Mark Memmott

We don't do too many traffic reports, but this news has the potential to be both fascinating and frustrating — depending on whether you're watching from afar or stuck inside a gridlocked car:

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge that carries U.S. Route 50 traffic back-and-forth between Washington, D.C., and mid-Atlantic beaches will be closed for about 40 minutes today, starting around 1:15 p.m. ET, so that a cargo ship carrying four huge cranes can pass (safely, we hope) beneath the span.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is reportedly still inside Ecuador's embassy in London, where he showed up Tuesday and asked for political asylum.

The chances of his being able to leave there and not immediately be arrested by British authorities seem to be somewhere between slim and none.

The defense rested its case just before noon ET today and closing arguments will begin Thursday in the trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on charges of sexually abusing young boys, according to reporters from The Associated Press, NPR and other news outlets.

Sandusky did not take the stand in his own defense.

Our Original Post: If Sandusky Is Going To Testify, Today's The Likely Day

In Cairo's Tahrir Square, reports that former President Hosni Mubarak is in critical condition and may be near death are being met with two reactions, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports:

-- Many Egyptians who have gathered there are saying, "It's about time, let him go."

The top news from Capitol Hill testimony today by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is that he says "the bank did its best to fully inform investors about its risk strategy several weeks before it suffered a $2 billion-plus trading loss," The Associated Press reports.

But the quote from him that seems to be getting the most attention came in response to a question from Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., who wanted to know if the bank could ever lose "a half a trillion dollars or a trillion dollars?"

Dharun Ravi walked out of a New Jersey jail this morning after serving 20 days of the 30-day sentence he was given for using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate at Rutgers University in 2010.

The case drew national attention after it became known that the roommate, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide soon after learning about what Ravi had done and that Ravi had told others about it.

A Russian cargo ship loaded with refurbished attack helicopters has turned back toward home after having its insurance canceled, British Foreign Secretary William Hague says, according to the BBC.

The MV Alaed was was passing by Scotland's north coast at the time. The policy was canceled by The Standard Club, a London-based insurer. According to the BBC, the insurer issued a statement saying:

NPR.org's lead story this hour is Barbara Bradley Hagerty's Morning Edition report headlined "Southern Baptists See Their Future In A Black Pastor."

As she writes:

Sneakers that come with prison orange shackles to wrap around your ankles?

That was Adidas' idea for the "JS Roundhouse Mids" it planned to start selling in August. It was to be "a sneaker ... so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles."

Was to be, that is.

There was a 7.9 percent jump in the number of construction permits issued to home builders in May, the Census Bureau says.

That increase boosted permits to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 780,000 — the most since September 2008, The Associated Press adds. It's a signal that construction will be strong in coming months.

There's fresh political turmoil in Pakistan today after the country's highest court "disqualified" Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani from office, The Associated Press writes.

Now that Roger Clemens has been found not guilty of lying to Congress and obstructing its investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs by Major League Baseball players, the debate resumes about whether one of baseball's greatest pitchers should or shouldn't get into the sport's hall of fame.

Today's developments in Europe's financial crisis focus mainly on Spain:

-- The Wall Street Journal writes that "Spain, on the edge of losing debt market access, paid around 2 percentage points more in interest rates Tuesday than a month ago to lure investors to its Treasury bill sale, an ominous sign ahead of a critical government bond auction Thursday."

Heard about the letter to the editor of a newspaper in Ohio demanding that the state find another tree to serve at its symbol because buckeyes are bisexual? It's starting to get some attention on the Web.

Well, it's a real letter to The Courier in Findlay.

But it's also our third hoax in as many blogging weekdays — or in this case, more accurately, a piece of social satire.