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Tensions with Iran these days are as high as they've been in years, and managing them will be one of the top challenges facing the Obama administration this year. With Iran threatening to block U.S. ships from entering the Persian Gulf, and the United States vowing not to back down, the stage seems to be set for war. And yet, what's happening with Iran right now may be more of an economic confrontation than a military standoff.

Americans' religious liberties are under attack — or at least that's what some conservatives say.

Newt Gingrich warns the U.S. is becoming a secular country, which would be a "nightmare." Rick Santorum says there's a clash between "man's laws and God's laws." And in a campaign ad, Rick Perry decried what he called "Obama's war on religion," saying there is "something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly ... pray in school."

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is no stranger to budget battles.

He was head of the Office of Management and Budget and White House chief of staff under President Clinton. But now, the former congressman faces what could be some of the toughest budget decisions of his career — how to cut more than $480 billion from the Pentagon's bottom line.

Once more, the great media consensus was confounded. Saturday night's debate at St. Anselm's College in Manchester, N.H., produced another battle among half a dozen presidential contenders, much like a dozen before it. Front-runner Mitt Romney was neither knocked out nor even knocked down. He was scarcely even knocked around.

Once again, the evening ended with the bruises pretty equally distributed among the contestants. And with the New Hampshire primary bearing down on Tuesday, virtually no time remains for Romney's rivals to bring him down.

Many of the journalists and professional political types who dutifully watched Saturday night's Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire probably had the same thought occur to them at several points: "For this we missed most of the NFL wildcard game between the New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions?"

Tim Goeglein worked in the George W. Bush White House for eight years, and it was in the Oval Office that the president forgave him.

While working as an aide to Bush, Goeglein repeatedly plagiarized columns he sent to his hometown newspaper under his byline. When his actions were discovered, he went to Bush to apologize, fully expecting to be fired.

"Before I could get barely a few words out," he says, "he looked at me, and he said, 'Tim, grace and mercy are real. I have known grace and mercy in my life, and I'm extending it to you. You're forgiven.' "

While people tend not to know much about New Hampshire, when it comes to presidential politics, the small state tucked into northern New England has some clout.

For the better part of the past week, all eyes have been focused on the 42nd most populous state, which holds its primary Tuesday. But who are the voters there, who play such a critical role in selecting the nation's next leader?

It's pretty easy to identify the classic stereotypes most outsiders associate with New Hampshire. Just ask long-time resident Earl Wingate:

Each of the Republican presidential candidate claims to be the true conservative — but who is? And what does that mean, anyway? Host Guy Raz looks at the state of conservatism particularly as it applies to the GOP candidates in a roundtable discussion with Dan McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative; Matthew Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.; and Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Rick Santorum has complained about being disregarded during a string of Republican presidential debates. The former Pennsylvania senator has a point (more on that in a moment), but likely won't for long: He should be at the center of attention during a pair of televised debates this weekend that lead into the New Hampshire primary.

An effort to halt public benefits for undocumented students in California hit a snag Friday. As Bob Hensley of Capital Public Radio reports for NPR News, a petition to get the issue on the state ballot has failed:

Supporters of a proposed ballot initiative to rescind a law providing financial aid for California students who are illegally living in the state came up more than 55,000 signatures short.

So when the law goes into effect next year, it will allow undocumented students enrolled at public universities to apply for state loans and scholarships.

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Now the story about one woman's effort to bring attention to the invisible wounds of war. The playwright Kate Wenner says she was stunned by investigations that showed thousands of U.S. troops were coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injuries and didn't receive the help they need. So Ms. Wenner decided to raise awareness through art. She's written a play about troops with traumatic brain injuries.

NPR's Daniel Zwerdling went to a production and has this report.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has been dropping around the country as the new year begins. Companies are laying off fewer workers, and hiring may be picking up. The U.S. Labor Department reported yesterday that the unemployment rate is now 8.5 percent, the lowest level in almost three years.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the shootings in Tucson, Arizona, which killed six people and wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Memorial events are taking place all weekend.

