NPR Blogs

Baseball fans love perfect moments.

-- Babe Ruth hitting his "called shot."

-- Ted Williams homering in his last at-bat (and not tipping his cap).

-- Willie Mays and "the catch."

Two former top editors at News Corp.'s now defunct News of the World tabloid in the U.K., including a man who later became a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, now face criminal charges related to the so-called hacking scandal.

The BBC writes that "eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, will face a total of 19 charges relating to phone hacking, the Crown Prosecution Service" announced today. Coulson, after leaving Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., worked for Cameron.

Top influenza researchers around the world published a statement back in January saying they would temporarily hold off on any work with contagious, lab-altered forms of a particularly worrisome form of bird flu.

The unusual voluntary moratorium was supposed to last only 60 days, but it's been more than six months. And scientists don't agree on what should happen next.

The sanctions slapped on Penn State football in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal charter a new territory in punishment by the NCAA, a sports author said today.

"I think it is unprecedented in terms of taking away wins. That's a huge blow," says Ted Kluck, author of several books on sports, including Game Time: Inside College Football.

More than 20,000 people are attending the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington this week.

The meeting features speeches from U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former first lady Laura Bush, health ministers from many countries around the world, Bill Gates, NIH scientists Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins and hundreds more.

At today's executive session during Fox's portion of the Television Critics Association press tour, Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly dramatically took out his phone and dialed Mariah Carey, putting her on speaker to tell the assembled journalists that she's joining American Idol as a judge.

Think about it — when you order something online, you avoid long lines, there are infinite options at your fingertips, and no one can see your face. So it comes as little surprise, then, when people order food online, they might go a little overboard.

Actually, sometimes a lot overboard.

If you show up at the emergency department at San Francisco General Hospital — for any reason — there's a good chance they'll offer you an HIV test.

It's part of a big push, in a city closely associated with the AIDS pandemic, to find nearly all people infected with the virus and get them in treatment right away.

During two press conferences this afternoon we learned a few more details about James Holmes, the 24-year-old man accused of opening fire at a Colorado movie theater and killing 12.

Lisa Damiani, the attorney for Holmes' family in San Diego, said comments Arlene Holmes, the suspect's mother, made to ABC News have been taken out of context.

Essentially, she said, she was merely confirming that was Arlene Holmes and that James was her son when she said "You have the right person."

In a theme playing out all over the country, Justice Department officials are proposing new ways to put the brakes on massive prison expenditures that have been eating up a bigger portion of their flat-lined annual budget.

The British probe into Rupert Murdoch's tabloid operations has extended into an investigation of information obtained from stolen cellphones. The New York Times reports that a senior police officer testified that an investigation found payoffs were given to public officials and that medical and banking records were obtained illegally.

The Times adds:

Chad Ochocinco has been deep-sixed.

After unofficially changing his name (but not his @ochocinco Twitter handle) back to what it used to be, the Miami Dolphins' No. 85 officially once again became Chad Johnson today.