The trial of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to detonate a bomb sewn into his underwear on a Christmas 2009 flight to Detroit, is set to begin today. Abdulmutallab has an attorney assisting him, but is acting as his own lawyer. He reportedly told federal agents he was directed by U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen last week.

The Occupy Wall Street protests continue in lower Manhattan today. Demonstrators are protesting perceived excessive greed by the super-wealthy and economic inequality as epitomized by Wall Street. The protests have grown in popularity over the last three weeks, and similar events are happening all over the country, including cities like Boston and Miami. On Monday, The Takeaway spoke with J.A. Myerson, from the media team for the Occupy Wall Street movement, about why he's protesting and what future he sees for the movement.

The Nobel Prize committee decided on Monday to posthumously award Dr. Ralph Steinman a prize in medicine and physiology. Steinman's ground-breaking winning research into dendritic cells helped treat his own pancreatic cancer, but he died just three days before the committee awarded him with the prize. Nobel rules say the award can only go to living scientists, but the foundation did not know Steinman had died on Friday and thus did not reverse their decision. Steinman shares this year's award with two other researchers, Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann.

A study released on Monday shows that women using two popular hormonal contraceptives put themselves — and their partners — at greater risk for HIV. While this is a problem for all users of these drugs, it is particularly worrying to people in southern and eastern Africa, where these affordable and easily available contraceptives are used in a very high risk environment.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) declared President Obama's jobs bill dead on arrival on Monday. Cantor said the House would consider elements of the bill, but refused to consider the entire $447 billion package. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, talks about the latest episode of political theater on Capitol Hill.

On July 23, 2011, Anders Breivik opened fire at a youth camp on the Norwegian island of Utoya, killing 69 people. Breivik’s brutal crime horrified the world. For many Americans, it stirred up memories of Oklahoma City in 1994, Columbine in 1999, and, of course, September 11, 2001. Yet, despite what looks like a proliferation of shooting sprees and terrorist plots in the last few decades, a new book argues that violence has actually declined since ancient times.

The U.S. Senate will bring a vote to the floor that seeks to punish China for currency manipulation. American economists have argued that China keeps the value of the yuan artificially below value. The Chinese Foreign Ministry characterizes the legislation is protectionist, and has said passage of the bill could lead to a trade war. 

After four years in prison, Amanda Knox walked free on Monday. The 24-year-old American woman, and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher in 2009. Sollecito's conviction was also overturned by an Italian appeals court in Perugia. The story of sex, drug-using, exchange students, and murder became a media sensation around the world. The prosecution's case against Knox was derided as based on circumstantial evidence doubted by independent experts.

In-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose 7.9 percent between the 2010-11 and 2009-10 school years. At private four-year schools, the average cost rose 4.5 percent. Are these rising costs improving education? Stephen Trachtenberg, president emeritus of George Washington University, presided over a 300 percent increase in tuition and fees over his two decades as president at GWU. He recently defended the high costs of tuition in an article for The Atlantic.

Last week, The Takeaway reported on an Alabama immigration law that is considered on of the toughest in the nation. A federal judge upheld the law in a challenge by the Justice Department. Among its provisions, the law requires Alabama's public schools to check the legal documentation of its students. Since the law went into effect on Thursday, over 200 Latino students went missing from schools in Huntsville. The law does not give schools the right to turn away children. Schools are only required to report to the state if a child cannot produce legal documentation.

The United Nations Security Council is likely to vote this week on a resolution condemning Syria's violent crackdown on those opposed to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Among the chorus of international voices speaking out against the Assad government is the United States' ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford. Ambassador Ford spoke to Lyse Doucet of the BBC about the Syrian opposition.

On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow interviewed Dr. Jonas Salk on the CBS show, "See it Now." Salk’s polio vaccine had just been proven effective in preventing the disease. Murrow asked who owned the vaccine. "The people I would say," Salk answered. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" Medical research culture has changed dramatically since Salk's time. Had it been invented today, it seems likely that the polio vaccine would have been patented immediately, and that Salk would have worked for a pharmaceutical company, rather than a university.

The 2011-2012 basketball season is supposed to begin in less than a month, but a labor dispute in the NBA might mean the regular season may be delayed. Mitch Lawrence, NBA columnist for The New York Daily News, reports on the lockout.

The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded on Tuesday to three scientists for their discovery that the universe in is being blown apart by a force known as "dark energy." Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University, and Adam G. Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University will share the honor. Adam G. Riess discusses the honor and explains what dark energy is, and why it's important to the universe.