National and World News from NPR

Many young people expect to spend some time couch-surfing when they're just starting out. For Eric Simmons, the couch came courtesy of an unsuspecting AOL. Simmons had been enrolled in an incubator program at the tech firm's Palo Alto campus. And when the program ended, the card that gave him access to the building kept working. That key card unlocked the solution to his housing problem.

Vatican authorities have charged Pope Benedict XVI's butler with illegally possessing secret documents. His arrest is the latest embarrassment for the Vatican. David Greene talks to NPR's Sylvia Poggioli for the latest on the investigation.

David Greene speaks with NPR's Joe Palca about Morning Edition's upcoming series, "Summer Science."

David Greene talks to Rick Knabb, the newly named head of the National Hurricane Center. Knabb is currently the Weather Channel's resident hurricane expert. When he previously worked at the National Hurricane Center as a meteorologist, he was one of the lead forecasters for Hurricane Katrina.

NPR's David Greene has the story of a memorial in Kabul, Afghanistan, that pays tribute to American soldiers killed while serving there.

Kanye West has made a name for himself with his music, his award-show antics, and recently his tweets. Including: "Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on" and "Sometimes I get emotional over fonts." Embroidery entrepreneur Amy Sheridan has decided that Twitter doesn't give these pearls of wisdom their due. For $45, she'll hand-stitch the Kanye tweet of your choice in a simple frame. Just picture, "Working on being a doper person" above the mantel.

Spain's third largest lender, Bankia, is getting a $24 billion lifeline from the Spanish government. The move is a part of Madrid's effort to return some stability to the country's struggling financial sector.

The U.N. Security Council is condemning the Syrian government for the massacre of scores of people, including children, in the town of Houla, a day after images of the mass killings shocked the world.

In this space earlier this month, I wrote about whether President Obama would face a backlash from African-Americans for his endorsement of same-sex marriage. (He hasn't.) I made mention of a random field experiment in which 285 black people in Cook County, Ill., were polled about gay marriage.