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When the current president of South Korea Lee Myung-bak took office four years ago, he turned a cold shoulder to engagement with North Korea. The conservative wing in South Korea opposed improving relations with Pyongyang. But that has proven to be an unpopular policy, and now Lee finds himself in the difficult position of appealing for closer ties in this unpredictable transition period in North Korea. Lee goes to Beijing Monday to seek Chinese backing for this policy shift.

In Israel, it might become a crime to use Nazi comparisons to criticize someone. As the AP puts it, a bill under consideration by parliament would "would impose penalties of up to six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for using the word 'Nazi' or Holocaust symbols for purposes other than teaching, documentation or research."

Not too long ago Nokia was the largest tech company in Europe. Its market cap rivaled Microsoft's. It helped create the mobile phone industry as we know it. But the emergence of a new generation of smartphones — led by Apple's iPhone and Android-based offerings from Samsung, HTC and others — left Nokia behind.

Eight colleges in Georgia will now become four, the State Board of Regents announced today. The move wil affect about 36,000 students and was proposed in an effort to save money.

Binge drinking in America looks to be an even bigger problem than we thought.

About 1 in 6 Americans, or 17 percent of the population, went on at least one drinking binge in a month last year, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That works out to 38 million people.

Sites like PolitiFact and Factcheck.org are designed to verify political claims and hold politicians accountable. But critics say fact-checking entities are themselves biased. The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway and Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post discuss fact-checking in American politics.

Each year, film fans and studio executives travel to Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, a premiere showcase for independent film from around the world. Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance Institute, offers a preview of what attendees can expect at the 2012 festival.

The demonstrations that spread across the Middle East in 2011 unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Yemen's president has agreed to step down and violence continues in Syria. NPR foreign correspondents discuss developments since the Arab Spring and what they mean for the region and the U.S.