NPR News

Ecuador's foreign minister says the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has requested political asylum.

Ricardo Patiño Aroca said on his twitter account that Assange had submitted his request at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"The Ecuadorian government is analyzing his request," said Patiño.

The top news from Capitol Hill testimony today by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is that he says "the bank did its best to fully inform investors about its risk strategy several weeks before it suffered a $2 billion-plus trading loss," The Associated Press reports.

But the quote from him that seems to be getting the most attention came in response to a question from Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., who wanted to know if the bank could ever lose "a half a trillion dollars or a trillion dollars?"

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics including the challenges facing single parents, difficult choices raised by advances in genetic testing and the jokes that define a community or group.

On this edition of All Songs Considered, poet and singer Patti Smith joins host Bob Boilen to talk about her musical passions, including doing fancy dance steps with her siblings in South Jersey. She talks about meeting Jimi Hendrix as a young journalist and later recording in his dream studio Electric Lady Studios, where she and her band made their latest album, Banga.

According to Forbes, the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. is now the world's highest-paid athlete, dethroning Tiger Woods who had held the spot since 2001.

Two bouts during the past 12 months — beating Victor Ortiz and Miguel Cotto in less than an hour combined — netted Mayweather $85 million. That's more than LeBron James ($53 million), more than Roger Federer ($52.7 million), more than Kobe Bryant ($52.3 million).

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit health advocacy organization, says you should be concerned about pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, but not so concerned that you stop eating these foods.

That's the mixed message delivered in the eighth edition of EWG's annual Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce released today.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. For years, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen remained an open secret. There are reasons why missile attacks on the territory of quasi-allies weren't acknowledged, but because of that secrecy, legal justification started to emerge only last year, and the process that the president and his advisors use to put individuals on the kill list only came into focus this month in Daniel Klaidman's book "Kill or Capture."

A jury found Roger Clemens not guilty on all charges of obstruction and lying to Congress about steroid use. Clemens has always denied the accusations, but despite the verdict, many fans and sportswriters declared Clemens guilty long ago and refuse to believe he's innocent.