NPR News

Every year, film fans and studio executives travel to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, a showcase for independent films from around the world.

While feature films are always a draw at the festival, documentary fans closely follow the nonfiction films that premiere at Sundance each year.

The demonstrations that spread across the Middle East in 2011 unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Yemen's president has agreed to step down and violence continues in Syria. NPR foreign correspondents discuss developments since the Arab Spring and what they mean for the region and the U.S.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics, including the moment that changed your life, differences between identical twins, and a proposal for a new calendar.

The victims of a North Carolina program that forcibly sterilized thousands of people should receive $50,000 in compensation, a task force said Tuesday. The AP writes that this is first time, the state tries to make up for a eugenics program that ran from the 1930s until 1977.

Before any payments are made, however, the state Legislature must approve the panel's recommendation.

The AP reports:

Primary Day in New Hampshire turned into open season as GOP rivals launched a barrage of attacks seeking to undermine front-runner Mitt Romney, whose campaign hopes to live up to expectations that he will deliver a solid victory.

Not only does Romney need to win, he needs to win convincingly — holding challengers such as Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and a resurgent Jon Huntsman comfortably at arm's length.

I don't know about you, but when I spoon into store-bought ice cream or chomp into hot dogs, I don't consider it a risky activity, one that could land me in the dentist's chair with a broken tooth. But it turns out that this does happen. Even Costco, the giant warehouse retailer, says it's true.

There are three new hosts of CBS This Morning, which was unveiled yesterday. One is Erica Hill, a holdover from The Early Show, the previous program in the early-morning time slot. Another is Gayle King, still best known as Oprah Winfrey's best friend, who's here to handle most of the entertainment interviews. And the third, the pivot point, is Charlie Rose, brought over from PBS to give this new show an injection of instant respectability and seriousness.

The Transportation Security Administration clarified its cupcake policy in a blog post. Cupcakegate — as the agency has termed it — was prompted in December, when TSA officers told Rebecca Hains, who was flying out of Las Vegas, she could not carry cupcakes in her carry-on luggage. The TSA said the icing on the two cupcakes was a security risk.

Slapping on a nicotine patch may not just be for smokers trying to kick the habit.

In an intriguing test, researchers tried nicotine patches as a memory booster for nonsmokers with mild declines in their thinking ability, a precursor to dementia or Alzheimer's disease.