Hsi-Chang Lin

A deadly gas pipe explosion in San Bruno, California last week left at least four people dead and nearly 40 houses destroyed. The company being held responsible is Pacific Gas & Electric, better known as PG&E. It could be more than a year before investigators determine precisely what caused the explosion. For years, however, California residents have accused PG&E of irresponsible safety practices.

President Obama is in Pennsylvania today, campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak.  

Every state save for Hawai'i has been to the primary polls, and the ballots for November are nearly set. In a few states we saw surprising results: results that might lead to changed strategies in the general election.

Few legal boundaries stood between Florida Pastor Terry Jones and his plans to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

While most of the world voiced dismay at Pastor Jones' political statement, fearing it would incite violence and radicalize religious extremists overseas, Jones argued that was demonstrating against what he calls the extremism of Islam. Yesterday, the pastor decided to call off his campaign to burn the sacred text after reaching what he said was an "agreement" to meet with the people planning an Islamic cultural center and mosque near ground zero.

Nobody can argue that America’s place on the world's geopolitical stage is changing.  America is fighting a war in Afghanistan and maintaining ongoing military responsibilities in Iraq, while weathering a major financial crisis at home: There is reasonable concern over America’s ability to maintain the international diplomatic clout as it has for most of the 20th century.

We're asking you, our listeners, about America's role in the world now. What should it be? Leader? Helper? Should it be smaller? Bigger? Let us know in comments or text your answer to 69866 with the word TAKE.

It wasn’t that long ago that presidential candidate Barack Obama could command rapt crowds chanting his campaign motto of hope, change and rejuvenation for a nation seemingly in dire straits. But these days, President Obama has a harder time commanding that kind of grassroots support.

President Barack Obama is talking about the economy all week. Yesterday, he delivered a jobs speech before a whooping crowd in Milwaukee, Wis., where he called on Congress to swiftly approve a new stimulus plan: one that would devote at least an additional $50 billion to upgrade the nation's infrastructure.

Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi holds the honor of being Pakistan’s number one ranked tennis player; but, as he competes in the U.S. Open, it is clear that he is playing for more than just the gold. Qureshi competes alongside doubles partner Rohann Bopanna; the pair has been dubbed "The Indo-Pak Express" on the international tennis circuit because Qureshi is a Pakistani Muslim, and Bopanna a Hindu from India.

And while the pair has explicitly stated their aim to overcome sixty years of hostility between their countries, the question remains: how can tennis heal the cultural wounds on the subcontinent?

As this week's Middle East peace talks come to a close, many people are talking about the level of compromise necessary for the talks to have any hope of success.  In politics, as in life, sometimes compromises are necessary...  but can they be immoral? 

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, American presidents have tried long and hard to encourage peace in the Middle East. After he helped ink the Camp David Accords, former President Jimmy Carter insightfully warned that peace would not come easily. "The questions that have brought warfare and bitterness to the Middle East for the last thirty years will not be settled overnight," he said. Now, six presidencies and thirty years later, lasting peace has yet to be achieved.

Ford has been open about its plans to phase out the massively popular Crown Victoria line in 2011, but is inviting stiff competition from both Chrysler and General Motors, who are unveiling vehicles aimed squarely at police fleets. Will Ford be able to keep the 75 percent market-share of the police cruiser market, that the Crown Victoria managed?

The 33 Chilean miners still trapped underground will need to stay mentally strong - and stay physically thin. Chile's health minister says the escape tunnel being drilled for the miners will prevent the passage of anyone with a waist size bigger than 35 inches. In the meantime, soap, clothes, games and food packages are being sent down to the men.

Five more states have nominated party candidates for November’s mid term elections.  

Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Tea Partiers were all in serious contention in last night’s primaries. Whether or not you live in one of the states that held a primary last night, the elections may still impact you.  Smart politicians adapt quickly; the lessons learned tonight, they will likely carry with them to November's election. Moreover, the issues that affected those statewide elections may also be playing out in your state as well.

The results are in for the Sunshine State's most expensive and, arguably, nastiest primary in history.  

In February 2007, the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that they would "do everything we can" to prosecute Civil Rights-era hate crimes. The Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative was an attempt to put federal dollars and manpower into closing unsolved murder cases. However, these crimes are more than 40 years old. Few of the cases have been solved and key suspects are dying.

Last week on the program we discussed the idea of making access to food a basic legal right. This idea comes from India, a country that is home to one of the world's largest impoverished populations, with over 421 million of its citizens going hungry. India is now considering making access to food a right enshrined by the constitution. Takeaway listeners tell us whether they believe access to food should be a human and legal right.

On our Facebook page, Kathleen writes:

"Food is absolutely a human right. The fact that not every country can feed all its people right now is irrelevant to food being a human right. Governments - including ours - should be judged according to how quickly and effectively they are working to feed everyone."

Earlier this week, The New York Times discovered that Google and Verizon were working on a backdoor deal which, as many online activists worried, would threaten the future of “net neutrality.” In essence, “net neutrality” means that the Internet carries traffic as quickly as it can, regardless of the source. If this neutrality were to end, particular websites could pay ISPs to carry their traffic faster than their competitors.

Thousands of babies are conceived through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) each year, but 29 years ago, when Elizabeth Comeau was born, the in vitro method was considered strange and miraculous. Comeau was America's first "test-tube baby." Now, at 29 years old, she's just given birth to her own baby boy.

(Correction: an earlier version of this story referred to Comeau as the "world's first test-tube baby" - she was actually the first in the United States. Louise Brown, born in the UK in 1978, was the world's first baby conceived via IVF.)

A recent heat wave in Russia coupled with extraordinarily dry conditions has been feeding the most widespread wildfires in the nation’s recent history. The fires stretch from central Russia to near Moscow and are generating a devastating plume of smoke that has killed 52 people and destroyed over 2,000 homes. Those massive fires are having a secondary (and potentially more lasting) effect as they have threatened the Russian wheat crops, which make up about eight percent of the world’s wheat production.  

In theory, the Internet provides a level playing field for businesses and consumers alike. That’s because, since its creation, the Internet has been built around the principle of “net neutrality”: all traffic online travels as quickly as it can, given the technology and congestion it encounters along the way.  According to an article published by our partner The New York Times, however, a backdoor deal may be nearing between Google and Verizon, which could give a speed advantage to those websites who are willing to pay more.