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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

For the first time in years, the Obama administration appears to be focused on shuttering the Guantanamo Bay prison and – at a minimum — has redoubled its efforts to reduce the number of people held there.

The key, officials familiar with the administration's thinking say, may lie with 56 Yemeni detainees, a group of men who have been at the island facility for more than a decade though U.S. officials cleared them for transfer years ago.

"If we can send the Yemenis home," one official said, "that could get the ball rolling."

The people of Portsmouth, England, on Monday turned out to bid farewell to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, destined for a Turkish scrap yard after its decommissioning two years ago.

Over the past week, Pope Francis has launched a crescendo of attacks on the global financial system and what he calls a "cult of money" that does not help the poor.

Beijing has long been about the closest thing to an ally that Pyongyang enjoys, but the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat by unidentified North Koreans has threatened to put an already tenuous relationship on even shakier ground.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei was quoted by The New York Times as making it fairly clear that his government was not happy about the development.

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JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST:

It's been a while since the last visit by a head of state from Myanmar. The last time was 47 years ago, when the country was still known as Burma. As President Thein Sein arrives at the White House Monday, some will hail him as a reformer who set his country on the path to democracy. Others may protest his arrival, as excessive recognition for a head of state that has presided over continuing human rights abuses.

Dozens of people are dead in heavy fighting around the Syrian rebel-held city of Qusair where troops loyal to President Bashar Assad are making a strong push.

News reports say as many as 50 people are dead.

NPR's Jonathan Blakley, who is in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, is reporting on the fighting for our Newscast Unit:

"Qusair is a strategically important town that lies between the city of Homs, where the Syrian uprising began two years ago, and the Lebanese border. The area has been under siege for weeks.