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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is Weekend Edition from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

BP is beginning to settle the financial bill it faces from a 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A group of individuals and businesses who sued the company have agreed to settle for nearly $8 billion. The plaintiffs all say they were harmed when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 men, and leading to the massive spill.

David Rohde is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times reporter, who's now a foreign affairs columnist for Reuters and The Atlantic. He talks to host Scott Simon about what he calls the "Obama doctrine" in a piece that appears in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

As the violence in Syria continues, the international community has been unable to do much more than continue to condemn it. Host Scott Simon talks with Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy about the mounting debate over intervention and the new humanitarian access to the country.

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

Baseball has begun its spring training season. That used to be taken as a sign of spring. Is it now a sign of ka-ching in Major League Baseball? Jim Bouton, who pitched for the New York Yankees, the Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros, Atlanta Braves and about a dozen other major, minor, and semi-pro teams, the man who shook up baseball 40 years ago with his classic diary, "Ball Four," so widely quoted and reissued, joins us from the studios of New England Public Radio in Amherst.

Host Scott Simon talk with Michelle Bernard, president and CEO of the Bernard Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy. She gives us her take on what Republican and right-leaning women are looking for in a presidential candidate.

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Now, to Super Tuesday. Ohio may not offer the most delegates of the ten states who will vote on Super Tuesday, but it has become the most coveted state for all the candidates of the Republican nomination for president, a microcosm of the countrywide fight for supremacy. Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney will all campaign there today. NPR's Tamara Keith has this campaign update from Cleveland.

European Union heads of state met again in Brussels at the end of this week. It was the 18th summit since the debt crisis began some two years ago, but for the first time, observers say there was no air of crisis surrounding the gathering. French President Nicolas Sarkozy even declared that Europe was turning the page on the financial crisis.

European Union head Herman Van Rompuy introduced the EU's new baby — what he said is its best hope for the future.