Morning Edition

The Boy Scouts of America unveiled a new merit badge Tuesday. Along with wilderness survival, archery and canoeing, Scouts can now earn a badge in robotics. To do so, they'll have to design a robot and demonstrate how it works.

Animal rights activists have secretly filmed the inner workings of livestock farms, which has led to some bad press for the industry. Bills introduced in Florida and Iowa would make photographing animal operations without the owner's permission a felony. Supporters say that would help prevent activists from fraudulently being hired. Opponents argue the bills would prevent current employees from reporting abuse. Harvest Public Media's Kathleen Masterson reports.

Do you get the feeling that the National Football League labor negotiations harken us back to nothing less than the Vietnam peace talks? Any minute now, I expect the two sides to start arguing over the shape of the table.

Both sides have essentially said, "Yeah, we sure do want to talk, only not actually to one another" — until finally, a judge has ordered them to meet again again, pretty please, starting tomorrow.

If you haven't been paying attention, which is to your credit, the whole business has been turned over to lawyers.

Washington, D.C., has joined dozens of other jurisdictions across the country that are suing online travel companies for tens of millions of dollars in what they claim to be unpaid hotel taxes.

The Internet travel industry is growing fast. Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz raked in more than $7 billion last year. Revenue from hotel bookings on Orbitz alone shot up more than 10 percent to about $200 million.

Like millions of Americans, Jerome Hicks, an assistant property manager in Rockville, Md., makes all his hotel and plane reservations on the Internet.

Since the release of a biographical HBO film last year, Temple Grandin has become even more of an unofficial spokesperson for autism.