Morning Edition

Mortgage broker Freddie Mac named Donald Layton as its new chief executive officer. Layton worked for JPMorgan Chase for nearly 30 years before retiring in 2004.

The drop on Japan's Nikkei stock exchange follows Thursday's report that the company suffered a net loss of $5.7 billion for the last fiscal year. The once dominant tech company has fallen behind other industry giants like Samsung and Apple, and seen especially heavy losses in its TV division.

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is in damage control mode after an article in The Washington Post accused the candidate of bullying in high school. Romney says he does not remember the incidents. Several of his classmates independently recall him going after students who seemed different, vulnerable or effeminate.

The Postal Service announced Thursday that it lost more than $3 billion during the first three months of the year. Post office officials are pushing Congress to give it more authority to cut some of its burgeoning costs.

Reporting from Afghanistan, Morning Edition's Renee Montagne talks to Salahuddin Rabbani. President Hamid Karzai recently appointed him chairman of the High Peace Council, which is tasked with negotiating with the Taliban. Rabbani replaced his father who was assassinated last year by a suspected Taliban member.

According to a survey by the National Retail Federation, mothers will be treated to a little more this holiday. All told, American consumers are expected to spend about $18.6 billion on the moms, stepmoms or grandmas in their lives.

Every spring, high school students descend on the headquarters of the New York Federal Reserve, a few blocks from Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. They compete to see who does the best impression of a central banker.

The High School Fed Challenge is a big deal. Schools like Montclair High in Montclair, New Jersey have multiple rounds of tryouts just to get on the team. Then they practice for months.

Dennis McLaughlin interviewed his mom, Theresa, to thank her for how she raised him. Born in 1948 with spina bifida, he was missing several vertebrae and was unable to use his legs. Theresa was a single mom, working in a paper mill near Portland, Maine.

"When you were 1 year old, your grandfather McLaughlin built you a little wheelchair," Theresa says, "built it out of wood that he had and wheels from a tricycle, and you got around in that very, very well."

New Hampshire foresters are closely watching the movements of an exotic beetle known as the Emerald Ash Borer.  Just last month the U-S Forest Service announced that for the first time, the beetle has been found east of the Hudson river.  That’s just ninety miles from the New Hampshire border.  The Emerald Ash Borer first appeared in North America ten years ago, and has killed millions of ash trees in several mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states, as well as Canada.  To find out whether or not the beetle poses a threat to the Granite State, we turn to Kyle Lombard.  He’s the Forest Health Prog

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It was Friday, April 27, when a car bomb exploded in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan. Syrian state television showed soldiers and civilians running from the smoke of the explosion under a bridge. Then the camera closed in on streams of blood and body parts.

The Syrian regime's narrative is that the uprising that has gripped the country for more than a year is not a case of people protesting and sometimes fighting for their rights; the official stance is that it's terrorism.

The Federal Reserve has announced three of China's largest state-owned banks have been given approval to expand their operations in the U.S. Analysts say that ICBC, China investment Corp., and Central Huijin Investment will likely look to purchase regional U.S. banks and establish a footprint in the American market.

States are moving to set up health insurance exchanges — a pillar of Obama's health care law. But many GOP governors find themselves in an awkward position. David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, talks to Steve Inskeep about why the governors' positions on exchanges are complicated.