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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. The big headline out of the U.N. general assembly has been about the speech by the Israeli prime minister who warned of the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Other speakers didn't get nearly as much attention.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The assembly will hear an address by his Excellency Hamid Karzai, president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

MARTIN: Hamid Karzai's address made little news, despite highlighting efforts to bring the Taliban back into mainstream Afghan society.

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

About 10 years ago, doctors in southern China started seeing a lot of patients with signs of what looked like a new illness.

DAVID QUAMMEN: It's like a very, very bad flu that gets people coughing and wheezing and with lung blockage.

MARTIN: That's David Quammen. He's a science writer who writes about the emergence of human diseases in his new book, "Spillover."

QUAMMEN: It causes a throbbing headache and a high fever. And then in some cases, if I recall correctly, it begins to cause organ shutdown, as well.

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(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIFE IS A BALLGAME")

SISTER WINONA CARR: (Singing) Life is a ball game being played each day. Life is a ball game...

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

If life is a ballgame, then Mike Pesca is our man in the dugout giving us the play by play and the big picture. Pesca, how the heck have you been? It's been a long time.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: I've been well.

MARTIN: OK, good. Well, I've missed you. I can't wait to hear what's on tap for this week. What's on your mind?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is running for re-election next Sunday. With some polls predicting a tight race, the youth vote in Venezuela is shaping up to be crucial.

That has both the populist president and his challenger working hard to appeal to younger voters who are worried about high crime and jobs — and who can remember no other president than Chavez.

Out on the campaign trail, Angie Rivas passes out fliers and organizes other young people as they canvass this gritty metropolis in a van belting out hip music.

Update 10:22 a.m. ET: Not Necessarily An Insider Attack

According to a ISAF statement, the attack that killed a NATO service member and a civilian contractor in Afghanistan on Saturday may not have been an insider attack, as originally reported.

In the statement, the International Security Assistance Force says:

President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney both barnstormed Ohio this week, holding rallies just miles apart in the state's northwest. Obama's event was smack in the middle of Wood County, with Romney's just north.

The county may have a population of only 125,000, but it has an outsized importance in presidential elections.

"Since 1960, [Wood County] has predicted every election except for one," says Wood County GOP Chairman Matt Reger. "I think that it is a microcosm of Ohio, which in some parts is a microcosm of the United States."