It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.
Support for Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, may be further deteriorating. That's after Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said his country would be glad to see Assad step down if most Syrians agreed. Russia's been one of the Syrian regime's staunchest supporters.
In Syria itself, another night of gunfire and explosions, some of it in the capital, Damascus. NPR's Deborah Amos is there and with me now.
The Justice Department has launched an investigation to determine the source of a series of leaks about sensitive intelligence matters. President Obama denied his administration authorized the leaks, but some Senate Republicans accused the White House of deliberately leaking the stories in order to boost the president's national security credentials.
Steve Guttenberg (left), Michael Winslow (center) and G.W. Bailey star in 1987's Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol, part of the film franchise launched by 1984's Police Academy.
Credit MGM/The Kobal Collection
Steve Guttenberg (left) stars alongside Daniel Stern (center) and Paul Reiser in 1982's Diner, which continues to be one of his most beloved film projects. He sometimes appears as a guest at revival screenings.
When Steve Guttenberg was 16, he went to see an agent about starting his acting career.
That agent told him: "You are the last guy I would pick to be a movie star."
Guttenberg decided to become an actor anyway.
The summer before he was supposed to start the University of Albany, he moved from Long Island to Los Angeles to try his luck. Once there, he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, he snuck onto the Paramount Studios lot, set up his own office, and started making phone calls to agents and producers.
The Weekends on All Things Considered series Movies I've Seen A Million Times features filmmakers, actors, writers and directors talking about the movies that they never get tired of watching.
For actor Jared Harris, whose credits include The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and AMC's TV drama Mad Men, the movie he can't get enough of is Sydney Pollack's Tootsie. "It's just so brilliant," says Harris.
Anti-government protesters in the northern Syrian village of Hass protest on Thursday following the deaths of dozens of civilians a day earlier in the village of Mazraat al-Qubair. The banner reads, "The al-Qubair massacre challenges the world's humanity."
NPR correspondent Deborah Amos joined U.N. monitors and a small group of journalists Friday who were able to enter the Syrian village of Mazraat al-Qubair, where 78 people, including women and children, were killed on Wednesday by pro-government forces, according to opposition activists.
Credit Courtesy of Minnelusa Historical Association, Journey Museum
The 1972 flood in Rapid City, S.D., killed 238 people and destroyed more than 1,300 homes. The city responded by establishing a no-build zone in the flood plain. Other cities across the country adopted similar policies after the disaster.
Credit Courtesy of Rapid City Public Library/Black Hills Knowledge Network
Two children climb over what remains of a home that has an "All OK" sign in front. The flood caused $165 million of damage to the area.
Credit Courtesy of Rapid City Public Library
This man's jeep was destroyed by the flood. In the bottom photo, he tees off 20 years later on a golf course that was built where his neighborhood used to stand. The city prohibited building in the flood plain after 1972. A gallery of before and after images is here.
Survivors say the wall of water was like a tsunami that destroyed nearly everything in its path as it roared through a Black Hills canyon and into town. The flash flood that hit Rapid City, S.D., on June 9, 1972, was one of the worst floods in U.S. history. It killed 238 people and damaged or washed away more than 1,300 homes.
On Saturday, the city will read the names of those who died and reflect on how the flood changed the way the city and others towns across the country built themselves.
With recent news that even Paris has one, food trucks are certainly in vogue these days. In the U.S., they're now spreading from the hot scenes in Los Angeles and New York to smaller cities, like Milwaukee and Madison. Even school systems are jumping on the food truck bandwagon.
A Mexican federal policeman guards the area where dozens of bodies, some of them mutilated, were found on a highway outside the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on May 13. The murders were one of the latest episodes in Mexico's brutal and unrelenting drug war.
Credit Alfredo Estrella / AFP/Getty Images
Mexicans wearing masks of skulls protest against violence in the country, in Mexico City, Nov. 27, 2011. More than 50,000 people have been killed in rising drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006.
Mexicans select a new president on July 1, and they want a leader who can reduce the rampant violence in their country. Warring drug cartels have killed more than 50,000 people in the past 5 1/2 years, while thousands have disappeared and some cities have been turned into lawless zones.
Among the creatures that survived the trans-Pacific trek aboard the Japanese dock was this sea star, which was found inside the float.
Credit Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation / AP
A large dock washed ashore early Tuesday on Agate Beach in Oregon. The nearly 70-foot-long dock was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. Marine scientists are worried that invasive species may be among the 100 tons of marine life that traveled aboard the dock.
Credit Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center
Workers from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife remove marine organisms from the dock. Marine biologist John Chapman says the dock may have carried hundreds of species and millions of organisms across the ocean.
Credit Edward Backus / flickr
The dock was encrusted with mussels, barnacles and other marine life from Asia. Marine biologists were surprised to see that coastal creatures survived the trip in the open ocean.
A bizarre event has drawn scientists to a beach in Oregon — a floating concrete dock from Japan has washed ashore. It had been ripped from its moorings by last year's tsunami and floated across the Pacific.
The dock is encrusted with mussels, barnacles and other marine life from Asia. Scientists are amazed these organisms survived the 14-month voyage, but they're also worried some of these organisms could become pests in U.S. waters.
