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When it comes to the U.S. role in Syria's civil war, President Obama says he's weighing all options. Whatever he decides, he'll have to make his case to a public that hasn't been paying close attention.

Linguists used to think the human brain had a specific region devoted to understanding language. But brain scans now indicate that regions controlling vision, movement, taste, smell and touch are all called into action when we think of a word, too.

Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of Blackstone Group, is launching a $300 million scholarship program in Beijing. He says his goal is to help to improve the understanding of China and ease Western fears about its growing economic power. "There'll be complete freedom of expression [and] discussion," he says.

The company showed a profit of nearly $220 million for the quarter but it fell short of analysts' expectations. CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed the missed target on higher costs. Company spending is up 60 percent this quarter over the previous one due to hiring and new developments.

Also: Claire Messud tears into an interviewer; a mashup of Marx and Cosmo; Joyce Carol Oates looks at Julian Barnes.

How much do you love your employer? Probably not as much as some employees at Rapid Realty of New York. Their boss offered a 15 percent raise to anyone willing to get a tattoo of the company logo. Forty people took him up on it.

There were 324,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, down 18,000 from the previous week's 342,000. Numbers on April's unemployment rate and job growth are due to be released Friday.

President Obama on Thursday nominated Penny Pritzker to run the Commerce Department. An heiress to the Hyatt hotel empire and one of Forbes' 300 richest Americans, she also served on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Obama also nominated a new U.S. Trade Representative. Michael Froman is a senior economic adviser to the president and a former Citigroup executive.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI moves into his newly renovated residence inside the Vatican, where he will be a 10-minute walk from the reigning Pope Francis.

The recent appointment of Italy's first black Cabinet minister was greeted with racist comments from a handful of political leaders. That has raised questions about whether the nation has a broader problem with bias. Host Michel Martin gets the latest from NPR's Sylvia Poggioli.