NPR News

Catholics across the country are celebrating the start of their annual Advent season in an unfamiliar way. For the first time in four decades, the wording of the official Catholic liturgy has changed. Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin talks with Father Carmen D'Amico of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands, Penn., after he performs his first mass with the new translation.

Writer-director Paddy Considine's debut film, Tyrannosaur, is a favorite of critics this year. It's generating Oscar buzz and has earned Sundance Festival awards for Considine's directing and the film's lead actors. the film tackles dark themes like death and spousal abuse, but a message of hope manages to shine through. Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin talks to Paddy Considine about writing and directing the film, which is in theaters now.

In a new book coming out next month, business tycoon and sometimes presidential candidate Donald Trump estimates his entire net worth is $7 billion. Trump says a hefty chunk — some $3 billion — alone covers the "brand value" of the Trump name.

It isn't just pop culture gadflies making a buck from that intangible factor known as "brand value" anymore. Journalists, too, are trying to build their own brands.

The frigid air needles exposed flesh and sinks through clothing, but that hasn't kept at least one protester from occupying a park in Fairbanks, Alaska, for more than a month. The temperature has been 30 to 40 degrees below zero in recent weeks.

This time of year, the days are short. It's dim, bleak and other-worldly in the nation's northernmost Occupy protest. While local officials want the protesters' tents taken down, occupiers say the shelter is necessary in such cold weather.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the conditions in California's overcrowded prisons violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by a third. Host Audie Cornish hears more from Ohio State law professor Douglas Berman, who says the popular "tough on crime" mantra helps explain why so many American prisons are over-capacity.

The Congressional supercommittee, charged with coming up with a plan to cut the national deficit, had been invested with handling so many unrelated tasks that its failure last week has left Congress with a sizeable workload in its remaining weeks this year. Among them: possible extensions of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, and a continuation of the entire federal budget. NPR congressional correspondent David Welna joins us to set the stage for December.

A group of human rights activists in Mexico has asked the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate President Felipe Calderon in connection with the deadly war on drug cartels. The complaint, spearheaded by human rights lawyer Netzai Sandoval, claims war crimes have occurred. The complaint was filed a day after two dozen bodies were found dumped in Guadalajara. NPR's Jason Beaubien has more.

The drug war in Mexico is taking a terrible toll in Central America. The region now has the highest homicide rate in the world, according to a new UN report, as traffickers move more and more U.S.-bound cocaine through Central America's struggling, weak states. Nick Miroff reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

A 71-year-old amnesiac in Germany has become well known in medical circles there. Even though the patient has lost nearly all memory of his past and has difficulty planning anything in the present or for the future, new research shows the former concert cellist is still able to learn new music. Audie Cornish speaks with Dr. Carsten Finke, a neurologist at The Charite university hospital in Berlin, about the unique patient.