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The furor over recently exposed government surveillance programs has posed an abundance of political challenges for both President Obama and Congress. Relatively unmentioned in all of this, however, is the role of the courts — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, and how its role has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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On a Monday, this is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene. We're reporting this morning on a decision just out from the U.S. Supreme Court. The court tossed out an Arizona law that required proof of citizenship for its voters. In a 7-2 decision the justices said the state's voter-approved Proposition 200 interfered with federal law.

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Good morning. I'm David Greene. Mayoral races across Mexico are turning into a zoo. In Xalapa, a cat named Morris is running with the campaign slogan: Tired of voting for rats? Vote for a cat. Candidates in other cities include Chon the Donkey and Tina the Chicken. Now, Morris the cat is in the lead - at least on social media.

He has 115,000 likes on Facebook, more than any of the five human candidates. And to think if he loses, that cat has eight more chances. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Let's look now at another change in health care, and this one has to do with paperwork. Hospitals and clinics are slowly replacing paper files with sophisticated electronic health records. But with a variety of systems in use, they often can't easily share medical information with each other, and this can be a pretty serious problem in the case of an emergency.

As Elizabeth Stawicki reports, smartphones might be one way to bridge this electronic gap.

When New England Patriots' owner Robert Kraft met with then-Russian President Vladmir Putin in 2005, he showed off his Super Bowl ring. Kraft told a crowd last week Putin put the ring on, and said, "I can kill someone with this ring." He then put it in his pocket, and walked away. The Kremlin says the ring was a gift.

In northern Lake Michigan, explorers are stepping up their effort to find a ship that sank in 1679. French and American archeologists are on the lake looking for the ship sailed by French explorer Rene-Robert Sieur de la Salle. So far, the excavation has uncovered a wooden beam that looks like the mast of a ship.

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And let's stay in this part of the world. Over the weekend, Iran overwhelmingly elected a new president, a man seen by many as a reformer. More than half the voters in that country opted for this change.

The relatively moderate cleric, Hassan Rouhani, replaces Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who's been in power since 2005. Rouhani campaigned on a message of ending Iran's international isolation.

For reaction from Tehran, we're joined by The New York Times bureau chief there, Thomas Erdbrink.

Thomas, good morning.

Jordan is hosting major military exercises known as Eager Lion 2013. More than 15,000 soldiers from 18 countries, including the U.S., will be participating. The war games kicked off as Syria's civil war rages next door.

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NPR's business news starts with an acquisition for Lowe's.

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GREENE: The home-improvement retailer, Lowe's, has reportedly agreed to buy Orchard Supply Hardware Stores. The sale price is expected to top $200 million. Now Orchard is a California-based hardware-and-garden chain. It was once owned by Sears, and is now about $230 million in debt.

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More than 40,000 scientists in Spain have signed a petition calling on the government to end cuts to their budget. They're blaming austerity for an exodus of the country's best and brightest researchers.

Lauren Frayer has more from Madrid.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Spanish spoken)

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Hundreds of lab-coated scientists delivered their petition to Spain's Economy Ministry. They marched there last week because the Science Ministry, itself, was closed in budget cuts.