NPR: PHILADELPHIA actress Amy Walker has become an instant YouTube star with a video of herself performing 21 different accents in two and a half minutes.

RELATED: Pioneering ’60s band The Dave Clark Five will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York later today. The group’s induction comes just weeks after lead singer, Mike Smith, died in hospital from pneumonia. Smith, 64, was paralyzed from the rib cage down following a fall at his home in Spain in 2003. Madonna, Leonard Cohen, The Ventures and John Mellencamp will also be inducted into the prestigious roll of honour tonight. Justin Timberlake will induct Madonna into the Hall of Fame, while Iggy & The Stooges will perform in honour of the singer. […]

FRESH AIR On February 26, Conductor Lorin Maazel led the New York Philharmonic on an unprecedented concert in Pyongyang, North Korea, at the invitation of the North Korean government. It was the first time a major American orchestra had performed in the communist country. The program opened with the national anthems of both North Korea and the United States, then moved on to music from Wagner’s Lohengrin, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony and Gershwin’s An American in Paris; the orchestra encored with the overture from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and with “Arirang,” a much-loved Korean folk song described by the Associated Press […]

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Remembering the day-to-day psychodramas of [the ’90s] still floods my frontal cortex with waves of loathing and anxiety. The further away you are from them, the easier it is to think they’re fine. Up close they are an intolerable, endless, soul-sapping soap opera. The media are marveling at the Clintons’ several near-death political experiences in this campaign. Hasn’t it occurred to them how creepily familiar all this is? The Clintons live off psychodrama. They both love to push themselves to the brink of catastrophe and then accomplish the last-minute, nail-biting self-rescue. Before too long the entire story becomes […]

(Welcome CNN.com readers!) ASSOCIATED PRESS: A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows. Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed. How do the drugs get into the water? People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of […]

THE SUN: Fraudsters used dead rocker Kurt Cobain’s social security number to buy a $3.2 million house, it emerged yesterday. The Nirvana frontman’s widow Courtney Love revealed that identity thieves had also set up 188 credit cards in her name. This week Courtney, 43, met cops in Van Nuys, LA, to give them details of a probe by forensic accountants Kroll which discovered £36million missing. Cheques had been stolen and cars bought by villains. “It was fraud after fraud. But nobody believed me until now. I did a check on my deceased husband’s social security number and he has a […]

NEW YORK TIMES: GARY GYGAX died last week and the universe did not collapse. This surprises me a little bit, because he built it. I’m not talking about the cosmological, Big Bang part. Everyone who reads blogs knows that a flying spaghetti monster made all that. But Mr. Gygax co-created the game Dungeons & Dragons, and on that foundation of role-playing and polyhedral dice he constructed the social and intellectual structure of our world. Dungeons & Dragons was a brilliant pastiche, mashing together tabletop war games, the Conan-the-Barbarian tales of Robert E. Howard and a magic trick from the fantasy […]