos.

Especially if you're a part of this wedding party getting hitched on primary day in South Carolina.

NPR's Don Gonyea tweeted this photo of the bride and her bridesmaids while preparing to cover the results of Saturday's first-in-the-South vote.

South Carolinians are voting today in the GOP primary, which some pundits see as the candidates' last stand for getting the GOP nomination to run in the general election.

On weekends on All Things Considered today, host Guy Raz talked with Danielle Vinson, the chair of the political science department at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., about what is often considered "dirty" South Carolina primary politics.

The third major contest of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign — South Carolina's primary — is being held today and we're live blogging as the news comes in. As we post, you'll get a message alerting you that there are new updates. Just click on that message and the news should flow right into the box below.

The third major contest of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign is being held today in South Carolina and as we did during the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, we'll be helping out the NPR elections team by live blogging as the news comes in.

North and South Korea are still officially at war, even though a truce was declared more than 50 years ago. As a result, there are upwards of 22,000 North Korean defectors now living in South Korea. The journey across the heavily guarded border is treacherous and often deadly. It's been just over a month since Kim Jong Un rose to power after his father Kim Jong Il's sudden death and there are some reports of would-be defectors being shot down while trying to flee the impoverished nation.

A new documentary tracks the history of the U.S. War on Drugs. As the film explains, after 44 million arrests, sales of illegal drugs are still on the rise. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks with director Eugene Jarecki, who debuts his film The House I Live In at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

JAY CARNEY: We need to do something about online piracy by foreign websites.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Stop SOPA. Pass on PIPA.

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: It's pretty clear to many of us that there's a lack of consensus at this point.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

The NFL is on the cusp of determining who will be playing in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Tomorrow on the West Coast, the San Francisco 49ers face the New York Giants, and on the East Coast, the New England Patriots host the Baltimore Ravens. NPR's Mike Pesca is here to preview the matchups. Mike, hello.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hello.

Let me take a second here.

Not very long, was it?

But a second tied up delegates to the UN's International Telecommunication Union, who postponed a decision this week on whether to abolish the extra second that's added to clocks every few years to compensate for the earth's natural doddering.

The earth slows down slightly as we spin through space. No one falls off, but earthquakes and tides routinely slow the earth by a fraction of a fraction of a second, which makes clocks minutely wrong. If not corrected, it could make a minute of difference a century.

The race for the 2012 Republican presidential campaign has been anything but predictable.

It's been the first contest in memory, for instance, with a candidate, Mitt Romney, who was reputedly the inevitable nominee but so suspect in many Republicans' eyes that they kept searching for an alternative. That has led to nearly every candidate in the crowded field, at one time or another, challenging for frontrunner status.

The final results for Egypt's parliamentary elections are in, and while there are no surprises, the Muslim Brotherhood exceeded expectations by capturing 47 percent of the vote.

The final election results were read out Saturday with little ceremony, but the final tally cemented what most people in Egypt already know: Islamist groups are the new political powerhouse in post-revolutionary Egypt.

One hundred years ago this week, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole with a small crew of men. They all perished on the return trip. In 2008 on Weekend Edition, NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reported from the South Pole on Scott's tragic journey. To mark the 100th anniversary, we reprise that story.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon, and the polls are open in South Carolina; first southern state to hold a primary in the race for the Republican presidential nomination of 2012, the stakes are critical. The state has picked the eventual nominee in every year since 1980, and it's sure been a turbulent week with Rick Perry dropping out, Iowa declaring Rick Santorum the winner of its caucuses and Newt Gingrich closing in on Mitt Romney.

Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard has spent the past week polling South Carolina voters ahead of Saturday's primary. Host Scott Simon talks to the former Republican political consultant about South Carolina politics and the results of his Palmetto Poll.

Nigeria is again gripped by deadly religious violence. Friday night, a coordinated series of bomb and gun attacks ripped through the largest city in the nation's Muslim north. The attacks were claimed by a militant sect that seeks to impose Islamic law in Nigeria. Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

Conference championship Sunday is almost as big as the Super Bowl, but without all those distracting halftime wardrobe malfunctions. Host Scott Simon is joined by NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman to discuss the upcoming games.

Under current law, candidates' campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with superPACs, although they clearly benefit from their messages. As result, candidates have performed feats of verbal gymnastics in order to talk about them. Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR's Peter Overby about the role of superPACs in the presidential race.

Police have closed down dozens of toy shops for selling Barbie dolls in Iran, part of a decades-long crackdown against "manifestations of Western culture." Host Scott Simon looks at what's being called a "cultural Trojan horse."