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Speaking to Israeli students at the Jerusalem Convention Center on Thursday, President Obama delivered a speech brimming with talk of hope and change that echoed the Obama of 2008. While there were touches of specifics on where the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians should head, for the most part Obama stuck with highlighting fundamental similarities between peoples.

This week, optimists had no trouble finding fresh evidence to suggest that the housing market is recovering.

Kentucky farmer James Gash is one of millions of American gun owners who don't belong to the National Rifle Association - the powerful lobbying group. Gash talks with host Michel Martin about why the NRA doesn't speak for him.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Guards at Dulles Airport outside Washington have a sense of humor. I once asked a guy at a checkpoint in the basement how he was doing, and he answered: Living that dream. Too bad we don't now what Dulles guards said when a woman put her cane in the scanner. There was a sword inside. It was a sword cane. The woman had no idea.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne.

Last night was opening night for the Broadway show "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but The New York Times reports it was also curtains for one of the actors. Montie Corelli was fired. He had been the main understudy for Vito Vincent in the role of a cat. The black-and-white feline apparently refused to follow stage directions. But hey, he's a cat. And likely the casting process to replace Monti was a lot like herding cats.

It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's House GOP budget balances in a decade and re-shapes Medicare. That is, it would if the measure passed by the House on Thursday ever became law — which it won't.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray's Democratic budget raises almost $1 trillion in taxes by closing loopholes and adds $100 billion in new spending on infrastructure. But it won't become a reality, either.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.

We're learning this morning of a possible change in the American use of unmanned drones. The change, if it happens, would affect who gives the orders and possibly how much the public learns.

Poet Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland, Iraq, a few years after the first Gulf War. She had been questioned by Saddam Hussein's government, and state media had labeled her writing and poetry subversive. Mikhail escaped to Jordan and eventually reached the United States, where she made a home for herself — marrying, raising a daughter and becoming a U.S. citizen.

Mikhail never physically returned to Iraq. But she revisits her homeland again and again in her poetry — line by line, stanza by stanza.