National and World News from NPR

World leaders are meeting with President Obama in his hometown of Chicago for a two-day NATO summit focused heavily on Afghanistan.

Obama warned of the difficulty ahead as the summit confronted questions about Afghanistan's future. The summit kicked off on Sunday with a meeting between Obama and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, the two key players to determine that future.

"We still have a lot of work to do and there will be great challenges ahead," Obama said. "The loss of life continues in Afghanistan and there will be hard days ahead."

Adam Lambert captivated America in 2009 when he almost won American Idol. Lambert was brash, likable and glamorous, but he soon became better known for being the first openly gay Idol contender.

Though Lambert finished as the runner-up, his popularity and talent won him a recording deal. He released his second studio album, Trespassing, this week — just a few months after his 30th birthday.

The former Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, has died.

Family members tell The Associated Press and Reuters that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi died at home after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 60.

Many Egyptians believe Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister to be corrupt. Yet Ahmed Shafiq, who is running for president in Egypt's historic elections this month, has climbed to second in opinion polls. Experts say his growing popularity highlights many Egyptians' desires for stability, which, as NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports, is something they believe the retired Air Force general can provide.

World leaders are gathered in Chicago for a two-day NATO summit starting Sunday morning. This is the third time the U.S. has hosted a NATO summit since the alliance was formed, and the first time it's being held in a city other than Washington, D.C. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the agenda will center on a theme: Afghanistan.

The White House is urging war-weary NATO leaders to dig deeper into their pockets to share the commitment to get Afghanistan's forces to stand up on their own so U.S. and NATO forces can pull out in 2014. Host Rachel Martin speaks with Ben Rhodes, White House spokesperson on national security issues.

Host Rachel Martin takes a moment to remember William Henderson Foote, a black federal agent in Mississippi in the late 1800s. He was honored this week by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Julie McCarthy in Islamabad and Quil Lawrence in Kabul about the situation on the ground in that region of Afghanistan.

Last fall, President Abe Lincoln lost his sword. The copper blade went missing from atop Lincoln's burial site in Illinois. Authorities eventually recovered it, but in two pieces. Now, as Rachel Otwell reports, the artifact has been replaced.

Host Rachel Martin talks with China scholar Perry Link about activist Chen Guangcheng's arrival in the U.S. Link has followed the lives of Chinese dissidents involved with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.