Adventurous dramas dominate the footlights this weekend in Lexington.  A play produced by the Actors Guild of Lexington has one of the community’s most famous prostitutes looking back at her life.  Another production, by the “On The Verge” theater company looks at the end of life with a performance at an actual funeral home.   And a take-off on “The Importance of Being Earnest” is staged by the Kentucky Conservatory Theater.  With previews is arts and cultural reporter Rich Copley of the Lexington Herald Leader.

As we have thoroughly documented here in the last year, the company that owned the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine in West Virginia has been thoroughly criticized by federal regulators, members of Congress, mine disaster investigators and mine safety experts.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller is stepping down to return to writing for the newspaper. He will be replaced by his chief deputy, Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news.

By all accounts, Keller is departing voluntarily after a successful but challenging eight-year tenure. In an interview, he said he went to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper's publisher and the chairman of its parent, the Times Co., to reveal his decision.

The videos emerging from the Yemeni capital of Sanaa today paint a grim picture.

A technology that monitors electrical activity in the brain could help identify infants who will go on to develop autism, scientists say.

The technology, known as electroencephalography, or EEG, is also providing hints about precisely how autism affects the brain and which therapies are likely to help children with autism spectrum disorders.

We've reported and heard plenty in the last year about how the Upper Big Branch mine explosion was preceded by failures to strictly apply mine safety regulations and practices. Both mine owner Massey Energy and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration share blame, according to a recent report from the West Virginia Governor's Independent Investigation of the disaster.

Poor James Levine. One minute he's praised, the next he's condemned. Last night many PBS stations aired the documentary James Levine: America's Maestro. That's got to feel good. So too would the publication last month of the coffee table book James Levine: 40 Years at the Metropolitan Opera, not to mention the lavish new 21-DVD and 32-CD boxed sets of his Met years.

Just as the Mississippi River settles after washing out swaths of the South, the flooding elsewhere has just begun: A raging Missouri River in the northern Plains now will threaten parts of the Midwest well into the summer.

Many communities in the upper Midwest had expected a wet season, but the specter of a more severe and sustained period of flooding surfaced following record rainfall concentrated in Montana.

Making matters worse, rising temperatures are expected to melt the snowcaps in the Rocky Mountains following a winter of greater-than-usual snowfall.

The E. Coli outbreak that has killed 17 people across Europe is also causing political tension. Today, Russia announced that it has banned imports of fresh vegetables from the European Union.

NPR's Philip Reeves reports that the European Union came out in protest just as quickly.

"We don't think that's the right move," said Frédéric Vincent, health spokesman for the European Commission. "We think this is disproportionate and we have a safety system in the E.U., which is working. We do have a health situation at the moment in Germany, but we're dealing with it."

"Barack Obama has failed America."

As that stark line from Mitt Romney's Thursday speech in which he officially announced that he is seeking the 2012 Republican presidential nomination for a chance to unseat President Obama, the putatutive GOP frontrunner is doing what the challenger to an incumbent president does. You call the president a flop and try to make the race a referendum on his presidency.

Romney, appearing at a rally at Bittersweet Farm in New Hampshire, had at least three narratives of the Obama presidency aimed at different groups of voters.