NPR's Richard Harris talks with host Scott Simon about the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors, one year after multiple meltdowns there spread radioactive materials across a swath of northern Japan. Huge technical challenges remain and prospects for resettling the area are uncertain.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. One year ago this weekend, Japan was battered by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. One of the places hardest hit was the coastal community of Yuriage. What was once a beautiful fishing village, and home to a bustling community of thousands, is now a desolate and deserted place. Doualy Xaykaothao reported from there shortly after the earthquake, and has just returned to file this report.

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The American job market is still a long way from healthy, but its pulse feels a lot stronger now than it did six months ago. The Labor Department says employers added 227,000 workers to their payrolls in February, a solid — if not spectacular — performance. It continues a trend that suggests a genuine recovery, not a temporary blip.

The unemployment rate held steady at 8.3 percent, even as nearly 500,000 people joined the workforce.

Improvement in the job market is a boon for President Obama as he tries to hold onto his own job in November.

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Ready for some creative competition? Weekends on All Things Considered is launching Round 8 of its Three-Minute Fiction contest. Here's what we look for: original, short fiction that can be read in less than three minutes — that's no more than 600 words.

The famous pack mules that carry supplies and people in and out of the Grand Canyon have back pain, as you might imagine. One man is on a mission to make the lives of these beasts of burden a little less painful.

When Rene Noriega retired a few years ago after a long career as a Border Patrol agent, he took what — for him — was the next natural step.

Today, The Huffington Post released what it says is a never-before-seen video of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Lawton, OK – Ron Paul hasn't given up yet, Texas unemployment rate is looking better and the Dallas Zoo adds Koalas to their zoo. KCCU's Mitch Watson reports.

Famously, Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, blanketed the country last year with warnings on bilboards and pamphlets that the world would end on May 21.

Campaigning in Mississippi on Friday, Mitt Romney took a pre-emptive swipe at a new 17-minute video about President Obama to be distributed next week by Obama's re-election campaign.

"The Road We've Traveled" was created by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for the 2006 Al Gore climate-change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.