NPR Blogs

The diplomatic battle in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken a dramatic turn today: In an angry press conference streamed live on the Internet, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Britain threatened to storm their embassy in London if Assange was not handed over to police.

"Ecuador is not a British colony," Patiño said. "The days of colonialism are over."

He added that "such a threat is improper of a democratic and civilized country."

This week, Bill Gates was at a summer fair in Washington State, but he was not eating deep-fried butter on-a-stick, or checking out livestock.

Gates was inspecting cutting-edge toilet technology on display at an event his foundation hosted in Seattle — the Reinvent the Toilet Fair.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors to be careful with codeine to relieve children's pain.

The agency noted reports of three kids who died and one who almost did after taking codeine following surgery. The kids had their tonsils or adenoids removed to treat obstructive sleep apnea.

The most valuable player of this year's All Star Game has been suspended for 50 games, Major League Baseball announced today.

Melky Cabrera, MLB tweeted, tested positive for testosterone and the suspension knocks him out for the rest of the season.

An experimental aircraft that designers hoped would hit 3,600 mph in a test flight over the Pacific on Tuesday "suffered a control failure" and failed in its attempt to go hypersonic, The Associated Press writes.

Its report follows earlier word from Wired magazine's Danger Room blog that it had been told by an "insider familiar with the test" that:

It seemed normal enough when President Obama chatted with a coffee shop patron about beer in Iowa Tuesday. The president has shown he's a fan of beer — and it's the most politically expedient, "everyman" beverage a candidate can drink. But then the president told a man at Knoxville, Iowa's Coffee Connection cafe that he travels with his own home-brew — and gave him a bottle to prove it.

The world of competitive Scrabble was jolted yesterday: One of the games' most promising players admitted he was hiding blank letter tiles.

As Mark wrote last year, a similar accusation of cheating was made at the World Scrabble Championships in 2011. But officials refused to strip search the man as an opponent demanded, because there wasn't sufficient evidence.

The first excerpts are out from journalist Joe Posnanski's upcoming biography of former Penn State head football Joe Paterno.

At least 1.2 million young undocumented immigrants will be able to apply for a temporary stay of deportation and a work permit beginning today.

This is the enactment of a policy President Obama announced back in June and it applies to younger illegal immigrants with no criminal history who were brought to the country as children.

Now 69-years-old, Betty Smithey was convicted for the 1963 murder of a 15-month old Phoenix girl.

Uh-oh, Bumbo.

The South African maker of molded foam seats that help babies sit up is recalling about 4 million of the chairs because of safety problems.

Babies can get hurt falling out of the seats.

If you have one of the Bumbo seats, you don't have to throw it out or return it. Instead, the recall works a little like one for a car. Bumbo International Trust has a free fix that consists of a safety belt to keep kids in place.