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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this TELL ME MORE from NPR News. This is the season of reflection for many religious people around the world. The importance of repentance and forgiveness are often a focus this time of year. But faith leaders aren't the only people who talk about the importance of forgiveness.

Recently, on this program, we talked about the work of psychologist who are trying to teach people how to practice forgiveness. They note that there are often physical and emotional benefits to forgiveness.

Dr. Ben Carson is known for blazing trails in the neurological field — including breakthrough work separating conjoined twins. Now he's making waves for his political views. Host Michel Martin talks with Carson about the current state of health care in America and his upcoming speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Who could have predicted this?

Well, apparently not "the world's most famous predictions market."

Iran and Pakistan are moving closer to completion of a nearly 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline linking the two countries, despite U.S. objections that it could become a source of hard currency for Tehran in defiance of international sanctions.

Monday marks the beginning of construction on Pakistan's part of the pipeline, which will consist of a 485-mile run. Iran has already completed most of its 760 miles of the link, which will stretch from Assaluyeh along Iran's Persian Gulf coast to Nawabshah in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- While U.S And South Korea Militaries Drill, 'Bombast Continues' From The North.

-- In Ohio, Town Mourns Death Of Six Teens Killed In Crash.

As NPR's Louisa Lim reported Monday on Morning Edition, a week of inflamed rhetoric from North Korea — including talk of a preemptive nuclear strike on the U.S. — is being followed by word that the North has carried through on its threat to annul the 1953 armistice that ended open warfare on the peninsula and has stopped answering calls on the telephone hotline to the South.

Authorities have pulled more than 2,800 dead pigs out of Shanghai's main source of tap water — the Huangpu River. And they're still counting, according to reports on Monday.

The discovery has raised fears of drinking water contamination in China's most populous city, although state media reports that officials have run tests and determined that so far there's nothing to fear.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Warren, Ohio, is in mourning after the deaths of six teenagers who died Sunday when the SUV they were in ran off a highway, flipped over a guardrail and landed in a small pond.

"It's going to be a rough week, a rough rest of the school year," said Michael Notar, Warren school superintendent, as NBC News reports.

An Indiana woman wanted to honor her late husband with a headstone shaped like a couch, and featuring Indianapolis Colts and NASCAR logos. St. Joseph's Catholic Church said the headstone is completely inappropriate — so the widow sued.

Myron Robinson managed to score a year of free Netflix videos and online streaming by tweeting a photo of his new Netflix tattoo. The company tweeted back, "No way! Free year for you!"

If you've had wrist and shoulder pain from clicking a mouse, relief may be in sight. This spring, a new motion sensing device will go on sale that will make it possible for the average computer user to browse the Web and open documents with a wave of a finger.

The Leap Motion Controller is on display at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, for the first time. It's one of the most talked about startups at the conference, where some 26,000 people have gathered to see emerging tech companies.

It's not the first study that finds the lowly aspirin may protect against the deadliest kind of skin cancer, but it is one of the largest.

And it adds to a mounting pile of studies suggesting that cheap, common aspirin lowers the risk of many cancers — of the colon, breast, esophagus, stomach, prostate, bladder and ovary.

The American conservative movement has its homecoming this week: the Conservative Political Action Conference, where everyone from politicians to peddlers is out to inspire the faithful.

Last year, one of the headline speakers was former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who harked back to the second-ever CPAC in 1975, when Ronald Reagan laid out a vision for a conservative Republican Party.

She invoked his image of a banner of bold colors, not pale pastels.

The Last Five Years originally ran off-Broadway in 2002. Cited as one of Time magazine's "Ten Best of 2001," it won Drama Desk awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics.

There are only two characters in the musical, Jamie and Cathy. Jamie is a young novelist and Cathy is a struggling actress. Told in reverse chronological order, the drama shows what happens when an artistic couple's romance fizzles out.

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now, we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free." — A Sand County Almanac

A Sand County Almanac, a collection of essays and observations, was written decades ago by Aldo Leopold, the father of the American conservation movement.

Christa and Cara Parravani were identical twins. When they were 28, Cara died of a drug overdose, and Christa spiraled into depression.

In her new book, Her: A Memoir, Christa explores their bond of sisterhood, which went beyond blood into the elliptical world of twinhood.

Both were artists, one a writer and the other a photographer. Both married young. Both lived through a hardscrabble childhood with a troubled mother. But Cara's path diverged after she was attacked and raped at age 24.

Militants in Nigeria have killed seven hostages, including three Westerners, in an act the British foreign secretary called "pure, cold-blooded murder."

The seven hostages — four Lebanese and one British, one Greek and one Italian citizen – worked for the Setrapo construction company. They were kidnapped Feb 16 from Jama'are, a town about 125 miles north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. Ansaru, a group that's an offshoot of Boko Haram, the militant Islamist movement, claimed responsibility for the killings.