And if you're just tuning in, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.
Have you ever received an unsolicited phone call from someone asking you questions about your politics or your buying habits or your likes and dislikes? Well, those surveys have long been important tools for corporations and political campaigns. But here's the thing - did you ever refuse to answer those questions or just hang up altogether?
A day of, what else, pomp and circumstance in London today.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT HORNS)
RAZ: Boats of all sizes blew their horns in celebration traveling past the queen on her own vessel on the River Thames. It's the queen's diamond jubilee, a celebration of her 60th year on the throne.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Three cheers for the queen. Hip, hip...
This Tuesday, a congressional race in California's rural Central Valley will come down to a fight for second place. As Sasha Khokha of member station KQED reports now, the race pits a farm worker-turned-astronaut against the son of a disgraced congressman.
Protesters hold Egyptian flags during the demonstration in Tahrir Square.
Credit Fredrik Persson / AP
Egyptians gather at Tahrir Square in Cairo to call for a new revolution Saturday. A court sentenced ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister to life in prison, but acquitted six security chiefs in the deaths of protesters last year.
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison Saturday for his role in killing protesters during the revolution that ousted him from power.
A hushed courtroom listened as the head judge read the verdict: guilty of accessory to murder and attempted murder. Mubarak lay motionless on a hospital gurney inside a courtroom cage, his only noticeable emotion being the slight quivering of his lips.
Marina Keegan had just graduated from Yale University with a degree in English and was headed off to a job at The New Yorker. On May 26, she died in a car crash near her family's summer home in Massachusetts.
The Beach Boys' new album — the first collaboration in decades between founding members Brian Wilson (third from left) and Mike Love (second from right) — is called That's Why God Made the Radio.
With violence escalating and journalists barred from the country, it's becoming harder to know how far and fast Syria is slipping into chaos. Host Guy Raz speaks with Paul Wood, world affairs correspondent for the BBC and one of few western journalists to have visited in the country in recent weeks. Then Raz speaks with Marwa Daoudy, visiting professor at Princeton from Oxford University, and Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, about the stakes of Western intervention to halt the violence.
With the unemployment rate climbing to 8.2 percent, the Mitt Romney presidential campaign can focus on the economy as issue No. 1 this November. Host Guy Raz speaks with news analyst James Fallows of The Atlantic about the economic malaise and how it may affect the election.
Screen grabs of four separate ads from four different political groups critical of President Obama's handling of Solyndra, the failed solar-panel maker. Clockwise from top left, the ads are from: Americans for Prosperity, MittRomney.com, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.
Among the biggest advertisers in the presidential campaign is a group that says it doesn't do political advertising: Crossroads GPS.
Crossroads GPS — which stands for Grassroots Policy Strategies — was co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove. It and others like it enable wealthy donors to finance attack ads while avoiding the public identification they would face if they gave to more overtly political committees.
