Weekend Edition Sunday

The Associated Press has announced new agreements with the Korea Central News Agency, including one to open an AP news bureau in Pyongyang. It would be the first permanent text and photo bureau operated by a Western news organization in the North Korean capital. Guest host Susan Stamberg discusses the latest development with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

Last week we spoke with Yotam Ottolenghi, the London-based Israeli chef and food columnist about his new vegetable cookbook, Plenty. We also spoke with singer James Torme, son of the late Mel Torme. Guest host Susan Stamberg shares listener comments on these stories and more.

Romantic comedies don't always delve into weighty issues like cultural identity or repressed memory, but that's just what two filmmakers in France have done with their movie The Names of Love. The film recently opened in the U.S. after winning two Cesar awards (France's equivalent of an Oscar), including the one for Best Original Screenplay.

On-Air Challenge: You are given a series of sentences, each of which is missing three words. The word in the first blank is five letters long. Drop the last letter to get a four-letter word for the second blank. Drop the last letter to get a three-letter answer for the third blank. For example, given the sentence, "While I was filming at the Egyptian pyramids, a ____ with a rider on it ____ into view of my ____," the words would be "camel," "came" and "cam."

Beginning on Sunday, June 3, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will exhibit Samuel Morse's painting Gallery of the Louvre. The American better known for inventing the telegraph and the communication code that bears his name, painted the large work — it's 6 feet tall and 9 feet wide — starting in 1831, while living in Paris.

David McCullough writes about Morse and his painting in his new book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. McCullough says Morse created the painting in order to show Europe's great works of art to Americans.