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With Paula Deen, it's not really about the butter, the mayonnaise or the fried cheesecake. For fans, it's about that feeling that you're sitting around the kitchen table with a friend.

Launched Saturday morning, the six-wheeled Mars Science Laboratory boasts a suite of high-tech instruments to study the planet's geology. It will land on the planet in August 2012, lowered gently to the surface on a cable by a rocket-powered helicopter.

The sides reached a tentative agreement early Saturday to end the 149-day lockout and hope to begin the delayed season with a marquee triple-header Dec. 25. Most of a season that seemed in jeopardy of being lost entirely will be salvaged if both sides approve the handshake deal.

Many former members of Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party are running for parliament, creating stiff competition for newcomers seeking office across Egypt and prompting cries for the interim Egyptian government to ban their candidacy. The military rulers had said they would pass a so-called "treachery law" preventing their candidacy, but have not acted thus far. NPR's Soraya Nelson reports.

The failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal on reducing federal government deficits is being called another example of dysfunction and gridlock in Washington. New attention is now focused back on the plan put forth last year by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission, a blueprint that a number of Democrats and Republicans endorsed. Host Scott Simon talks with former Sen. Alan Simpson, former co-chair of that deficit reduction commission, about the failed negotiations of the supercommittee.

Bill Bratton is the former chief of police in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. He helped introduce the system of predictive policing and calls it the next era of crime prevention and an evolution of community policing. Host Scott Simon speaks with Bratton, who's been tapped by the University of California Davis to lead the independent investigation of pepper spraying of student protesters by campus police.

The nation's retailers are hoping consumers open their wallets and spend this holiday shopping season. Amid all the worries about the economy and high unemployment, there are some early indications that this year might be slightly better than last. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.

This year's historic drought killed thousands of evergreen trees in Texas and Oklahoma. Now Christmas tree farmers are scrambling to meet holiday demands. Host Scott Simon checks in with Karen Barfield, owner of Tinsel Time Christmas Tree Farm in New Caney, Texas.

Turkish rhetoric has now escalated to the fullest, with Friday's call by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave power. Turkey insists it won't move unilaterally, but pressure is building to protect civilian life in Syria.

This year, the Air Force says it will recruit more pilots to fly unmanned aircraft than manned fighters and bombers combined. Here's what that shift means for the military, for potential pilots, and the way we think — or don't think — about war.