Just months after the killings of Osama bin Laden and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S. intelligence officials are trying to assess just how dangerous al-Qaida still is.

They seem to agree that core al-Qaida — the group that launched the Sept. 11 attacks and looked to bin Laden for guidance — is in trouble.

Now, the discussion is about a loose affiliation of groups that present a diffuse and entirely different threat.

Sugar is a great temptation, UCSF scientists say--it's even addictive, in addition to its links to chronic heart disease and diabetes. According to a report released this week, we consume three times more sugar than we did thirty years ago. Scientists say it's time for a drastic intervention...

Planned Parenthood says a flurry of new donations over the past couple of days has essentially made up the funding gap left by Susan G. Komen for the Cure's decision to discontinue funding for the organization.

Yesterday, we heard how politics have shaped California’s prison system, and about the push and pull between rehabilitation and punishment. “At the end of the day, corrections was about the bumping of heads of those people that think prison should be for punishment and those people that think that prison should be for rehabilitation,” says JB Wells, who spent almost three decades stuck between the two ideologies.

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:

The boom in cheap natural gas in this country is good news for the environment, because relatively clean gas is replacing dirty coal-fired power plants. But in the long run, cheap natural gas could slow the growth of even cleaner sources of energy, such as wind and solar power.

Natural gas has a bad rap in some parts of the country, because the process of fracking is not popular. But many people looking at cheap natural gas from the global perspective see it as a good thing.

President Obama has been criticized by some liberal critics for not doing enough to improve the lives of the nation's poorest citizens and for not even talking as much as those critics think he ought to about poverty.

Schools worried about concussions increasingly use computerized tests to tell if a student athlete has a brain injury. But new research says those tests aren't reliable enough to diagnose concussion, or to tell if it's safe to return to play.

The researchers looked at research on one computerized neuropsychologist test, called ImPACT, that is widely used by colleges and high schools. (Here's one NPR story on how high schools use ImPACT to assess concussions.)

On today's Your Call, we’ll have a conversation about the protests in Oakland, which resulted in 400 arrests. With tensions escalating between the police and the protesters, some people are questioning the direction the occupy movement is taking. So what happened during the latest Occupy Oakland demonstration? Join us at 10 or email feedback@yourcallradio.org. How is the Occupy movement responding to the recent wave of violence? And what's next? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:

Syria's protest generation is obsessed with images.

Thousands of videos have been posted on YouTube during the 10-month revolt against President Bashar Assad's regime, even as regime snipers take deadly aim at the photographers.

The smugglers who carry critical medical supplies to underground clinics in protest cities also smuggle in cameras hidden in baseball caps and pocket pens. The obsession comes from the conviction that documenting the brutality will stop it — this time.