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Friday was the first day of negotiations at the Syrian peace conference. There were no direct talks, however. Instead, international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi shuttled between government and opposition delegations in separate rooms.

The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for the swift enactment of tough new standards on trains carrying crude oil. With the huge increase in oil shipped by rail across North America, safety officials warn another major disaster could be looming.

Mexican Artist Pedro Reyes wants to encourage questions about the availability of deadly weapons, so he turns guns into shovels and most recently, unique musical instruments.

The suspect was charged with murder early Saturday in connection with Friday's killing of Brandon Robinson, a member of the school's football team.

The Chinese tennis star defeated her Slovakian opponent, Dominika Cibulkova, 7-6 (3), 6-0. It's Li's second Grand Slam title after she won at the French Open in 2011.

The Australian Open is drawing to a close with Li Na of China winning the women's tournament on Saturday. If Rafael Nadal wins on Sunday, he'll be the first man to win all the majors twice in the era of opens. Howard Bryant of ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine joins NPR's Jacki Lyden to talk tennis and weigh in on the U.S. Olympic team's uniforms.

The Olympics are less than two weeks away. The Russian host city of Sochi is busily preparing for the influx of athletes and media, but it's the security preparations that have people talking. Andrei Soldatov, the editor-in-chief of www.Agentura.ru, spoke to NPR's Jacki Lyden about security for the Games.

Newspapers from the U.K. to the U.S. were reporting a sensational story this week about an abandoned cruise ship drifting across the Atlantic with a crew of cannibal rats aboard. It sounded too outrageous to be true, so we dug into the story and smelled, well, a rat.

Fighting in Syria has internally displaced some 4 million people, and aid has only reached half of them. Humanitarian groups hope the talks in Geneva will allow them to get more aid into the country. NPR's Jacki Lyden speaks with Khaled Erksoussi, the head of operations for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

There were signs of progress at the Syria peace conference Saturday after the government and the opposition agreed to meet in the same room for the first time. Reporter Deborah Amos shares the latest from the talks in Geneva with NPR's Jacki Lyden.