Noel King

Fascinating details are emerging on Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born, U.S. citizen who authorities say confessed on Tuesday to an attempted terror attack in New York City's Times Square. Michael Schmidt, reporter for our partner The New York Times, joins us with some insight into Shahzad's life.

Federal authorities arrested a suspect allegedly responsible for a car bomb that was left to detonate in New York's Times Square on Saturday. The 30-year-old man, Faisal Shahzad was apprehended while trying to board an airplane to Dubai. NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne explains the arrest.

UPDATED 7:20 PM

Noel King, here on the night shift.

Not much has changed since Anna’s update, but we’ve discovered some Presidential trivia that may excite history buffs. President Obama is scheduled to give the commencement address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday morning. Our guest, Jake Smilovitz, editor of student-run The Michigan Daily, reminds us that the campus has seen its share of Presidential history. During the 1960 presidential campaign, then-candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy set the stage for the formation of the Peace Corps. In an impromptu 2 AM speech, he asked students if they’d be willing to volunteer in undeveloped nations. Two weeks later, in San Francisco, Kennedy used the term “Peace Corps” for the first time. And in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson gave his Great Society Speech at U Mich. Smilovitz weighs in on what the class of 2010 wants to hear from Obama.  

Anna Sale here on the day shift.

As the Senate starts debate on a financial regulation package, we'll get into the nitty-gritty tomorrow. Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel for the bank bailout funds, will join us. So will Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who made headlines this week with his pointed, sometimes salty, questioning of Goldman Sachs officials. We recorded our interview with Elizabeth Warren today, so check back on the website to hear a preview.

Robert Bobb, emergency financial director of the Detroit public school system, will reinstate an extended-day program for students who are struggling academically, the district announced on Wednesday. It was the latest in a series of fiercely pitched battles between Bobb and the Board of Education, which has sued Bobb, alleging that he has overstepped his mandate by attempting to make changes to the school's academic programs.

Greek's debt crisis has the European Union worrying about a possible domino effect. Spain and Portugal have already seen their credit ratings downgraded, and Ireland and Italy may be next. Some fear that Greece's crisis may deal such a sharp blow to confidence in the global credit market that we see a repeat of the global financial crisis.

The number of American troops in Afghanistan will outnumber those in Iraq by late May or early June, according to new reporting from the Brookings Institution. That news comes as the U.S. and Iraq mark five years of democratically elected government in Iraq and as U.S. and NATO allies prepare for an upcoming offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar.

The Takeaway talks to Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to both Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush Administration. He is now the President of Khalilzad Associates.

Residents of Detroit are up in arms over recent media coverage that they say highlights Detroit's poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, but fails to consider any of the positive aspects of life in Motor City.

President Obama was on Wall Street yesterday pushing for stronger oversight of the financial industry, which he set forth as the best way to prevent another massive financial collapse.

"The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we're proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny," Obama said during a speech at Cooper Union.

Across the country, cash-strapped schools say budget cuts are forcing them to lay off teachers. Secretary of education Arne Duncan has called the layoffs — which may number in the hundreds of thousands — a potential catastrophe for the education system. The Takeaway talks to superintendents on opposite coasts who find themselves in similar positions. 

From airlines champing at the bit to get back in the air over western Europe despite Iceland's volcanic ash, to some dirty dealings at Goldman Sachs, questions of risk and risk-taking are dominating the news cycle this week. But what happens if we avoid risk all-together? Is it even possible?

The state of Colorado has the fastest growing rate of child poverty in the U.S. The poverty isn't evenly distributed, however: When the Colorado Children's Campaign attempted to put that statistic into context, they discovered a vast gulf between rates of poverty for Hispanic children and white children.

President Obama is in Cape Canaveral, Fla. today, where he'll defend his controversial vision for NASA. The linchpin of Obama's plan involves cancelling the Constellation program and reviving the Orion project. Axing Constellation will effectively prohibit NASA from returning astronauts to the moon - a prospect that lead iconic astronauts Neil Armstrong and James Lovell to publicly express dismay, calling Obama's plan "devastating." 

In Oklahoma, anti-federal government sentiments run hot in some quarters. State Senator Randy Brogdon said recently that a state militia would, in his opinion, be permitted by the Sec...

President Obama's nuclear security summit, held in Washington, D.C. and hosting 46 world leaders, wrapped up last night with a request from the president. He called on all the nations present to cooperate in keeping nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.

President Obama's nuclear summit in Washington has brought together leaders of 47 nations in pursuit of an elusive goal: to lock down unsecured nuclear material within the next four years and prevent it from getting into the hands of terrorists. That agenda would be difficult enough if nuclear material weren't already circulating on the black market, but it is. 

Across the country, dozens of cities are facing serious budget deficits, that are requiring officials to cut everything from swimming pools to firehouses. We're taking a closer look at two of those cities: Detroit and Baltimore. In Detroit, residents are worried that a shortfall of around $450 million may actually force the city to file for bankruptcy. Jerome Vaughn, news director at WDET joins us.

Yesterday, we reported on a widely circulated WikiLeaks video from 2007 showing U.S. troops firing on citizens, reporters and armed Iraqis. The video led to a conversation about what we should see from the war as well as the reliability of the source material. We hear your responses. Takeaway producer, Noel King, looked into the story and got a response from a Central Command spokesperson who pointed us to a photo, that he says shows, “very clearly an AK 47 or what remains of it,” as well as “at least one RPG and a number of rifles.”

Noel King here — following up on a story I produced yesterday about a classified video that was released by the non-profit group Wikileaks showing footage of a 2007 incident in Iraq, in which Americans in an Apache helicopter fired on several Iraqis. Two unarmed employees of the Reuters news agency — as well as ten other men — were killed in that incident.

This morning, we spoke to Josh Ray Person, who served with the Marines from 1999 — 2003 and the BBC’s Baghdad Correspondent Jim Muir, who was gathering Iraqi reaction to the video.

A listener from Miami wrote in to say that we failed to mention a redacted report released by the Pentagon late Monday, which said some of the Iraqis — though not the two Reuters employees — were carrying weapons.

Mauro wrote:

Yesterday on NPR this same topic was discussed and the guest agreed that the journalists were there and that they were considered armed because of the straps on their shoulders, but it was also said that at least one RPG was found on one of the casualties and it is shown (but not highlighted) in the video that another of the victims did have an AK-47. Watchdogs are necessary, but they must also be impartial, this video is showing this situation from a very biased viewpoint, all of the editing and the intro are geared towards showing all involved as innocent victims, which is not the complete truth and we have to be fair if we are going to critique.

A non-profit website called WikiLeaks has released footage of an incident in Iraq from July, 2007 that shows the death of two employees of Reuters News Agency at the hands of American troops. 

25 miners are dead after an explosion tore through a coal mine in West Virginia's Raleigh County. The mine is owned by the Massey Energy company, which, according to news reports, has a history of safety problems. President Barack Obama sent condolences to West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin while emergency vehicles and helicopters arrived on the scene.