All Things Considered on 90.5 WKAR

This election cycle, one factor stands above all others in driving the dynamics of the race for the Republican presidential nomination: televised debates.

There are not many things that Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney agree on, but when it comes to job training there is common ground.

"It is time to turn our unemployment system into a reemployment system that puts people to work," President Obama said during his State of the Union address Tuesday.

Earlier in the week, Newt Gingrich offered a similar solution for helping those facing long-term unemployment.

Melissa Block talks with NPR's Mara Liasson about Thursday night's Republican debate in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnnell was on the floor Thursday, offering rare praise for the Obama administration. He agrees with the actions of the White House and the State Department in responding to signs of reform in the southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma. McConnell talks about this rare instance of bipartisanship.

The Obama administration released more details Thursday about the energy plan he previewed at the State of the Union this week. He announced an oil-and-gas-lease sale on nearly 38 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico — and proposals for new incentives to increase the use of natural gas in heavy trucks and buses.

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. But who's at the most risk?

A study in the lastest New England Journal of Medicine offers a simple way to predict the risk of a fatal or debilitating heart attack or stroke for a middle-aged person over the rest of his or her life.

A day after delivering his State of the Union address to Congress, President Obama took his message on the road. Obama hoped that stops at manufacturing sites in Iowa and Arizona would drive home his point that the government should do more to encourage factory jobs.

The three-day trip also includes stops in Colorado, Nevada and Michigan. Those are all states likely to be important in the November election.

Obama kicked off his road trip at Conveyor Engineering and Manufacturing, a factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Dudley Butler is quitting his job tomorrow. Never heard of him? He's President Obama's appointee to run the division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that governs antitrust issues in the meat industry. He was part of a cadre of high-level bureaucrats charged to expose and fight agribusiness monopolies. In fact, he was the last of that group.

Egyptians commemorate the first anniversary of the uprising against the Hosni Mubarak regime. Demonstrators are in Cairo's Tahrir Square, even though opinion polls suggest the overwhelming majority of Egyptians are firmly against further protests.

Gov. Rick Perry is back in Texas, after dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He's returned battered and bruised, but he still has strong supporters in his home state.

Newt Gingrich celebrated his win in the South Carolina primary with a fundraising blitz — a two-day push to raise as much money as possible. The campaign says it brought in $2 million. That money will come in handy in Florida. But the need for quick fundraising shows the precarious state of the Gingrich campaign's finances.

The battle over Iran's nuclear program escalated Monday as the European Union announced an embargo on importing oil from Iran.

For years, Europe has been reluctant to join the United States in imposing tough sanctions on Iran. The United States years ago stopped buying Iranian oil, while European nations including France, Spain, Italy, and Greece kept up their purchases. European countries right now buy about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran.

John Hawkes' conversation with Melissa Block on today's All Things Considered begins as many of his conversations might: with her noting that when she told people she was coming to talk to him and rattled off his credits, she got a response that he undoubtedly gets a lot: "Ohhh, he's that guy."

A plea deal has been reached in the court martial case of Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. He was the last person facing charges in the killings of 24 Iraqis at the village of Haditha in 2005. Monday, he admitted to one charge of dereliction of duty. The case became a touchstone for criticism of the Iraq war. Originally, several Marines were charged with murder in the case. But the Marines who killed the Iraqi civilians that day claimed that their actions were tragic — but legal under the official rules of engagement in a complex war fought in and among the people.