Morning Edition

Camden, N.J., has serious health problems, with too many people going to local emergency rooms unnecessarily. But progress is being made, albeit slowly.

John Pike, 53, is a Camden resident who used to be a frequent flier at the ER.

Pike has a smoker's cough, and when that cough or pain in his bad hip flared up, he'd go to the ER — maybe eight or nine times a year. But when he did, ER staffers didn't really remember him or his medical history.

The demand from American companies for high-skilled immigrants seems to be up this year. And that could mean something is about to change for the overall economy.

There is a cap on the number of visas the government gives out for these kind of workers every year. Lately, that cap has been 85,000. Demand always outstrips supply, but for the past couple of years, it has taken at least a few months to hit the quota. But this year, the H-1B visas might be gone by the end of the week.

It being the start of baseball season, that means we've been inundated by predictions — who'll win the divisions and the pennants and the World Series? We know two things on this subject. In every sport, at the start of the season, the experts are bound and determined to make these long-range predictions. And second, they are invariably wrong.

Friends of a New York man planned a surprise party, but he found out. To surprise him, they threw a pillowcase over his head, threw him in a van and drove him to the party in Pennsylvania. Witnesses to the fake abduction called police, who mounted a massive search.

In 1964, Robert Ostertag attended his first of 50 straight New York Mets home openers. That same day, Luke Gasparre began his job as an usher. The New York Times captured quite a moment Monday: Gasparre showed Ostertag to his seat in section 310.

David Greene talks to Yvette Aehle, director of the Southwest Georgia Regional Airport, about her plans to shut down the airport's air traffic control tower. Because of sequestration, the FAA will no longer pay for air traffic controllers at 144 smaller airports.

Fans are returning to Major League Baseball parks for a new season. Let's take a break from the intensity of college basketball's March Madness, and talk about the beginning of the long and winding Major League Baseball season.

If it was a sleepy Monday for you, you may have fallen victim to some April Fools' Day pranks. David Greene and Steve Inskeep have a roundup of some of the all-in-fun pranks.

Much has changed since last November, when Afghans were praising Pakistan for saying it would no longer support the Taliban and would instead work for peace.

"We believe that relations between the two countries are deteriorating," says Aimal Faizi, spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

Faizi says the downward slide started last month. The two countries had agreed to convene a conference of religious scholars, or ulema, to denounce suicide bombing. But the conference fell apart at the last minute, with each country blaming the other for undermining the effort.

The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is sometimes called the second most important court in the country, regularly delivering the final word on major environmental, labor and national security cases.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has a whopping four vacancies, the most in the nation, including one opening that dates all the way back to 2005, when John Roberts moved to the U.S. Supreme Court.