Led by Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt, ethereal folk-rock group The Pines makes its first appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Paramount Theater in Bristol, Tenn./Va. As a young boy growing up Iowa, Ramsey watched as his father — producer and guitarist Bo Ramsey — helped craft the definitive alt-country sound alongside Lucinda Williams.

United Nations monitors in Syria were shot at with small arms fire today as they tried to reach the scene of another alleged massacre, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said this morning.

At the U.N. General Assembly, Ban also condemned today's "shocking and sickening" reports about the killings of dozens. And, NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, he called this yet another "pivotal moment" that could see Syria fall into a full-blown civil war.

If you drive northwest on New Hampshire Avenue out of Washington, D.C., you'll pass a few shopping plazas, a freeway or two, a house of worship for nearly every imaginable denomination. Around the point where the suburban sprawl begins to thin out, there's a one-block-long dead-end street on the right called Spotswood Drive. That's where a man named Walter Salb once lived; he was a beloved and respected drummer, and by most accounts a larger-than-life character.

"Economic growth appears poised to continue at a moderate pace over coming quarters," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is telling Congress this hour, and will be supported in part by additional "accommodative monetary policy" from the central bank.

While there's been a slowing in job growth, Bernanke says that Fed policymakers believe household spending has been "relatively well sustained" and are encouraged by "consumer spentiment [that is] ... up noticeably from its levels late last year."

The Television Critics Association (which I'm part of) has announced the nominees for its annual awards, which will be handed out during press tour in late July.

(From Athens, correspondent Joanna Kakissis tells us about the latest news regarding the troubled Greek economy.)

"A massive dock" that was washed away from a city on Japan's northeast coast by the devastating March 2011 tsunami landed this week on an Oregon beach. It's a warning sign that dangerous chunks of debris from that disaster are reaching the Pacific coast of the mainland U.S. much sooner than predicted, The Oregonian reports.

There were 377,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, down 12,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

But in yet another mixed signal about how the economy's doing, that welcome dip is tempered by the fact that the "4-week moving average was 377,750, an increase of 1,750 from the previous week's revised average of 376,000." Economists watch that average because it offers a slightly larger look at the trend.