NPR Blogs

Good morning - here are our early stories:

Obama, Romney Trade Jokes; Critics Aim At Obama's 'Optimal' Comment.

Malala Stands For First Time Since Being Shot By Taliban, Doctors Say.

And these headlines:

Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who spoke out against the Taliban and was shot in the head by one of its gunman for her bravery, "has stood for the first time since her attack," ITV News, The Associated Press and other news outlets are reporting.

Doctors who specialize in treating infertility are making a big change in their position on a controversial practice. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has concluded that freezing women's eggs to treat infertility should no longer be considered "experimental."

The group plans to officially announce the change on Monday.

It's official: The Detroit Tigers are going to the World Series.

The Tigers beat the New York Yankees 8-1 Thursday for a four-game sweep of the American League Championship Series.

Here's more from The Associated Press:

"Miguel Cabrera and Jhonny Peralta hit two-run homers in a four-run fourth inning against CC Sabathia, who was unable to prevent the Yankees from getting swept in a postseason series for the first time in 32 years.

There's now a deeper look at young kids who got sick after eating or otherwise messing around with those laundry detergent pods that look a lot like candy.

Doctors from two poison control centers and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention have analyzed more than a thousand incidents involving people exposed to the pods and other kinds of laundry detergent.

Immigrant rights groups rallied in Detroit, yesterday, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested one man and questioned another when they were on their way to drop their kids off at school.

Michigan Live reports:

After a first round of historic peace talks, the Colombian government and members of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have agreed to continue peace talks in Havana, Cuba.

It was just this summer that President Juan Manuel Santos acknowledged for the first time that the two groups were engaged in "exploratory talks" aimed at bringing the longest war in the Western Hemisphere to an end.

The Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it discriminates against same-sex couples, a second federal appeals court has ruled.

NPR's Joel Rose reports that it took the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York less than a month to come to its decision. As he tells our Newscast Desk:

On orders from the Oregon Supreme Court, more than 1,200 confidential files the Boy Scouts of America kept on suspected child molesters from the 1960s through 1985 have been made public.

Commonly referred to as the organization's "perversion files," they give the public a first and intimate look at how the Boy Scouts handled allegations of sexual abuse. In some cases, they show how some volunteers were booted from the organization, then snuck back in, only to be kicked out again when parents or scouts made allegations of sexual abuse.

If you're one of those people who vigilantly checks the ingredient list of the things you buy at the grocery store, you may have already seen this: Some food products now contain something called "evaporated cane juice." It can be found in yogurt, fruit juices and lemonades.

So what exactly is evaporated cane juice? Well, it depends on whom you ask. We spoke with a few folks outside our local grocery store, and many of them were confused. Take a listen:

"It was the best of times, it was the best of times," riffs aspiring writer Sophia in the opening of MTV's new dramedy, Underemployed, as she taps away on her laptop, narrating the lives of her recent-grad friends a la Carrie Bradshaw. It's the first cliché in a series full of them. It's also a sign of the ongoing fascination with the lives of twentysomethings trying and failing to do big things in big cities during a big recession. (Take it from me — it's not that great.)

Oops.

Here are some of the details from the winter weather forecast released this morning by the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center:

-- There are "enhanced chances for above normal temperatures across most of the western half of the lower 48 states."

-- The Florida peninsula is likely to experience "below-normal temperatures."

A small study offers a bit of cautious optimism about the prospects for treatment of tuberculosis, one of humankind's most ancient scourges.

This week's New England Journal of Medicine has a report showing that adding a 12-year-old antibiotic called linezolid, brand name Zyvox, to existing treatments cured nearly 90 percent of patients with a form of tuberculosis resistant to both first- and second-line antibiotics.