Morning Edition

The Labor Department announced unemployment figures for April on Friday. The jobless rate fell to 8.1 percent, from 8.2 percent in March. There have been conflicting signals about the strength of the economy, and the way voters interpret those signals could have a major impact on the presidential race.

As school budgets continue to get squeezed, administrators, parents and students are having to do more fundraising. And now the fight to raise funds has come head-to-head with the fight against childhood obesity. Stephanie Armour, of Bloomberg Businessweek, talks to David Greene about the move to ban bake sales.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

NPR's business news begins with Facebook frenzy.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GREENE: The world's largest social networking site is going public later this month. And yesterday it set a price range for its stock. It plans to sell share shares for between $28 and $35 each, using the ticker symbol FB. The share sale is expected to raise as much as $12 billion, making it one of the largest initial public offerings ever.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

Video game fans hear this often. EA Sports, it's in the game. Well, now America's largest game publisher is trying to stay in the game. EA, Electronic Arts, built a gaming empire with a strategy straight out of Hollywood - big names and big budgets. But the market is changing. For one thing, more players now prefer games you can play online. And so the Silicon Valley company has been forced to change as well. KQED's Aarti Shahani reports.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Let's talk about this more with NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen. She's traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She's in Beijing. And Michele, how did this seem to go so wrong so quickly?

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement in the Afghan capital Kabul. The deal put a spotlight on a future Afghanistan that does not include a massive number of American and NATO troops.

Newt Gingrich officially pulled out of the Republican presidential race Wednesday. So what happens to the leftover T-shirts and campaign buttons?