All Things Considered from NPR

Gov. Rick Perry is back in Texas, after dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He's returned battered and bruised, but he still has strong supporters in his home state.

More than two dozen commandoes from the Navy's SEAL Team 6 swept into an encampment in northern Somalia Tuesday, rescuing American Jessica Buchanan and her Danish colleague some three months after they were taken hostage. The two were in the country as aid workers. The SEALs killed nine of the captors and apprehended three others. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman tells Robert Siegel the latest.

Newt Gingrich celebrated his win in the South Carolina primary with a fundraising blitz — a two-day push to raise as much money as possible. The campaign says it brought in $2 million. That money will come in handy in Florida. But the need for quick fundraising shows the precarious state of the Gingrich campaign's finances.

The battle over Iran's nuclear program escalated Monday as the European Union announced an embargo on importing oil from Iran.

For years, Europe has been reluctant to join the United States in imposing tough sanctions on Iran. The United States years ago stopped buying Iranian oil, while European nations including France, Spain, Italy, and Greece kept up their purchases. European countries right now buy about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran.

John Hawkes' conversation with Melissa Block on today's All Things Considered begins as many of his conversations might: with her noting that when she told people she was coming to talk to him and rattled off his credits, she got a response that he undoubtedly gets a lot: "Ohhh, he's that guy."

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The South is cleaning up from yet another round of devastating tornadoes. The storms started first in Arkansas, then brought baseball-sized hail, heavy wind and lightning to parts of Tennessee and Mississippi. But it was Alabama that saw the worst of it. At least two people died with 100 more injured.

As NPR's Russell Lewis reports, the overnight storms hit communities still struggling to recover from a series of devastating tornadoes last year.

NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins Melissa Block from Florida to discuss Monday night's Republican presidential debate.