NPR Blogs

This weekend, 20 people from around the country will meet in a nondescript hotel room in Arlington, Va., and take a vote. A passing stranger who stumbled on this group wouldn't see much of anything, just a bunch of graying academic types sitting around a table.

But millions of people will be touched by that vote because the graying academic types are voting to approve the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the bible of psychiatry.

The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus has killed two people in Jordan — the third country where the novel microbe has been traced.

That brings lab-confirmed cases to nine, with five fatalities.

The Carousela cafe in West Jerusalem is one of a handful of restaurants and cafes in Israel staging a bit of a rebellion by defying Jewish religious authorities who claim they are the only ones who can certify restaurants as kosher, or in compliance with Jewish dietary laws.

Many of us are still not over the demise of Twinkies. Now there's this.

Bazooka Bubble Gum is redoing is packaging and, says The New York Times:

It looks like the case in India against two young female Facebook users has been dropped. But the debate over free speech in India is still heating up.

As we've reported, two young women were arrested last week for a Facebook comment that criticized the shutdown of the city of Mumbai for the cremation of a controversial political leader.

Three people are dead from apparent homicide at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming, The Casper Tribune reports.

On its website, the college, which has a population of about 4,000, said it had put the campus on lockdown. At this time, students and faculty are being allowed to travel through the campus.

The biggest scandal at the summer Olympics in London didn't involve doping, or boorish behavior by athletes or judges tipping the results.

No, the biggest scandal came out of the badminton competition, shocking the sport's fanatic followers in Asia and leaving the rest of the world snickering at cheating in badminton, of all things.

One of the big questions that arose out of the November general election is how Republicans would pivot to close the astonishing gap in the Latino vote.

Hispanics voted for President Obama instead of Gov. Mitt Romney by a 71-to-27 percent margin. That kind of lopsided result immeditately changed the minds of many Republicans on immigration reform.

Mickey Baker, one half of the hit-making duo Mickey and Sylvia in the late '50s and an influential guitarist whose work can be heard on hundreds of records, has died at his home near Toulouse, France.

He was 87.

When it comes to public health, there are bad ideas that seemingly can't be stopped and smart ones that don't get their due.

Often, the real trick to improving health is getting both patients and doctors to hear the right message and then do something about it.

So what's the best way to get the word out about a decades-old generic drug that could save the lives of critically injured patients?

Make a comic book.

The news that someone has shut off the Internet (and cellphone service) across Syria has led Anonymous to vow it will "shut down Syrian government websites around the world," as Reuters' Anthony DeRosa puts it.