Morning Edition

The Ramones were there at the birth of punk rock.

None of the Ramones were actually related, but they all changed their last names to Ramone. They wore matching skinny jeans and leather jackets, and their songs were short and to the point, with hooks that are still impossibly catchy. The band's first album stunned listeners and critics. Joey Ramone described its influence in a 1991 interview in Finland that's posted on YouTube.

The Northern Mariana Islands are about 4,000 miles west of Hawaii. They look like the kind of tropical islands you see in the movies with bright blue water and white sand beaches.

The people who live on the islands are American. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a U.S. territory. And just like a lot of U.S. states, the commonwealth has a pension plan for its government employees.

Sixto Igisomar used to run it.

Oregon officials are trying to ease the stress of road construction along the Sunset Highway for at least one resident. Rose-Tu is a pregnant elephant at the nearby Oregon Zoo.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Egyptian voters go to the polls over the next two days to vote for president. There are 12 candidates but polls suggest the race is down to four men: two Islamists and two former officials in the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak. If no one wins at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round, a runoff will be held next month.

The movie being talked about the most at this year's Cannes Film Festival in the south of France is Michael Haneke's Amour. It's the 65th anniversary of the festival.

Gucci sued Guess over trademark infringement, citing multiple cases of designs it claimed were "studied imitations of Gucci trademarks

Nearly two years ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered that gun-toting private security companies in his country be brought under state control. But the Afghan force to replace the foreign-funded contractors is off to a rocky start.

According to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the new force will increase security costs for USAID projects and could even shut some of them down, at a loss of about $899 million. USAID in Kabul disagrees, and the dispute has gone public.