NPR News

"A former justice of the peace has been charged with murder in the slayings of a North Texas district attorney and his assistant who prosecuted him for theft, officials announced Thursday," The Associated Press reports. Eric Williams is also charged with the murder of the district attorney's wife.

Astronomers have found three planets orbiting far-off stars that are close to Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone": a distance from their suns that makes the planets' surfaces neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

One of the three planets orbits a star with the prosaic name Kepler-69.

Parents worry a lot about the safety of children crossing the street. It looks like they should be worried about Grandpa, too.

Older people are at higher risk of being killed by a car while walking, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Going up against a 2,000-pound moving metal object is never a good idea. Pedestrians account for 13 percent of all motor-vehicle traffic deaths, even though walking accounts for 10.5 percent of trips.

A large storm system moving through the center of the country, has already caused major flooding in Chicago and is threatening to bring severe weather to the Tennessee Valley all the way to the Gulf Coast, tonight.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn declared a state of emergency Thursday afternoon, NBC Chicago reported.

Bipartisan bonhomie broke out Thursday afternoon when four Democratic and four Republican senators made a case for their comprehensive immigration overhaul proposal.

The scene at the Dirksen Senate Office Building stood in marked contrast to the ugly end Wednesday of a smaller cross-party effort to fashion gun legislation that would have expanded background checks and banned assault-style weapons.

Jokes weren't on his mind Thursday morning when Car Talk funny guy Ray Magliozzi was a guest on WBUR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

Explosions at the Boston Marathon, potentially ricin-laced letters intercepted en route to the White House and Sen. Roger Wicker, and an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas have each prompted investigations. In each case, authorities sift through evidence to construct a timeline of events.

Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai has become a symbol of hope for change in Pakistan and the world. Since her near-fatal shooting in 2012, her voice and reach has grown, as she speaks out against the Taliban's influence, and advocates for education for Pakistani youth.

Transcript

CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Celeste Headlee.

For Arab and Muslim-Americans, news of a terrorist attack or possible terrorist attack on U.S. soil is complicated by fears that the perpetrator might be a member of their own community and in the hours after the Boston Marathon, rumors of a young Saudi suspect spread like wildfire despite statements from law enforcement that no suspect had been identified.