Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, Host:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.

At age 19, Bojana Jovanovski is a veteran traveler - the world's 53rd-ranked tennis player. She picked up plane tickets for this week's Mercury Insurance Open in Carlsbad. After several plane changes, she arrived in Carlsbad, New Mexico. And she found herself standing at the airport with her luggage all alone. Only when she called to ask why her ride didn't pick her up did she find the tournament was in Carlsbad, California.

It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Customers of Berea Municipal Utilities will soon have the option to invest in a small solar farm. The Berea Solar Farm won’t be a moneymaker for investors. A 25-year lease for one panel will cost about $700. The average residential customer uses an average of 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month, and a single panel would provide about one-twentieth of that energy.

There were two Twitter feeds arguing over which was being written by the real peacock that escaped from a New York City zoo Tuesday: BirdOnTheTown and CentralPeacock. The squawking quickly became moot; the missing peacock flew back to the Central Park Zoo on Wednesday morning.

A professor of anthropology at Transylvania University in Lexington has completed the first leg of an expedition to the remote Mosquito Coast area of Honduras, where he’s exploring the legend of an ancient “lost city.” Kentucky Public Radio’s Rick Howlett spoke with Christopher Begley, whose work will be featured in a documentary funded by the National Geographic Society

Over the last four years of the Mexican drug war, the country's northern border has become one of the most violent parts of the country. Yet recently that same part of Mexico has been booming economically.

The duty-free maquiladora assembly plants along the border are rapidly adding jobs, and exports to the United States are reaching record levels.

Seattle would seem the ideal setting for noir crime novels, what with the rain, the port, and the gloomy Scandinavians. But it's not as noir as it used to be. J.B. Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Book Shop, says downtown Seattle was once a lot seedier. "It was more about sailors on leave and tattoo joints," he says. "And the Donut Shop!"

The Donut Shop? Tres noir, says Dickey. "People who were here during the '70s remember the Donut Shop as being a very notorious place."

Part 5 of a 6-part series

Let's say you're the mayor. It's your city, it's where you wake up. But are you thinking about Washington each morning, or do you zip out of the house in your mayor's outfit with your smartphone, and see what you can get done yourself?

If you're Wayne Seybold, the mayor of Marion, Ind., it's a bit of both.

The 47-year-old Republican is now in his second term. His city, in north-central Indiana, is home to 30,000 people who've been though a tough economy.

Bringing the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to Atlanta was a long shot. Athens, Greece was the sentimental favorite to host the centennial games, and tension was palpable as IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch made the announcement back on September 18, 1990.

"The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic Games to the city of ... Atlanta," Samaranch revealed.

During Washington's heated debate over the debt ceiling, President Obama and others in the administration canceled several campaign fundraisers as work on a compromise dragged on. But Wednesday night, Obama, who turns 50 Thursday, went out raising money at a pair of birthday-themed events in Chicago. The election is a long way off, but the country's long-term financial obligations seem certain to become a prime issue.

When it comes to this White House and judges, there's a string of firsts. The first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. The first openly gay man on a federal district court. And the first women nominees who are Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Obama administration officials say that's by design.