KVNF Mountain Grown Community Radio

Host Michel Martin continues her interview with Senator Rand Paul. She asks whether his actions really line up with his libertarian philosophies.

Senator Rand Paul is reaching out to African-American voters. He recently visited Howard University, one of the country's most prominent historically black universities. Senator Paul talks to host Michel Martin about why he's reaching out, and what his message is for minorities.

The first national gun control legislation since the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., is going to be debated on the floor of the Senate and appears headed for a vote sometime next week.

Supporters in the Senate on Thursday morning rounded up more than the 60 votes necessary to clear a procedural hurdle that could have held up consideration of the Democratic-crafted package. The vote was 68-31 in favor of blocking a bid by some Republicans to filibuster the legislation.

The Mountaintop is an award-winning play about the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died. But some critics don't love playwright Katori Hall's portrayal of the civil rights icon as a regular guy. Hall tells host Michel Martin why she found it important to focus on the man, not the myth.

Sales of new PCs plummeted nearly 14 percent globally in the first three months of the year, and much of the blame is being placed on Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system.

International Data Corp. reported Wednesday that shipments of PCs totaled 76.3 million worldwide in the first quarter of 2013, down 13.9 percent from the same period the previous year.

There's been a bit of a brouhaha over the Federal Reserve's inadvertent early release Tuesday evening of minutes from its closed-door March 19-20 policy meeting.

As The Associated Press writes, "employees at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo and Citigroup were among those to receive [the] market-sensitive information."

OK, the conventional wisdom about the budget President Obama sent to Congress yesterday is that's irrelevant.

It's two months late, after all, and the House and Senate have already approved their own spending blueprints for fiscal 2014.

But here's why it matters when it comes to health.

The House of Representative Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan says he sees hope for a bipartisan budget agreement for the first time since President Obama came to office.

Some 3.4 million vehicles produced by four Japanese automakers are being voluntarily recalled due to faulty airbag inflators.

The inflators were installed in some of Toyota's top-selling Camry and Corolla models produced since 2000. Certain Honda Civics and Mazdas are also subject to recall, which also reportedly includes the Maxima and Cube, according to Reuters.

The defective passenger-side airbag inflators were produced by Tokyo-based Takata at a Mexican plant, Reuters says.

There were 346,000 first-time claims for unemployment benefits, down 42,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

Meanwhile, the "4-week moving average" of claims was 358,000, up by 3,000 from the previous week's 355,000. That measure smooths out some of the volatility in the numbers.