NPR News

Around this time each year I begin to marvel at how we've already reached the halfway point. I haven't even taken down my Christmas lights yet and already everyone's reflecting on all the great music we've had so far.

The music made by Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known by his stage name, Diplo, is one part club-music mashup and one part pop music forecast. In 2009, he took bubblin' — a syncopated house style born in the clubs of Holland — as inspiration and collaborated with fellow DJ Switch, his partner in the group Major Lazer, to make the dance-floor hit "Pon de Floor." But he wasn't done with the bubblin' sound yet. In 2011, he used that song as basis for "Run the World (Girls)," a single by the pop star Beyonce.

Shellie Zimmerman, the wife of George Zimmerman, has been charged with one count of perjury.

According to court documents, Shellie was charged for knowingly making a false statement during the bond hearing of George Zimmerman.

George Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, has claimed he acted in self defense.

This week, World Cafe invites listeners to discover the music of New Orleans with the series Sense of Place.

Leaders of a group that represents most Catholic sisters in the United States meet with Vatican officials in Rome today. As we've reported, the sisters went to Rome to talk to the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about a report that found the group was running afoul of church doctrine.