From NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Raum.

 

　　Detroit officials say they are looking to the federal government for help for their city which filed for bankruptcy last week. Mayor Dave Bing was asked about a federal bailout this morning on ABC's This Week.

 

　　Not yet, you know, I know the president has a lot on his plate. This is going to add tremendous rate to that. And I want to say we are not the only city that's going to struggle through what we are going through. There are over 100 major urban cities that are having the same problems that we are having.

 

　　Detroit Emergency Manager Kevin Orr was asked the same question on FOX News Sunday.

 

　　We operate on the assumption that we have to cure this process, this problem on our own. We are not expecting the cavalry to come charging in. We are out here on outpost and we have to fix it because we dug this hole.

 

　　Orr said the city had no choice but to file for bankruptcy protection. He said he believes the city will be able to rehabilitate itself and investors will eventually have confidence in Detroit.

 

　　Violence continues in Afghanistan. Militants attacked the compound of a district governor eastern Afghanistan today, killing his brother and several guards. NPR's Sean Carberry reports a female police officer was assassinated in a separate attack.

 

　　A government spokesman says the officer, her husband and other family members were  walking home from visiting in laws when gunmen approached and killed her. The rest of her family was unharmed and assailants escaped. Another female police officer was assassinated outside her home in southern Afghanistan earlier this month. Women make up about 1% of the national police force and many in this conservative country don't condole women joining the police or military. According to the organization Human Rights Watch, female police officers are frequently the victims of sexual assault by their male colleagues. Sean Carberry, NPR News, Kabul.

 

　　The U.S. navy says it's trying to figure out what went wrong during a training exercise in Australia last week. Two U.S. fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. None of the bombs exploded. But that doesn't make Senator Larissa Waters of the Australian Greens party  feel any better about it.

 

　　We are letting the U.S. military drop bombs  on the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef. I mean, have we gone completely mad. Is this how we look after our World Heritage areas now? Letting a foreign pilot drop bombs on it?

 

　　Waters was interviewed by the Australian broadcast corporation. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest network of coral structures. It stretches more than 1,800 miles along the Australian northeast coast.

 

　　In Japan, the party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a decisive victory in an upper house election today, giving in control of both chambers for the first time in six years. This appears to give Abe a mandate to pursue difficult legislative reforms designed to improve the economy.

 

　　This is NPR News.

 

　　Belgium has a new king. Seventy-nine year old King Albert abdicated today to allow his son to become the country's new monarch. King Philippe is 53. He was sworn into the ceremony in Brussels. He took his oath in Belgium's three official languages, Dutch, French and German. He is the seventh king in Belgium, a largely ceremonial position. The prime minister holds political power.

 

　　Fans and scholars of Ernest Hemingway can now study the early life of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner. NPR's Renee Montagne has more.

 

　　The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library digitally uploaded five scrapbooks Sunday on Hemingway's birthday. In them , his mother dutifully chronicled the minutia of his life from birth to age 18. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago  that Frank Lloyd Wright once described as having so many churches for so many good people to go to. In addition to the many church pamphlets, his mother also saved spelling tests, water color paintings of boats and clippings from his high school newspaper. There are also photos of the youngsters with guns and fishing rods. Evidence of the many summers he spent at his family's vacation home in Michigan. And here, perhaps a sign of his future, under one photo, his mother wrote, Can cock my own gun. Renee Montagne NPR News, Washington.

 

　　House Speaker John Boehner was asked in an interview aired this morning why the Congress is passing so few laws these days. He said Congress are to be judged on how many laws it repeals. The Ohio Republican told CBS's Face the Nation the U.S. already has more laws than the administration could ever enforce.

 

　　I'm Nora Raum, NPR News, in Washington.