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A women's Final Four without Baylor, Stanford or Tennessee? That's happened only one other time in the last dozen years. We've become so used to it being a power party, that it's downright disorienting.

Or maybe that's just vertigo from trying to track the movements of the Final Four's breakout star, Louisville guard Shoni Schimmel. She's a big reason why two of those teams — Tennessee and Baylor — aren't in New Orleans for a chance at the title.

The Air Force continues to grapple with the number of sexual assaults among its members.

In March, Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard Harding and other legal officials for the military appeared before a Senate subcommittee to address rape in the services. The hearing was spurred by a general's decision to overturn a jury's sexual assault verdict on a U.S. Air Base in Aviano, Italy.

The U.S. Senate was scheduled to begin voting on gun control measures this week when Congress returns from recess, but Senate staffers say a bipartisan agreement has yet to be reached on universal background checks. That snarl may end up delaying a vote on gun legislation for another week, as lobbyists on both sides of the debate use the extra time to keep the pressure on.

Transcript

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden. Spring is here. And just as temperatures begin to creep up, so do the bugs - all matter of creepy crawlies. Among the noisiest and, for my money, most repulsive...

(SOUNDBITE OF CICADAS)

LYDEN: ...cicadas.

MICHAEL RAUPP: My name is Michael J. Raupp. I'm professor of entomology and the bug guy here at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Amid a cascade of headline news from North Korea, often forgotten are the 24 million average citizens living under the most authoritarian regime in the world. Host Jacki Lyden speaks with Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times on the lives of ordinary North Koreans.

For students now sprinting toward the end of their college days, the finish line may not be much of a relief. More than ever, their gait is slowed by the weight of impending debt.

Thirty-seven million Americans share about $1 trillion in student loans, according to Federal Reserve data. It's the biggest consumer debt besides mortgages, eclipsing both auto loans and credit cards. And on it grows, an appetite undiminished by the recession.

Lawmakers in Kansas passed an extensive anti-abortion measure Friday night, which Gov. Sam Brownback is expected to sign into law. The bill declares that life begins "at fertilization," prohibits abortions related to the baby's sex and blocks tax breaks for health care providers that perform abortions.

The House passed the bill 90-30, hours after the Senate approved it 28-10.

Guns and America were born around the same time and grew up together. Like feuding cousins, their histories have been linked ever since.

Often helpful in American history — and often harmful — the portable gun has been inarguably influential in the national direction. The American Revolution would not have been won without guns. Precious lives at numerous school shootings would not have been lost without guns. And somewhere in between those two truisms lies the truth about what Americans really feel about firearms.

A federal judge ordered Friday what women's groups have failed to accomplish politically for a dozen years. He ruled that Plan B, the most commonly used morning-after birth control pill, be sold without a prescription or other restrictions to women of all ages.