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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with labor woes at AT&T.

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MONTAGNE: AT&T and union officials have agreed to extend contract negotiations, preventing a mass walkout by some 40,000 unionized workers. The deadline to agree on the new contract had been yesterday. AT&T is seeking concessions from its workers, including cuts in pension contributions, and also an increase in health care premiums. The union is calling those concessions unrealistic.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne. The shooting was supposed to stop in Syria tomorrow. Now we can't be sure. Syria's regime made last-minute demands that appear to have derailed the peace plan, including a ceasefire scheduled for Tuesday.

The Syrian government is under increasing pressure, as we'll hear in a moment. But it remains defiant, as NPR's Grant Clark reports.

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The Masters Golf Tournament finished dramatically yesterday in a sudden-death playoff that ended with Bubba Watson sporting the green jacket. Christine Brennan was there. She's sports columnist for USA Today and a frequent guest on our program. She joins us this morning from Augusta.

Good morning Christine.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Good morning, Renee.

Over the weekend, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace died in Connecticut. Wallace, a star of that CBS news magazine for 40 years, stood out because of his seeming willingness to ask anybody anything. In 2005, he sat down for an interview with Steve Inskeep.

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A brief encounter between two leaders has raised hope for better relations between India and Pakistan. India's prime minister hosted Pakistan's president and accepted a return invitation to travel to Pakistan. We talk here of two nuclear-armed rivals whose relations were even worse than usual, after Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai in 2008. And the meeting came as disaster struck Pakistani troops facing Indian soldiers in the Himalayas.

NPR's Julie McCarthy is going to talk us through all this. Hi, Julie.

The artist was known for scenes of cottages, country gardens and churches in dewy morning light. Kinkade repeatedly claimed to be the most collected living artist.

In 2012, the federal tax return deadline is Tuesday, April 17 — so if you haven't already filed your income tax return, you have about one week left to shop around for different options to finish your taxes, or request an extension.

Since the uprising began in Syria last year, there have been a lot of stories about soldiers who have defected from the army to join the rebels. This rebel group is loosely known as the Free Syrian Army, and it's starting to look more and more like an insurgency.

Not all soldiers who leave the army, however, decide to join these rebels. Those who simply escape the army altogether offer a rare glimpse into a military they say is committing unspeakable atrocities and a rebel force that's fighting back with its own brutality.