The news overnight that the U.S. and Japan have reached an agreement to move about 9,000 U.S. Marines off the island of Okinawa means that slightly more than half of the Marines who have been stationed there will be heading to Guam and other places in the Pacific.

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest players in basketball history, has one more record. It's not likely a record he wanted. He's the owner of the NBA's worst team ever. The Charlotte Bobcats have seven wins and 59 losses.

William Lawlis Pace died in California this week. He holds the record for the person alive the longest with a bullet in his head. Back in 1917, his brother accidentally shot him with a rifle. Doctors left the bullet in place, feeling it would do more damage to remove it.

The first round of the 2012 NFL draft was held at New York City's Radio City Music Hall Thursday. The top-two picks are two of the most highly regarded quarterbacks to enter the NFL in quite some time. After those players were selected, teams began furiously trading picks and players in order to secure their presumed slice of future greatness.

A controversial biography of TV and music impresario Simon Cowell came out on both sides of the Atlantic this week. Cowell showed up at the London launch of the unauthorized biography entitled, Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell.

Stop motion animation, where physical objects are manipulated literally frame by frame to give the illusion of movement, is one of the oldest movie techniques, but it's being used in a brand new film called The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

It's been a busy week in politics including Mitt Romney's five primary wins — making him the de facto Republican presidential nominee. Newt Gingrich, however, has still not pulled out of the GOP presidential race.

Sales of previously owned homes are up more than 10 percent from last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, the number of homes for sale is at the lowest levels in years. The result, say many real estate firms, is that most of the offers being made these days come with competing bids.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with impressive earnings for Amazon.

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INSKEEP: Amazon released its first-quarter earnings for 2012, which far exceeded Wall Street expectations. As NPR's Steve Henn reports, that sent Amazon's stock price soaring.