NPR News

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. After more than a week of fighting and at least 145 dead, Israel and Hamas agreed today to a cease fire. The Egyptian government took the lead in negotiating that agreement with help from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

SIEGEL: Clinton held talks today not only in Cairo, but also in Jerusalem and Ramallah. And she said the cease fire was just the start of the process.

Why people yawn is a mystery. But yawning starts in the womb.

Past studies have used ultrasound images to show fetuses yawning, but some scientists have argued that real yawns were getting confused with fetuses simply opening their mouths.

So Nadja Reissland, a researcher at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, used a more detailed ultrasound technique to get images of fetal faces that could distinguish a true yawn from just an open mouth.

Maybe the end is nigh, after all.

A judge has approved Hostess' plan to liquidate the company, all but assuring that the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Donettes and Wonder Bread will cease to exist.

The New York Times reports:

Full disclosure: The first thing I said when I saw that Rob Delaney would be talking to NPR's Audie Cornish on today's All Things Considered was that I was curious to see whether he had ever said anything on Twitter — where he has almost 670,000 followers (including me) as of this writing — that they thought they could read on the radio. It's an exaggeration. But not by that much.

Hewlett Packard is claiming it was duped into overpaying when it acquired Britain's largest software company a little more than a year ago. HP released its latest quarterly earning report on Tuesday and announced that it was writing off most of the $11 billion investment. The firm HP bought, Autonomy, denies there were any improprieties.

In eastern Congo, the city of Goma was captured by rebel forces. But on the streets, life appears normal and people are not particularly fearful. Many say that the rebels have humiliated their national army and UN peacekeepers. Even some wounded government soldiers in the military hospital seem in a conciliatory mood.

In the Gaza Strip fighting, where a cease-fire was reached Wednesday, the Israeli military pounded Gaza with hundreds of airstrikes. Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that rules Gaza, launched hundreds of rocket attacks on Israel.

The weeklong battle temporarily diverted attention from Iran, the archenemy of Israel and a key ally of Hamas. Israeli leaders have threatened to strike Iran over its nuclear program.

Yet the Gaza fight may offer insights into what a possible confrontation between Israel and Iran would look like.

Samuel Yirga is a pianist from Ethiopia. A 20-something prodigy, Yirga is too young to have experienced the Ethio-jazz movement of the early 1970s, but he has absorbed its music deeply — and plenty more as well. With his debut release, Guzo, or "Journey," Yirga both revives and updates Ethiopian jazz.

The election may be over, but the bickering continues, and not just between NPR's Ron Elving and Ken Rudin. As President Obama defends his United Nations ambassador, Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to lambast her for "misleading" reports about what happened in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Plus: Mitt Romney's "gifts" that keep on giving. And Rep. Allen West concedes in Florida.