National and World News from NPR

Spanish politicians spent $220 million on the sparkling new Castellon airport on Spain's Mediterranean coast — $40 million alone was spent on TV ads and other marketing. They also paid $600,000 for ferrets and falcons to kill birds that endanger aircraft.

Yet no plane has yet taken off. Construction, which began in 2004, went over budget, partly to fund a 75-foot statue of a local politician out front.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney received a key endorsement Sunday morning when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia endorsed Romney on NBC's Meet the Press.

Cantor cited the economy as the top issue of the campaign.

"What I have seen is a very hard-fought primary. And we have seen now that the central issue about the campaign now is the economy," Cantor said. "I just think there's one candidate in the case who can do that, and it's Mitt Romney."

We call her the Typhoid Mary of the Tiny Desk.

Paris has become a virtual ghost town as families vacate the city for two weeks of ski holiday, a time-honored ritual the French seem disinclined to give up. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.

Host Rachel Martin reads and responds to listener feedback about last week's program.

Filmmaker Paul Weitz's new film, Being Flynn, is about a struggling writer who meets his estranged father while working at a homeless shelter. The movie stars Robert De Niro and Paul Dano, and it's based on a 2004 memoir by Nick Flynn. Host Rachel Martin talks with Weitz.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now, on to Super Tuesday. In two days, 10 states will cast votes in the GOP presidential nominating contest. It will be the largest single day of voting yet in the Republican race.

And Mara Liasson joins us with analysis. She is NPR's national political correspondent.

OK, Mara. Do you think Romney's win in Washington state may foreshadow what may come on Super Tuesday? I mean 10 presidential contests happening that day.