All Things Considered on 90.5 WKAR

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

The largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history is nearing an end. Jefferson County, Alabama has been saddled with more than $4.2 billion of debt. Today in Birmingham, a federal bankruptcy judge began reviewing a tentative agreement in the case.

From member station WBHM, Andrew Yeager reports.

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Major League Baseball is investigating as many as 20 players, including some of the league's biggest stars. MLB wants to know if they used banned drugs from an anti-aging clinic in Florida. That clinic is now closed and the owner is now cooperating with MLB investigators. Two former MVPs, Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, are reportedly on the list of players who are being interviewed. ESPN's "Outside the Lines" broke the story last night.

NPR's Tom Goldman joins us now. Tom, what can you tell us?

As President Obama meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, many experts hope this will be the start of something new: regular high-level contacts. History shows it is always dangerous when established powers face rising powers.

To her many admirers in the international community, Aung San Suu Kyi remains one of the world's best known democracy icons.

But in Myanmar, also known as Burma, she is now very much a politician who is being criticized for trying to cooperate with the former military rulers who kept her under house arrest for nearly two decades.

If you want to see the old, iconic Aung San Suu Kyi, just head to the bustling headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, in Yangon, the country's largest city and former capital.

The numbers go like this: Very few single black women — just a quarter of those surveyed — said they were looking for long-term relationships, or LTRs. But on the flip side, nearly 43 percent of single black men said they're looking for a long-term partner.

President Obama fired a warning shot Tuesday in the battle over Senate confirmations: He nominated three new judges to the powerful federal appeals court in Washington, and he challenged Senate Republicans not to stand in their way.

Obama complained about procedural roadblocks that have tied up many of his previous nominees — sometimes for years.

This isn't the first time Shuggie Otis' masterpiece, Inspiration Information, has been reissued — but that's OK. It's an album that absolutely deserves to be rediscovered every decade or so.

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At another hearing today, lawmakers heard testimony from top military officers about the crisis of sexual assault in the armed forces. Today's debate: should Congress rein in the power of commanders. Many lawmakers are convinced that commanders are standing in the way of some sexual assault prosecutions. But military leaders told senators that measures limiting their powers would erode discipline and order in the armed forces.

NPR's Larry Abramson explains.

Life was already grim in the Gaza Strip when fighting raged between Israel and Hamas last November. Then Khulud Badawi got unexpected bad news about her husband.

"I was at home when my son came in and said, 'Mom, they killed Dad.' I said, 'Who?' He said, 'Hamas.' I asked him, 'Where?' He said, 'Next to the gas station,'" she recalls.

Badawi's husband, Ribhi Badawi, was in prison in Gaza City. He was supposed to go to court that day for a final appeal of charges that he had collaborated with Israel against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

Mississippi lawmakers have embarked on a controversial campaign to discourage older men from having sex with teenagers.

Starting in July, doctors and midwives in the state will be required by law to collect samples of umbilical cord blood from babies born to some girls under the age of 16. Officials will analyze the samples and try to identify the fathers through matches in the state's DNA database.

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From researchers at Columbia Business School comes the following useful advice: When you're negotiating the price of a car or a house, when you pick the number that you're going to ask for first, be careful. Don't pick a round number. Associate professor of business, Malia Mason, studied this and she joins us now. Welcome to the program.

MALIA MASON: Thank you.

SIEGEL: And first, give us an example. What do you mean don't pick a round number?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime, and see if the DNA matches any samples from unsolved crimes in a national database.

The 5-to-4 decision split the court's conservative and liberal blocs, with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia authoring a fiery dissent. Twenty-eight states and the federal government have enacted laws that provide for automatic DNA testing of arrestees.