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As Egyptians gathered Sunday in Cairo and other cities for what are expected to be the largest protests so far against the year-old government of President Mohammed Morsi, some in the streets were telling NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson that they expect he will be toppled in much the same way as President Hosni Mubarak was in February 2011.

One protester told Soraya that Morsi is a "wounded lion in a corner ... if he attacks us, he loses ... if he doesn't attack us, he loses."

At midday in Cairo, Soraya said on Weekend Edition Sunday, things were peaceful. But there were concerns that pro-Morsi Egyptians might clash with the protesters later in the day. Many eyes, she said, are on the Egyptian army. Its leaders have said they will "protect the will of the people." Protesters say that means the army will defend them, as it did at times during the Arab Spring protests against Mubarak. But Morsi's supporters say it means the army will stand up for the democratically elected president.

Being "born with a silver spoon in your mouth" has long been known to have advantages. Apparently, eating off a silver spoon also has its perks — it seems to make your food taste better.

That's the word from a group of researchers who've been studying how cutlery, dishes and other inedible accoutrements to a meal can alter our perceptions of taste. Their latest work, published in the journal Flavour, looks at how spoons, knives and other utensils we put in our mouths can provide their own kind of "mental seasoning" for a meal.

"Some of my wine-drinking colleagues would have me believe that flavor is really out there on the bottle, in the glass or on the plate," says Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. "But I think it is much more something that we ... understand better through looking at what's happening inside the brain, and not just the mouth of the person eating or drinking."

Alterations in taste perceptions aren't necessarily the result of the cutlery itself, he says, but of the mental associations we bring to a meal. "Silver spoons and other silver cutlery, I'm guessing, are more commonly associated with high-quality food in our prior eating experiences," Spence says.

In recent years, psychologists have found that the color and shape of plates and other dishes can have an impact on the eating experience. Studies have found, for example, that people tend to eat less when their dishes are in sharp color-contrast to their food, that the color of a mug can alter a drinker's perception of how sweet and aromatic hot cocoa is, and that drinks can seem more thirst-quenching when consumed from a glass with a "cold" color like blue.

So why study cutlery? For starters, there wasn't any real scientific literature on the topic, Spence tells Linda Wertheimer on Weekend Edition Sunday.

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Shortly before midnight last Thursday, in front of a cheering crowd, 31-year-old Hussein al-Deik was picked as the president of Palestine.

It wasn't a real election; just the grand finale of a TV reality series, shot in front of a live audience. Suheir Rasul, co-director of the Jerusalem office of Search for Common Ground, the organization that put on the show, said the goal is to get young people excited about the democratic process.

"The word is to reenergize and reignite the people, to remind them that we can be democratic, we believe in democracy, and the youth have a voice," Rasul explains.

But Palestinians have held only two presidential elections since the Palestinian Authority was established almost 20 years ago. The current president, Mahmood Abbas, has stayed on several years past the end of his term.

Palestinian political analyst Daoud Kuttab says a lack of elections leads to a lack of legitimacy.

"In most political events, you need a kind of election cycle to create leaders," Kuttab says.

The lack of elections also makes restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations difficult. Secretary of State John Kerry has been in the region for the past three days, trying to convince leaders on both sides to come together for talks.

Palestinian political leaders have long had their roots in militias who fought against Israel, but Kuttab says people are beginning to look for leadership elsewhere.

Parallels

'Arab Idol' Win Unites Palestinians In Jubilant Celebration

If you've paid attention to the case of Edward Snowden, you might have heard Ecuadorean officials refer to some bankers the U.S. is refusing to hand over.

Ecuador, of course, is considering an asylum request from the NSA leaker. The U.S. is pressuring them to abide by an extradition request, while Ecuador is taunting the giant.

During a press conference on Thursday, National Communications Secretary Fernando Alvarado said the United States should have been more thorough in analyzing its extradition request for "the bankers."

So who are these bankers?

Turns out they are the defendants in a lawsuit filed by the government of Ecuador in a Miami-Dade County court. The lawsuit was decided in the bankers' favor on May 31. We tracked down the final judgment, in which Circuit Court Judge John W. Thornton lays out who these two men are.

According to Thornton: Roberto and William Isaias Dassum were the president and vice president of Filanbanco, Ecuador's largest bank. In the late '90s, Ecuador descended into a severe banking crisis, so it created an agency a lot like the FDIC that pumped $1.16 billion into Filanbanco to keep it afloat.

That failed and, according to the government of Ecuador, the Dassums fled to Miami after allegedly embezzling millions.

"Ecuador has requested that the U.S. extradite the Defendants back to Ecuador to conclude criminal proceedings against them and to be sentenced. This extradition request is pending," Thornton writes.

In this lawsuit, however, Ecuador was asking the U.S. to confiscate about $20 million worth of assets the Dassums allegedly have in Miami. The government had already seized about $400 million in Ecuador.

The U.S. court refused Ecuador's request, saying it is under no obligation to enforce Ecuadorean laws. What's more, Thornton ruled, to allow Ecuador to confiscate property in the U.S. would "signify a substantial deviation from U.S. law and policy."

"The Defendants may have committed the wrongs which Ecuador has alleged," Thornton wrote. "However the manner in which Ecuador has attempted to right the Defendant's alleged wrongs is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy."

dassum by Eyder Peralta