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The two suspects in Monday's deadly Boston Marathon explosions and the Thursday night murder of a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are brothers from a former Soviet republic who were in the United States legally for years and lived together in a Cambridge, Mass., apartment.

The Tsarnaev brothers were rooted in two different cultures: both the war-torn Caucasus region, with its vestiges of the Chechen conflicts; and America, where their father scraped a meager living and the older boy especially struggled to fit in. Host Jacki Lyden talks with Julia Ioffe, a Russian immigrant and writer for The New Republic.

After more than a week of gruesome media coverage, linguist Geoff Nunberg takes a close look at the words we use to describe events that mesmerize and horrify, that sensitize and desensitize, that transfix and repel us at the same time.

The number of Americans with diabetes is set to skyrocket in the next 40 years. Social media has given patients an online support network and information repository for dealing with their disease. Big drug companies are hopping on the bandwagon as well.

Islamist rebels are among the groups fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, raising concerns in the West about what their role would be in a Syria without Assad. NPR's Kelly McEvers recently spent some time with these Islamist fighters in the embattled city of Aleppo.

Mitt Romney is set to depart from London Saturday, after three days of photo ops and closed meetings. But his assessment of London's handling of the games drew a rebuke from Prime Minister David Cameron. Host Scott Simon chats with Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman about the visit and the perceptions formed by Romney's hosts.

The incentives are stacking up in favor of making things at home. As General Electric discovered in its Appliance Park in Louisville, Ky., big things can happen when marketers and designers talk to assembly line operators. Collaboration is one piece of how U.S. factories are becoming more efficient — and enticing.

Democrats have seized on rape comments made by Rep. Todd Akin. The issue of women's health and abortion for rape victims has put Republicans on the defensive. Tuesday, party members met in Tampa to put together their platform, and the abortion language includes no exceptions for rape or incest.

BP has been banned from seeking new contracts with the federal government. It's the latest blow, with the company set to appear in a New Orleans federal court next month to work out its guilty pleas to criminal charges in connection with the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The oil giant has agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in a criminal settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. But far more money could be at stake in civil litigation stemming from the oil disaster.

Syrian opposition figures are meeting in Qatar, trying to forge a more coherent coalition to counter President Bashar Assad. Their ranks include militant jihadists as well as peaceful protesters. Host Scott Simon talks to Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy about Syrian opposition and recent troubling reports that some rebels have committed war crimes.