NPR News

A longer version of this interview was originally broadcast on June 28, 2012.

Marcus Samuelsson owns two restaurants in New York City and two restaurants in Sweden. He's cooked for President Obama and prime ministers, served as a judge on Top Chef and Chopped, and recently competed against 21 other chefs on Top Chef Masters. (He won.) He's the youngest chef ever to receive two three-star ratings from The New York Times.

Two men were arrested and removed from a Pakistan International Airlines passenger jet Friday. It had been on its way from Lahore, Pakistan, to Manchester, England, when something that happened aboard led authorities to scramble Royal Air Force fighter jets and divert the passenger plane to London Stansted Airport.

(We most recently updated the top of this post at 6:45 p.m. ET.)

An explosion followed by gunfire in Kabul on Friday claimed the lives of at least two attackers and wounded a small number of civilians. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which appeared to have been aimed at offices of the International Organization for Migration and stretched over several hours as Afghan security forces tried to hunt down those responsible.

As night fell in Kabul, it was unclear whether the incident was over or not.

Representatives of President Bashar Assad's regime have agreed "in principle" to attend an international peace conference aimed at ending more than two years of brutal warfare in Syria, Russia's foreign ministry said Friday.

Monday's tornado in Moore, Okla., killed 24 people and caused an estimated $2.2 billion worth of damage. As the community reflects on what happened, one question is: How did so many manage to survive such devastating destruction?

Lifelong Oklahoman Kristi Freeman has seen her share of tornadoes, but she says the twister that tore through her neighborhood Monday was something else.

"This tornado was like a monster. It was like something that was alive. It destroyed your peace, your comfort," she says.

As the residents of Moore, Okla., and surrounding communities continue to recover from Monday's devastating tornado that killed at least 24 people and injured more than 375, we're keeping an eye on the news from there:

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

(Most recent update: 5:35 p.m. ET.)

Miracle is the word that comes to Dan Sligh's mind after he and his wife, Sally, survived a plunge off a highway bridge in Washington state on Thursday evening.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm David Greene. Some photos on Twitter ended Anthony Weiner's congressional career. The latest online image, not quite as damaging. Weiner launched his campaign yesterday to be mayor of New York City, and a gorgeous city skyline showed up on his homepage: the skyline of Pittsburgh, my home town. I'm honored if the Web designer is impressed with our city's skyline.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne.

Fracking may have met its match in Germany, where beer makers have lined against it. Fracking, of course, is a way of bringing up natural gas by pumping water and chemicals into the ground. Germany's powerful beer industry is concerned fracking would pollute groundwater. Half of Germany's 1,300 brewers have their own wells and say the pure water is the essence of their famous beers. And if there's one thing Germans take seriously, its beer. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: