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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

NPR's Don Gonyea joins us in the studio this morning. He spent all week in his home state of Michigan reporting on the campaign there. Don, thanks for being back with us.

DON GONYEA, BYLINE: It's a pleasure.

SIMON: As I already noted, Mitt Romney looks to improve his lot this week. How did he do it?

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Gunfire broke out today inside the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Afghanistan. Two high-ranking U.S. military officers have been killed. The incident came on the fifth day of protests across the nation, sparked by the burning of Qurans at a U.S. base. NPR's Quil Lawrence joins us from Kabul. Quil, thanks for being with us.

QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: My pleasure.

SIMON: What do we know now about the shooting?

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Time now for your letters.

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SIMON: Today a correction, so maybe some music that's a little more suitable.

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Events as disparate as the cruel, escalating violence in Syria and the congested, unnerving conditions where Apple's iPads and iPhones are made at the Foxconn assembly plants in China raise a recurring question:

When do a country's internal affairs become the business of the world? And when do we make that our personal business?

You can take that question back through atrocities, crimes and outrages of recent history.

Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California's Bay Area is expanding, quite literally, up next to some people's backyards. And while you might think neighbors would be thrilled to see this scenic landscape preserved, the relationship between the National Park Service and locals is off to a rocky start.

In the late 1880s, a silver strike turned the dusty town of Tombstone, Ariz., into a cosmopolitan hot spot. There were casinos, oyster bars and shops filled with the latest Paris fashions.

But when the silver ran out, Tombstone almost died. Only one thing has kept it alive for the past century: the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral, re-enacted daily.

Blackened rubble is all that is left of Abskharon Suleiman's appliance store in the northern Egyptian village of Sharbat.

Suleiman is a Coptic Christian, and his upstairs apartment, as well as his children's homes and shops, were gutted and looted in an attack last month by young Muslim men.

Syrians are looking to the world in their hour of need and "we cannot let them down," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday at an international conference on Syria held in Tunisia.

The dozens of countries represented at the conference, Clinton said, are united in their demands: Syrian President Bashar Assad must allow much-needed aid to his people and silence his guns or face more isolation and pressure.

But debate continues over what other steps countries in the region could take.

The entire public school system in Kansas City, Mo., has flunked.

The state board of education revoked its accreditation on Jan. 1. Public schools met just three of the 14 standards set by the board for basic proficiency. They received failing grades for attendance, graduation rates, plus math and reading and writing scores.