All Things Considered

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(SOUNDBITE OF CLOCK TICKING)

GUY RAZ, HOST:

Major storms have reached a swath of the Great Plains from Oklahoma City up through central Kansas and into Nebraska. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks with Chance Hayes, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Wichita, Kansas.

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GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's simple. If you make more than $1 million every year, you should pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle-class families do.

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RAZ: President Obama from his weekly Saturday video address talking taxes and his proposal for a millionaire's tax, the so-called Buffett Rule. James Fallows of The Atlantic is with me now for more on this story and others we're following. Hello, Jim.

In 2009, jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez showed up in Laredo, Texas, with only a suitcase, some sheet music and one aim: to collaborate with Quincy Jones. A Cuban seeking amnesty in the U.S., Rodriguez ended up arrested by Mexican border officials. He says they questioned him for hours and demanded money.

Robert Siegel talks to Louisa Lim in Seoul about North Korea's rocket launch on Friday morning.

One of the sharpest dividing lines emerging between President Obama and GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is the budget introduced in Congress by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., with its sharp cuts in domestic spending and lower tax rates.

Both sides see it as a winning issue for the fall campaign. The Obama campaign likes to call it the "Romney-Ryan budget" — and Romney hasn't objected.

On the campaign trail in Wisconsin, Ryan was a constant presence with Romney before that state's April 3 Republican primary, which Romney won.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

In Sanford, Florida, there's been a new development in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. Late today, attorneys for the admitted shooter, George Zimmerman, said they are no longer representing him. Attorney Craig Sonner says they haven't spoken to Zimmerman since Sunday.

It's never been easy to make a living as a musician. But there was always a dream: to become a star on the strength of your talent and your music. The Internet is a rude sandman, however, and today that dream is a lot more convoluted.

No longer can a would-be rock star follow the once-accepted checklist: (1) sign with a big label, (2) get a hit, (3) buy mansions and cars. The number of ways a musician can make money is now varied. The question, for many musicians still trying to make a go of it in the industry, is whether those many sources can add up to something sustainable.

During the course of his career, singer-songwriter Adam Cohen says he has twisted himself into creating commercially successful music — but not this record, not this song. "What Other Guy," from his third album Like A Man, didn't seem likely to generate mainstream popularity. And yet it did, more than any other song he has ever recorded.

The son of iconic singer Leonard Cohen, Adam Cohen says his latest record is a celebration and demonstration of his father's influence on his music.

Idan Raichel is one of Israel's top-selling pop musicians. Vieux Farka Toure is a virtuoso guitarist from Mali. The two met by chance in a German airport, and when Toure played a concert in Tel Aviv, Raichel sat in. He enjoyed himself so much that he invited Toure and two other musicians to come to a studio the next day and jam. The music they created is now an album called The Tel Aviv Session.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the shooting deaths of three people in Tulsa, Okla., last Friday. Amanda Bland, a reporter for the Tulsa World, discusses the arrests.

With Love is singer Rosie Thomas' first full-length album in four years, and she's experienced many ups and downs in that time. One of the downs was an injury: Her thyroid broke, causing her to take a hiatus from music.

Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan speaks with NPR reporter Joseph Shapiro about the sentence of Shirley Ree Smith's "shaken baby" case. California Gov. Jerry Brown has commuted Smith's sentence. Despite her claims of innocence, Smith was convicted in December 1997, and has been free since 2006 awaiting the results of her appeals.