Morning Edition

Alabama and Mississippi are holding Republican primaries on Tuesday. The contests are vitally important for the candidacies of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney arrived in Mississippi Thursday night for a rally, and he has a pair of events in Mississippi and Alabama Friday.

Iranians have agreed to meet with Western officials to discuss their nuclear program, amid increasing Western concern about its purpose. Steve Inskeep talks to Paul Pillar about his article in The Washington Monthly entitled "We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran." Pillar teaches in the security studies program at Georgetown University.

In North Carolina, Wal-Mart has unveiled a new ad campaign in the Charlotte area. The ads are unusual because they target the small, regional grocery chain Harris Teeter. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. Harris Teeter is 207th. In the commercials, Wal-Mart says it sells the same items as the local chain, but for less.

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This week, San Francisco is hosting the Game Developers Conference. It's the largest global event for the industry that makes video and online games. Twenty thousand people from one hundred countries are there right now. And a game that hasn't even been created yet is getting lots of attention.

From member station KQED in San Francisco, Aarti Shahani reports.

The new film Salmon Fishing in the Yemen stars Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor. It's a pleasant fantasy whose few attempts at seriousness are best forgotten.

The American non-profit group Invisible Children aims to raise awareness about Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony. A video the group made has gone viral on the Internet. Steve Inskeep talks to Barbara Among, a journalist with Uganda's Daily Monitor, to find out what Ugandans think of the campaign.

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Kansas holds its Republican presidential caucuses tomorrow. Rick Santorum has been the most active candidate in that state. He's trying to stop Mitt Romney's momentum again. Kansas Public Radio's Stephen Koranda has more.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick...

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Here's one more sales pitch for you. Today's last word in business is your chance to buy a legendary brand.

Fender made guitars held by everyone from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix to Bruno Mars - and maybe even smashed by a few of them. And now Fender has filed paperwork for an initial public offering. The company is looking to raise some $200 million. This company, based in California, wants to pay down debt, and get into new markets like India and China.

Here's the secret of the modern dairy farm: The essential high-tech advances aren't in machinery. They're inside the cow.

Take a cow like Claudia. She lives at Fulper Farms, a dairy farm in upstate New Jersey. Claudia is to a cow from the 1930s as a modern Ferrari is to a Model T.

In the 1930s, dairy farmers could get 30 pounds of milk per day from a cow. Claudia produces 75 pounds a day.

To appreciate a cow like Claudia, you have to know where to look.

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Private creditors holding Greek bonds have until the end of today to participate in the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history. This means creditors must exchange the Greek government bonds they now hold for new ones that are worth far less. Some creditors are balking, since it means up to a 70 percent loss on their returns.

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And we turn now to a group of people worth almost as much as a small country. Today's last word in business goes to Forbes magazine, which has released its 25th annual billionaires list.

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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

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And I'm Renee Montagne.

Western governments are still debating whether to help Syria's rebels. But as they debate, the rebels are finding ways to help themselves.

INSKEEP: Syrians continue arming themselves, even after they retreated from the battered city of Homs. This week, the United Nations' humanitarian chief finally toured that city, including a rebel neighborhood, now mostly abandoned.

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Here's a stunning fact we came across as the anniversary of Japan's tsunami and nuclear disaster approaches. Of Japan's nuclear plants, only two of 54 reactors are currently active one year after the disaster. To talk about the implications of this, we've called Kenneth Cukier. He is Tokyo correspondent for The Economist magazine. He's on the line.

Welcome to the program.

KENNETH CUKIER: Hi, there.

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NPR's business news starts with allegations of price fixing on e-books.

The Justice Department is threatening to sue Apple and five major U.S. publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of digital books. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple persuaded publishers, including Harper Collins, Penguin and Simon and Schuster, to change how they price their e-books before the launch of the first iPad in 2010.

There were a lot of good stories from the 2008 presidential election, including Hillary Clinton's serious run for the Democratic nomination, not to mention the election of the first African-American president. The whole story was covered in the bestselling — and controversial — book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change.

In El Paso, a new county commissioner was sworn in this week. She is temporarily replacing another commissioner who is facing federal drug trafficking charges. The former commissioner comes from a politically active family in the southernmost portion of El Paso county. As Monica Ortiz Uribe reports for the Fronteras Changing America Desk, the area has a history as an active smuggling corridor for drugs and people.

Scientists aren’t the only ones worried about climate change. The Defense Department is too. And they’ve sought the help of the University of Arizona to be better prepared. Laurel Morales reports for the Fronteras Changing America Desk.

The first batch of Oreo cookies was made at the original Nabisco bakery in New York in 1912. The company is releasing limited edition "Birthday Cake" Oreos.

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President Obama held a wide-ranging news conference Tuesday. He bluntly challenged Republican critics of his Iran policy — saying the stakes are too high to let politics intrude. The news conference was designed to steal some of the spotlight from GOP presidential hopefuls on Super Tuesday.

Renee Montagne talks to Terry Emmert, who's in charge of transporting a 340 ton granite boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be featured in a modern art exhibit.

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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

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And I'm Renee Montagne.

It was the biggest day yet in the Republican presidential race. Mitt Romney hoped that Super Tuesday would reinforce his frontrunner status. And to some degree it did. He won six of the 10 states, including the most populous and hotly contested state, Ohio.

Wind power is all the rage in Oklahoma and could be a boon in a state that has been hit hard by unemployment. The problem is finding qualified people to work in the industry.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum won three Super Tuesday contests: Oklahoma, North Dakota and Tennessee. He just missed in Ohio. Mitt Romney went on to win there.

Another year of growth was enough to edge Brazil past the stagnant United Kingdom in global economic rankings. Agriculture and food processing were the big areas of growth for Brazil.

Mitt Romney won the GOP presidential primary in Ohio Tuesday night. Unlike most of the other states voting on Super Tuesday, Ohio will be a pivotal swing state in the general election.