NPR's Ted Robbins has been there and tells us how people are commemorating an event they cannot forget.

It's the opening day of the NFL wild card playoffs, but really, are any of those teams going to make a run at Green Bay or New England and their marquee quarterbacks? NPR Sports Correspondent Tom Goldman joins host Scott Simon to talk about Wild Card Weekend and more.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Voters in New Hampshire are getting a last close-up glimpse of the candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination. But the number of candidates is dwindling in this last weekend before Tuesday's primary vote. Now, in a moment, we'll hear how Congressman Ron Paul's New Hampshire bid is shaping up. First, we're joined by NPR's national political correspondent Don Gonyea in Manchester. Don, thanks very much for being with us.

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And Texas Congressman Ron Paul took a break from the campaign trail following his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, but today he is back in New Hampshire. He'll take part in tonight's debate with the other Republican candidates for president. Yesterday, Dr. Paul addressed an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in an airplane hangar in Nashua and took particular aim at one of his competitors, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.

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President Obama may have riled Republicans with his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but there's bipartisan agreement on Mr. Cordray's qualifications. He served as Ohio's attorney general. Before that, he was Ohio state treasurer. For more, we're joined by our friend from the business world, New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera. Joe, thanks for being with us.

JOE NOCERA: Thanks for having me, Scott.

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The honey bee population of North America is in decline. That fact has even acquired an acronym, CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. A number of theories have been advanced as to why honey bees are dwindling, including viruses, mites and various fungi.

This week, researchers at San Francisco State University published a paper with a finding that bees on their own campus have been invaded by parasitic flies, who lay their eggs in the bees abdomen which causes the bees to become disoriented - falling down drunk disoriented.

Eleven-year-old Gloriana Hamphill, known as Glory, feels like she's about to have the worst summer of her life. It's 1964 in Hanging Moss, Miss., a year that will teach her about bigotry, loyalty and bravery. Former librarian Augusta Scattergood talks with host Scott Simon about her first young adult fiction novel,Glory Be.

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Shakespeare's Iago is one of the great defining villains of literature. He masquerades as a friend, and that disguises his schemes to manipulate, betray and destroy. He fools Othello into believing that his wife is betraying him - she's not - then manipulates his old friend and commander into having her killed in a fit of engineered jealousy.

Iowa and New Hampshire are not demographic snapshots of America. They are smaller, less diverse and more rural than California, New York or Illinois, which have a lot more votes.

But Iowa and New Hampshire win a lot of attention early in an election year. As an old political columnist, now departed, once told me over the din of clinking cups in an Iowa diner, "If the first presidential caucuses were in Hawaii, congress would give federal subsidies to make gasoline out of pineapples."

Anyone who lives with a cat knows that fruits and vegetables do not top the feline food chart. So it's a surprise to hear that some cats do crave mushrooms.

This tale starts with Ellen Jacobson, an amateur mushroom hunter in Colorado. As she was cooking up a bolete mushroom, her cat Cashew started brushing against her legs. She put some of the mushrooms in a bowl, and Cashew gobbled them up. "He didn't like them raw," she told The Salt. "He only liked them cooked."

President Obama acknowledged Friday that the economic recovery has a long way to go. Still, he was able to share some good news. The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent.

"Obviously, we have a lot more work to do," he said, "but it is important for the American people to recognize that we've now added 3.2 million new private sector jobs over the last 22 months."

Those better-than-expected numbers could help Obama, as he tries to hang on to his own job.

When Mitt Romney kicked off this past week with a blitzkrieg tour of Iowa, he had no way of knowing just how true this statement would be: "You guys in Dubuque, you're the best. Get out there and vote tomorrow. I need every vote!"

He wasn't kidding. When the final numbers were tallied in Iowa, the former Massachusetts governor edged his closest rival, Rick Santorum, by the smallest margin in Iowa history — just eight votes.