World

An audio postcard of a cooking tour of Morocco.

Neat rows of grapevines run down the slopes of the Cotes de Beaune, all the way to the gravel driveway at Chateau de Corton Andre. The castle's traditional Burgundy black-and-yellow-tiled roof glistens in the autumn sun.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. In Sweden, Anna Erickson got a letter accepting her into the local preschool. It had gone out to everyone in town born in '07. Great, except for one detail: Anna was born in 1907. So the 105-year-old won't be showing up to class. In New York, the elegant Waldorf-Astoria experienced a blast from the past this week when a man returned one of the hotel's silver-trimmed teapots, pilfered back in the 1930s. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

As the Christmas-themed floats cruised down the street, a man began shouting, claiming that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Apparently he'd gotten into the Christmas spirits instead of the Christmas spirit, and he was arrested for public intoxication.

For Thanksgiving, NASA's space food experts always try to make sure astronauts get to enjoy traditional holiday fare, even if its not exactly home cooking. And being so far from home, astronauts can get pretty attached to their comfort foods.

This year, Kevin Ford, the commander of Expedition 34 and currently working at the International Space Station, says he has the ingredients to make one favorite Thanksgiving dish the NASA nutritionists may not have anticipated: Candied yams with marshmallows.

The yams are thermostablized and come in a plastic pouch.

Ethiopia has one of the world's fastest growing economies, but in some ways it's decades behind in terms of development. Transportation remains largely by foot, bicycle or donkey. Ethiopia hopes that by restoring the century-old imperial railway, and adding thousands of new miles of lines, the nation will be propelled into the future.

Some analysts have suggested that one impetus for the Israeli military strikes in Gaza is the upcoming election season in Israel. With elections set for January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu changed the political landscape last month by announcing that his Likud Party would run along with a right-wing party led by hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Likud Party leaders complained that they were left in the dark before the prime minister effectively vaulted Lieberman into the No. 2 political position.

The cease-fire between Hamas and Israel has been a political boost for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. The Islamist leader spent hours in meetings and on the phone with world leaders, including President Obama, and got results: a cessation of violence that puts Egypt back on the international map. But Morsi faces a test Thursday night, when negotiations on the details begin.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Maen Rashid Areikat is chief of the PLO delegation in Washington, D.C. That means he is the de facto ambassador of the Palestinian Authority in the United States. Welcome to the program.

MAEN RASHID AREIKAT: Thank you.

HOST: I want to ask you first about what we just heard Leila Fadel say. Is Egypt now the guarantor of this agreement in the Gaza Strip?