NPR's Morning Edition

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And our last word in business today: sushi bot.

It's where raw fish and robots meet up. More specifically, it's a cutting-edge sushi-making machine. A company called Suzumo introduced a prototype at a food expo in Tokyo last week.

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ANNOUNCER: It is true that a skilled chef can train for a long time. However, with Suzumo sushi-making machine everyone can make stable quality sushi very easily.

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

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

We're going to spend this part of the program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a deadly shooting spree in a black neighborhood has revived memories of a long ago race riot.

INSKEEP: First, we have an update on the news here. Police in Tulsa confirm that the two men accused of shooting five black people and killing three confessed shortly after they were arrested on Sunday.

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Police are still investigating whether the Tulsa shootings were racially motivated. We do know some of Tulsa's history. It has a difficult history of race relations, including a riot in 1921 that left scores, if not hundreds, of people dead.

Scott Ellsworth has studied that event closely. He's a Tulsa native who now teaches African-American history at the University of Michigan. He's on the line from Michigan Radio.

Welcome to the program.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: Thank you very much.

Carole King has an armful of Grammy Awards and countless Top 10 hits, both under her own name and as a songwriter for artists from Little Eva to the Monkees to Aretha Franklin.

Her solo album Tapestry spent 15 weeks at the top of the charts, becoming one of the biggest-selling records of all time. King managed to fit in all those hits by starting very, very young. She tells NPR's Renee Montagne that she was just 15 when she and some classmates formed a doo-wop group called the Co-Sines.

M. Ward's music inspires a sense of wonder — it recalls many sounds from a different time and place.

"I get most of my inspiration from older records and older production styles," Ward says, "and that ends up rearing its head in the records that I make. One of the great things about music is that it has the capability of time travel — you smell a certain smell in the room and it takes you back to your childhood. I feel like music is able to do that, and it happens to me all the time."

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NPR's business news begins with big layoffs at Sony.

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MONTAGNE: The one-time leader in entertainment technology is trying to regain its edge, and that means painful changes. According to Japanese news reports and The Wall Street Journal, Sony plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs worldwide. That's about 6 percent of its overall workforce.

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Michael Sullivan made many trips to Myanmar, also known as Burma, when he was NPR's correspondent for Southeast Asia. He recently returned, and found a country changing at a dizzying pace.

I get off the plane and almost immediately feel like I've come to the wrong country. There's a large blue sign at immigration that reads: "Attention journalists covering the by-election: please register at the Media Counter."

"Media Counter"? My kind has never been welcome here.

It's the first surprise in a trip full of them.

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A brief encounter between two leaders has raised hope for better relations between India and Pakistan. India's prime minister hosted Pakistan's president and accepted a return invitation to travel to Pakistan. We talk here of two nuclear-armed rivals whose relations were even worse than usual, after Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai in 2008. And the meeting came as disaster struck Pakistani troops facing Indian soldiers in the Himalayas.

NPR's Julie McCarthy is going to talk us through all this. Hi, Julie.

Over the weekend, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace died in Connecticut. Wallace, a star of that CBS news magazine for 40 years, stood out because of his seeming willingness to ask anybody anything. In 2005, he sat down for an interview with Steve Inskeep.

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The Masters Golf Tournament finished dramatically yesterday in a sudden-death playoff that ended with Bubba Watson sporting the green jacket. Christine Brennan was there. She's sports columnist for USA Today and a frequent guest on our program. She joins us this morning from Augusta.

Good morning Christine.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Good morning, Renee.

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NPR's business news starts with labor woes at AT&T.

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MONTAGNE: AT&T and union officials have agreed to extend contract negotiations, preventing a mass walkout by some 40,000 unionized workers. The deadline to agree on the new contract had been yesterday. AT&T is seeking concessions from its workers, including cuts in pension contributions, and also an increase in health care premiums. The union is calling those concessions unrealistic.

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And we're going to take a moment now to remember painter Thomas Kinkade. He died Friday at age 54, and left behind a legacy of decorative artwork that's celebrated a rustic America often lit up with streams of light.

THOMAS KINKADE: Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage.

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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. The shooting was supposed to stop in Syria tomorrow. Now we can't be sure. Syria's regime made last-minute demands that appear to have derailed the peace plan, including a ceasefire scheduled for Tuesday.

The Syrian government is under increasing pressure, as we'll hear in a moment. But it remains defiant, as NPR's Grant Clark reports.