LATEST FROM NPR

Formed by four Peruvian high-school friends in 2001, Novalima has been making traditional music sound sultry and modern ever since. In the past decade, the group has grown to a nine-piece band that's helping change the way the world thinks about world music.

President Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's corporate tax system would sharply cut the taxes that U.S. companies pay. But it would also eliminate many of the loopholes that help them pare down what they owe.

White House spokesman Jay Carney says the proposal unveiled Wednesday should appeal to both Democrats and Republicans, by doing what both sides "say is important to do ... which is lower the rate, broaden the base [and] eliminate the underbrush of unnecessary subsidies and loopholes and special provisions that complicate the tax code."

It has been a bit of a sour week for drinkers of raw milk.

Yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a federal court had granted it a permanent injunction to keep a Pennsylvania raw milk maker from distributing across state lines to raw milk buying clubs. The decision was the latest in an escalating battle between the federal government and producers and consumers of raw milk.

Jeremy Lin has yet one more thing to celebrate today: After his meteoric rise from benchwarmer to superstar, the 23-year-old now has a Manhattan condo to call his own.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lin signed a contract to rent a condo on the 38th floor of the W New York Downtown Hotel.

The Journal adds:

We arrived nearly an hour late, our taxi drivers lost in the potholed, half-flooded streets of Tripoli. Our Libyan host, who would never have fathomed an on-time start anyway, invited us upstairs, where he had managed to arrange an impressive array of hors d'oeuvres and beverages on such short notice.

People arrived in groups of three or four at a time. Everyone knew almost everyone else. They hugged each other as if it could be their last time, struggled to hold back the tears, occasionally finding a way to evince a smile from each other.

A United Nations panel says it has evidence that top Syrian officials "bear responsibility for crimes against humanity and other gross human rights violations" during the nearly year-long crackdown on dissent that has left thousands of civilians dead.

Americans have learned to carefully craft their Facebook postings, and edit and spell-check e-mails. But apparently we don't give text messages much thought, and they're providing abundant and effective fodder for divorce attorneys.

It's been a weird winter. It's warm when it should be cold. There's mud where there should be snow. Flowers are blooming way ahead of schedule. Wildlife seems confused.

Well, here's one more weirdness: The flu season seems to be largely M.I.A.

James Bopp is the lawyer who first represented Citizens United in the case that ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled that corporations and unions could give money to political committees active in election campaigns. That decision and subsequent lower court decisions have led to SuperPACs, which allow corporations, unions and individuals to make unlimited contributions, pool them together, and use the money for political campaigns.

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. SuperPACs have led to what was described in the New York Times yesterday as a new breed of super-donor. About two dozen individuals, couples or corporations have given a million dollars or more this year to Republican superPACs that have poured that money directly into this year's presidential campaign.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Dozens Killed, Hundreds Wounded In Iraq; Attacks Blamed On Al-Qaida.

-- Report: Two U.S. Troops Killed In Afghanistan; Quran Burnings Backlash?

The buzz is building about the news that, as The New York Times has reported, there soon may be "Google glasses" that can "stream information to the wearer's eyeballs in real time."

(This post was updated with breaking news at 9:27 a.m. ET.)

Seven U.S. Marines were killed Wednesday night when two helicopters collided over the Yuma, Ariz., Training Range Complex, according to a statement just emailed to the NPR Newscast Desk by a spokesman for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.

The statement adds that:

"The aircraft, an AH-1W 'Cobra' and an UH-1Y 'Huey,' were conducting routine training operations around 8:00 p.m. Identities of the Marines will be withheld until next of kin have been notified."

There were 351,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, unchanged from the four-year-low level of the week before, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

It adds that "the 4-week moving average was 359,000, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week's revised average of 366,000."

Saying that "we must reject the conclusion that privacy is an outmoded value" and that it has been "at the heart of our democracy from its inception," President Obama this morning released his administration's "Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy" — a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights."

"Two U.S. troops have been shot to death and four more wounded by an Afghan solider who turned his gun on his allies in apparent anger over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, an Afghan official tells CBS News."

Officially, the International Security Assistance Force says that:

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti wants more transparency so he made his cabinet disclose their finances. That sparked so much interest, the government website crashed. Ministers own real estate in New York, Brussels and Paris. One made $9 million last year.

"A rapid series of attacks spread over a wide swath of Iraqi territory killed at least 50 people on Thursday, targeting mostly security forces in what appeared to be another strike by al-Qaida militants bent on destabilizing the country," The Associated Press reports.

Ten months and a score of debates ago, the Republican Party and a slew of news organizations brought forth on our TV screens a new definition of a presidential nominating process — conceived in targeted marketing and dedicated to the proposition that no number of debates was too many for hardcore conservatives.