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Nurturing young talent is a long tradition in the classical music world, and many professional orchestras have their own youth orchestras. But it stands to reason that an organization with the kind of international stature the Cleveland Orchestra enjoys would have a top-notch youth ensemble. It does. And it's called, not surprisingly, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra — COYO for short. The young musicians have just embarked on a European tour.

Quoting a "security official," the AP reports that Hosni Mubarak's heart stopped just as he reached a military hospital. Mubarak is now on life support.

The former Egyptian president, who ruled for 30 years, was being transfered to the military hospital from prison after suffering a stroke.

Reporting from Cairo, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi-Nelson tells our Newscast unit that Mubarak's health has declined since he was sentenced in June.

How do doctors work around so many ill people without getting sick? Well, they don't.

Even if they scrub their hands like crazy, which certainly helps, they succumb to germs every once in a while, just like the rest of us. And also like lots of the rest of us, they'll go to work sick, a survey of medical residents finds.

This morning you woke up, got yourself through the morning routine and somehow managed to haul yourself to work. You did this yesterday and you will do it again tomorrow. The days come and they go. You do your best. You try not to hurt anyone, try to be helpful. But sometimes — just sometimes — the fog of real and imagined urgencies parts. Staring across the abyss of your own brief time on this world, you wonder, "Does any of this matter? Does any of it matter at all?"

I had that experience last week and I am still reeling.

Ecuador's foreign minister says the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has requested political asylum.

Ricardo Patiño Aroca said on his twitter account that Assange had submitted his request at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"The Ecuadorian government is analyzing his request," said Patiño.

The top news from Capitol Hill testimony today by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is that he says "the bank did its best to fully inform investors about its risk strategy several weeks before it suffered a $2 billion-plus trading loss," The Associated Press reports.

But the quote from him that seems to be getting the most attention came in response to a question from Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., who wanted to know if the bank could ever lose "a half a trillion dollars or a trillion dollars?"

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. For years, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen remained an open secret. There are reasons why missile attacks on the territory of quasi-allies weren't acknowledged, but because of that secrecy, legal justification started to emerge only last year, and the process that the president and his advisors use to put individuals on the kill list only came into focus this month in Daniel Klaidman's book "Kill or Capture."

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit health advocacy organization, says you should be concerned about pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, but not so concerned that you stop eating these foods.

That's the mixed message delivered in the eighth edition of EWG's annual Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce released today.

According to Forbes, the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. is now the world's highest-paid athlete, dethroning Tiger Woods who had held the spot since 2001.

Two bouts during the past 12 months — beating Victor Ortiz and Miguel Cotto in less than an hour combined — netted Mayweather $85 million. That's more than LeBron James ($53 million), more than Roger Federer ($52.7 million), more than Kobe Bryant ($52.3 million).

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Last week on the first day of the sex abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, a 28-year-old man referred to as Victim Four in court papers took the stand and offered graphic detail of years of abuse.

He also expressed regret for not coming forward earlier. He told the jury he had spent, quote, so many years burying this in the back of my head forever that when he heard there were other cases like his, he felt responsible.

Hans-Jurgen Kuhl started painting when he was 10. He loved gazing at the artwork in Cologne's Ludwig Museum. As a young adult, he discovered silk-screening and soon made something of a name for himself producing Andy Warhol imitations.

Years later, frustrated by his meager living as an artist, he decided to imitate a more difficult but more immediately rewarding piece of art: the U.S. Treasury's $100 bill. Kuhl still considered it art, though the authorities used a different word when he manufactured hundreds of thousands of maybe the best counterfeit C-notes ever.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics including the challenges facing single parents, difficult choices raised by advances in genetic testing and the jokes that define a community or group.