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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. First of all, you might be noticing that the program sounds a little bit different today. We are having some technical difficulties that are not allowing us to play some of the music and other elements you're used to hearing. But we're still going to have great conversations.

Presidential speeches are usually meant to inspire — and sometimes challenge — Americans. Host Michel Martin continues her State of the Union conversation with a group of diverse people: Oakland Lewis, who is looking for work, Gaby Pacheco, an immigrant rights activist, and Trei Dudley, a college student.

Beginning March 1st, many people who receive social security and other federal benefits will no longer receive paper checks. The Treasury Department says sending payments electronically will save nearly a billion dollars. But some experts say it could affect the "un-banked." Host Michel Martin talks with The Wall Street Journal's Sudeep Reddy.

"When whatever forces put you down, you don't stay down."

Kenyan writer and professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o tells NPR's Michel Martin that this is something he constantly tells his children.

It is advice that has kept him going since he was born in 1938, at a time when his nation was still a British colony.

Firstborn children end up a little taller, smarter and richer than their younger siblings, on average.

But are the eldest kids more likely to develop diabetes and heart disease when they grow up, too?

Since what's said and written about a State of the Union address on the morning after can determine what's most remembered about such speeches, let's look at Wednesday's headlines:

-- NPR's It's All Politics: "Obama To Congress: With Or Without You."

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Republican Senator Marco Rubio delivered the Republican reply to the State of the Union. In mid-critique, Rubio wanted water but water was out of reach. The senator ducked down, reached off screen, found it, sipped it and resumed. But the Twittersphere had left the building. Water tweets flooded the nation. Rubio tweeted too - a picture of his water bottle. You're listening to MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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

We most recently updated the top of this post at 1:25 p.m. ET.

While authorities have canceled the "tactical alert" that had been in place during the manhunt for accused killer Christopher Jordan Dorner, the case has not been closed because it's not absolutely certain that Dorner is dead, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman just told reporters.

So, Los Angeles police officers and their families who have been under protection while Dorner was on the run will continue to get that protection until his death has been confirmed.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

In New York, it's hard to get a dinner reservation to a trendy restaurant on Valentine's Day. And apparently, for hipsters in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, it can be tough to get a spot on a romantic tour of a sewage treatment plant. New York's Department of Environmental Protection says this Valentine's Day, it had to add an extra tour because of the demand. Why the sewage plant tour is so trendy? Hmm, maybe the pheromones.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with an unlikely call for assistance.

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There may have been only a half dozen times all night when both sides of the aisle all stood and clapped in approval. One of those moments was when President Obama called for overhauling immigration.

Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep and NPR reporters give a "close read" of President Obama's State of the Union speech. In some cases they are checking facts. In others, they are asking what some parts of the speech really mean.

U.S. companies that have their networks routinely penetrated and their trade secrets stolen cannot be surprised by a new National Intelligence Estimate on the cyber-espionage threat. The classified NIE, the first-ever focusing on cybersecurity, concludes that the U.S. is the target of a major espionage campaign, with China the leading culprit.

The political crisis in Tunisia is deepening after last week's murder of a prominent secular politician. Tunisians are increasingly divided over their country's government and future, just two years after collectively overthrowing the dictator in a popular revolution.

British police raided a slaughterhouse and meat firm in two different corners of Britain on Tuesday in connection with the growing horse meat scandal.

Gentlemen of a certain age might make a nostalgic note that today, Valentine's eve, is the 80th birthday of Kim Novak.

One of Miss Novak's most famous movie roles was in Picnic, where she played the gorgeous ingenue who could've married the son of the richest man in town but instead fell for a hunk of a bum who was an old football star.

Picnic is being revived on Broadway, as is Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, where — guess what? — Maggie, played by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson, is married to a hunk of a bum who is a former football star.

Kirk Siegler talks to Melissa Block for an update on the search for former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner. A man that authorities identified as Dorner was holed up in a cabin near Big Bear Lake, Calif., on Tuesday evening. Hundreds of officers surrounded the home. Dorner is wanted for questioning in three murders and one attempted murder.

One of the long-standing knocks against electric cars is that it can be hard for the machines to hold a charge in cold weather. That's exactly what New York Times reporter John Broder says he found when he took a Tesla Model S on a road trip from Washington, D.C., to Connecticut.

Comcast Corp. said Tuesday it will complete its buyout of NBCUniversal from GE for about $16.7 billion, ahead of schedule. Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, has owned 51 percent of NBCUniversal since their $28 billion merger in 2011.

NBCUniversal owns several familiar news and entertainment brands, including NBC, CNBC, Universal Pictures, Telemundo, USA Network and Universal Parks and Resorts.

President Obama is expected to put specifics behind the vision he outlined in his inaugural address a few weeks ago. Get live updates from the speech and join NPR journalists in analyzing what it could mean for the future.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A common vitamin supplement appears to dramatically reduce a woman's risk of having a child with autism.

A study of more than 85,000 women in Norway found that those who started taking folic acid before getting pregnant were about 40 percent less likely to have a child who developed the disorder, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Sometimes the best way to advance an argument is by looking back.

President Obama's second inaugural address was filled with historical allusions. His State of the Union address on Tuesday, which will lay out a long list of agenda items for the year and his second term, is likely to employ fewer references to the past.

North Korea's latest nuclear weapons test is much more powerful than the previous two, according to estimates made by instruments that measure seismic waves from the blast. It's about the size of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in World War II.

But it's not so easy to verify the claim that the nuclear explosive has also been miniaturized. That's a critical claim because a small warhead would be essential if the rogue regime chose to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Big bombs are easier to make, but they aren't all that useful as a threat.

Plenty of people are ready to offer advice on noshing options when it comes to the Super Bowl. But what do you serve when the occasion for gathering in front of our screens is President Obama's State of the Union address?

When NPR White House correspondent Ari Shapiro posed that question to his 125,000 Facebook followers earlier Tuesday, plenty of people jumped at the chance to toss off a bon mot.* Among our favorites: