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NASA astronauts will be heading out to conduct critical repairs on the International Space Station early Saturday morning. The 6 1/2-hour spacewalk, the first in a series, will replace a faulty piece of cooling equipment.

Robots from around the world are competing in a Pentagon-sponsored robot "Olympics" this weekend. The challenge is to build a robot that can do human tasks and even go into disaster zones.

NASA reports that things went well in Saturday's 5-1/2-hour spacewalk, with two American astronauts removing a pump from the International Space Station Saturday in an effort to repair a faulty piece of cooling equipment.

Russia's most famous prisoner, former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was freed Saturday and flown to Germany. Russians are wondering why the former oil magnate asked for a pardon after years of denying guilt.

The Obama administration released documents that shed some light on the programs' inception. It also reveals that both the Obama and Bush administrations believe the surveillance programs are important and should be kept secret.

The Texas Camel Corps leads trips through the rugged Big Bend region of West Texas. Indigenous people lived in the area some 9,000 years ago, and for a while, camels called it home, too. In the 1800s, U.S. soldiers brought the animals in to traverse the distance between water supplies for the first American settlers.

In 1979, then-Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs argued the case Smith v. Maryland before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case revolved around the warrantless collection of phone call information. Sachs defended the practice at the time, and he won. But the case now has a new life: the government cites the case as the legal basis for the National Security Agency's bulk collection of metadata from millions of Americans' phone calls. Now, Sachs says that practice goes far beyond what he argued in 1979, and constitutes a "massive intrusion" on Americans' privacy.

It was another tough week for the National Security Agency. First, a federal judge said some of the NSA's surveillance activities were "likely unconstitutional." Then, a White House panel recommended that NSA activities in the U.S. and abroad should be significantly reined in. Host Arun Rath speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman about the week's news and the future of the NSA.

Four U.S. military personnel have been wounded in South Sudan after their aircraft were fired on during an evacuation mission. NPR's Gregory Warner tells host Arun Rath how the political conflict there is on the edge of full-fledged civil war.

By the end of December, interns are nearing the midpoint of their first year of intense, hands-on work with patients. That's long enough for the young doctors to feel committed to their chosen career but not nearly far enough along to see the finish line.