On Monday, things went back to normal at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky. TMMK production has returned to 100 percent, up from 30 percent production levels the plant experienced from mid-April up to last week. The Georgetown production line was hurt by parts shortages caused by the continuing impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The largest Toyota plant in North America stopped the line for two non-production days each week in an effort to conserve parts supplies.

President Obama is giving the warmest possible welcome to an ally in some political trouble.

Obama is not only greeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House Tuesday, but will fete her with a state dinner and present her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Coming shortly after Obama's week-long trip to Europe, the red-carpet treatment for Merkel is a signal, some observers say, that the administration is giving added weight to the importance of its friendships in Europe.

Paul Hockenos is author of Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany.

L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace.

Surely Napoleon found audacity a formula for success in war, politics and l'amour. It was also, ultimately, his undoing. What we see in the Anthony Weiner case is something similar on a pathetic scale.

What Dominque Strauss-Kahn is accused of doing to a hotel maid is terrible crime. What Weiner is wrestling with seems more a series of online dalliances. What he tried to get away with is, relatively speaking, rather lonely and small.

Fifty-two Harlan Countians, primarily residents of Benham, Cumberland and Lynch, have been indicted on drug charges. The indictments followed a year-long undercover investigation that primarily revolved around the sale of OxyContin, hydrocodone and Suboxone. A majority of the pills purchased during the investigation originated in Florida, officials said.

Starting Wednesday, small amounts of marijuana or prescription pills may not land a violator in jail. Under provisions of House Bill 463 set to take effect this week, law enforcement officials will issue citations instead of making arrests on many misdemeanor offenses. Hopkinsville Chief of Police Guy Howie said his department has already been issuing citations for some misdemeanor offenses. Still, he admitted any time there is a new procedure there is also an adjustment period. “It’s going to be a change,” Howie said. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”

It is a horrific sign of what was to come.

In New York today, the Simon Wiesenthal Center will reveal what it believes is the original copy of Adolf Hitler's first known writing about his anti-Semitic view of the world.

Dr. Christopher Braden, the chief of food- and waterborne diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doesn't expect the Escherichia coli bug causing serious illness in northern Europe to leapfrog the Atlantic anytime soon.

Still, Braden tells Shots, "I am concerned about something similar that could happen in the United States."

Syrian opposition leaders were bracing Tuesday for a major military crackdown in a northern border town in retaliation for what the government said was an ambush by armed gunmen that killed 120 security troops.

The government has vowed to respond "decisively" to Monday's alleged attack in Jisr al-Shughour on the border with Turkey. NPR's Deborah Amos said activists reported that many residents were fleeing the town of about 50,000 in anticipation of a brutal response.

Good morning.