When Sissy Spacek started her film career, she was told to lose her heavy Texas accent. But her famous drawl became one of her greatest assets when Terrence Malick cast her in his 1973 crime drama Badlands.

Spacek played Holly, a teenage girl from South Dakota who became an accomplice on a cross-country murder spree. The film, which also starred Martin Sheen, was narrated in Spacek's distinctive Southern voice.

Five years ago, Twitter was hardly a blip on the political radar. Now, it's a social media giant. President Obama recently urged college student to take to Twitter and pressure their representatives on student loan interest rates. Host Michel Martin discusses the role of Twitter in politics with NPR's Don Gonyea and SocialFlow's Frank Speiser.

Host Michel Martin marks Tell Me More's 5th anniversary on NPR's airwaves by speaking with political strategists Donna Brazile and Ron Christie. They discuss the past five and next five years in politics. They examine the dividing lines of race, gender, and party, and what they mean for our political future.

Cheese is a staple of many diets and, let's face it, it makes us happy. But sometimes we worry about the fat and calories it contains. Add this little guilt trip, plus a rise in veganism over the past few years and an increase in reported allergies to milk and soy, and now you've got a ripening market for cheese alternatives.

More kids than ever have Type 2 diabetes, the kind that used to be referred to as the adult-onset variety.

It's a sign of our sedentary, calorie-rich times. Childhood obesity, a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, is commonplace. For teens, about half of new cases of diabetes are now Type 2 compared with just 3 percent a few decades back.

Ohio officials have decided they will hand over five animals to the widow of a man who last October paralyzed a community by releasing 56 lions, tigers, bears and other exotic animals from his farm.

(The milestone was reached at 2:14 p.m. ET.)

With the addition of some steel columns, 1 World Trade Center has reached a height of symbolic importance.

At 1,271 feet (and growing) it is 21 feet taller than the observation deck on the Empire State Building.

Rare, once-lost historic records about pioneer Chinese immigrants to the Northwest have found a new life online. The digital archive is hosted by Oregon State University. A Chinese-American civic group hopes the document trove can help families locate ancestors gone missing early in the last century. Correspondent Tom Banse reports.

Twelve years ago, BP built a second dock at its Cherry Point refinery north of Bellingham, WA. But they didn’t do an assessment of what that added dock capacity would mean for tanker traffic in Washington waters. Now the Army Corps of Engineers has released a long-awaited study that does just that. Ashley Ahearn reports.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- China, U.S. Rushing To Resolve Crisis Over Blind Activist Chen.

-- After Big Gain In February, Consumer Spending Rose Less In March.