The NBA's Ron Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace last year.

But the player known for being at the center of a 2004 brawl in the stands at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan showed Sunday that his new name doesn't mean he's changed all his wild ways.

"Far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen" now has a chance to swing the French presidential election, as France 24 reports, after pulling in 18 percent of the ballots in the first round of voting Sunday.

Misaki Murakami and his family lost everything in last year's tsunami in Japan. Waves carried his soccer ball — covered in notes from third grade friends — to a beach in Alaska. The ball is being returned.

In the 1990's, a Panthers' player earned a place in pro hockey lore when he found a rat in the dressing room, and whacked it with his hockey stick. Fans are encouraged to litter the ice with plastic rats after a win. In a playoff game Saturday, a player from the opposing New Jersey Devils raced for the puck, and kicked a toy rat instead.

The Northeast and mid-Atlantic began the cold season with an unusual Halloween snowstorm that knocked out power to millions. And after that? Almost no snow in may parts of those regions.

As a part of Earth Day celebrations, performance artist Alison Knowles took salad making to the extreme in New York City. Knowles chopped romaine lettuce, carrots and cucumbers to the beat of live music. She then tossed the avalanche of salad off a balcony into a giant tarp, where the salad was served up to audience members.

Sebastian Vettel won the Bahrain Grand Prix over the weekend, but in a larger sense the winners were the race organizers. They managed to hold the race which was canceled last year by political unrest, which was part of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Bill Law, of the British Broadcasting Corporation, talks to Steve Inskeep about the weekend's events in Bahrain.

A deadly fire and explosion at a German chemical plant has created big headaches for the global auto industry. The recent blast has resulted in a shortage of a chemical compound used in plastic fuel and brake lines. The chemical is hard to replace, and now automakers are scrambling to avoid major production disruptions.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: