Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Julie McCarthy in Islamabad and Quil Lawrence in Kabul about the situation on the ground in that region of Afghanistan.

Host Rachel Martin takes a moment to remember William Henderson Foote, a black federal agent in Mississippi in the late 1800s. He was honored this week by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The White House is urging war-weary NATO leaders to dig deeper into their pockets to share the commitment to get Afghanistan's forces to stand up on their own so U.S. and NATO forces can pull out in 2014. Host Rachel Martin speaks with Ben Rhodes, White House spokesperson on national security issues.

When Egyptians go to the polls on May 23, many will be looking to celebrate the end of military rule that began some 50 years ago. Observers warn that it won't be easy to send a deeply entrenched military back to its barracks, and they point to Turkey's experience as an example. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul.

World leaders are gathered in Chicago for a two-day NATO summit starting Sunday morning. This is the third time the U.S. has hosted a NATO summit since the alliance was formed, and the first time it's being held in a city other than Washington, D.C. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the agenda will center on a theme: Afghanistan.

Many Egyptians believe Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister to be corrupt. Yet Ahmed Shafiq, who is running for president in Egypt's historic elections this month, has climbed to second in opinion polls. Experts say his growing popularity highlights many Egyptians' desires for stability, which, as NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports, is something they believe the retired Air Force general can provide.

Out West Sunday, it will start getting dark earlier than normal, but just for a little while. A major solar eclipse, although not quite total, will spread across the skies in a 200-mile swath from Oregon into west Texas. Longtime Washington, D.C., meteorologist Bob Ryan has traveled the world chasing eclipses with his wife. He joins host Rachel Martin.

Host Rachel Martin talks with China scholar Perry Link about activist Chen Guangcheng's arrival in the U.S. Link has followed the lives of Chinese dissidents involved with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

If life is a ballgame, then NPR's Mike Pesca is the guy in the stands, carrying his own stat-sheet and searching out empirical evidence. Host Rachel Martin speaks with Pesca about what the numbers have to say about injuries.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Writer Paul Theroux can't shake Africa. Almost 50 years ago, he lived in the small central African nation of Malawi. Theroux was there for four years teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer, and some of the most visceral details have stayed with him.