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Astronomers want increasingly large telescopes to peer into the depths of space. To build a solid telescope mirror nearly 30 feet across, you need an oven that heats to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit and spins around like a top.

Australia's Northern Territory is home to the cunning, powerful and deadly saltwater crocodile — the world's largest. And in the territory's capital, Darwin, the crocodile is both feared and beloved.

Ahead of the primary voting in Mississippi and Alabama, guest host Linda Wertheimer talks with William Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and Professor of Political Science at Mississippi State University, about the religious politics of the South.

Should the U.S. leave now, go later or reinforce? Just as the nation is divided over the war in Afghanistan, so too is Congress. As usual, Democrats and Republicans are arguing, but this time it's among themselves.

NPR's Richard Harris talks with host Scott Simon about the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors, one year after multiple meltdowns there spread radioactive materials across a swath of northern Japan. Huge technical challenges remain and prospects for resettling the area are uncertain.

The agency that governs domain categories like .org and .com is forging ahead with plans to sell new names despite some vocal opposition from regulators. For a registration fee of $185,000, applicants could register a suffix like .music or .Nabisco. But that could lead to problems, opponents say.

The Golden Globes have equally good comedy and drama masks this year. Sunday's musical or comedy contenders make up a strong bunch that could give their best-drama cousins at the Globes a run for their money come Oscar time.

The public relations problem for private equity capitalists at firms such as Bain, KKR and Blackstone is that they are the agents of the creative-destruction part of capitalism. They aim to take over underperforming firms and operate them more efficiently. In that process, people do lose their jobs.

In a rare hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer discussed the role of judges under the Constitution. Among the revelations: Scalia considers himself out of touch with modern American values and Breyer likes to top off debates with a joke.

Joseph Guillotin, Henry Shrapnel and Jules Leotard became immortal — by entering the English language. But when your entire life is reduced to a single definition, the results are sometimes upsetting.