NPR News

A Colorado judge on Thursday will consider whether to lift the gag order in the case of James Holmes, 24, who's accused of killing 12 and wounding dozens more at a movie theater last month.

NPR and other news organizations want access to case files, including a notebook that Holmes reportedly sent to a university psychiatrist before withdrawing from the school that may have described an attack.

It's not easy to find video of the London 2012 Olympics on the Internet — even on YouTube. And that's inspiring people to "interpret" the Summer Games for themselves. For instance, you can see puppet shows, 8-bit video, and Taiwanese animation, all related to the Olympics... or, at least sort of related.

Here are some of my favorites — feel free to put yours into the comment section below:

Sure, you might spend a lot of time on your couch, as you watch the Summer Olympics. And hey, maybe you've drifted a couple pounds above your fighting weight. But there's all kinds of athletes competing in London — one of them has to be around the same size as you, right?

Now you can find that out, thanks to the BBC, whose site has an interactive chart that lets you enter your height and weight — and then tells you which two Olympic athletes you most resemble.

You could soon pay for a latte at Starbucks simply by walking into the store with a smartphone in your pocket and giving the cashier your name.

Square, a San Francisco-based payments startup unveiled a deal Wednesday with the world's largest coffee chain that will move its mobile payments products into Starbucks stores around the U.S. starting this fall.

Katherine Losse was Facebook's 51st employee. After earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2005, she got a job as a Facebook customer service representative — tasked with answering questions like "What is a poke?" In the course of five years, she became the personal ghostwriter for founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"I witnessed over those five years this huge transformation in how we lead our lives," she tells NPR's Tom Gjelten.

This map is disturbing, once you understand it. It's a new attempt to visualize an old problem — the shrinking of underground water reserves, in most cases because farmers are pumping out water to irrigate their crops.

The recent shootings in Oak Creek, Wis., and Aurora, Colo., have reignited the debate about guns and gun control in America. But beyond the talking points and heated exchanges lie real questions about guns ownership, regulation and use.

Taunting and trash-talking are a regular part of the culture for online video gamers. Opponents tease and threaten each other to complement the violent clashes between the game avatars.

In a piece for The New York Times, reporter Amy O'Leary describes a series of incidents with female gamers over the past six months that have sparked a debate about sexual harassment in the online gaming community.

Transcript

TOM GJELTEN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Tom Gjelten in Washington. Harry Reid says Mitt Romney doesn't pay taxes. Romney supporters are furious. The VP speculation builds, and the debate on welfare reform is back on center stage. It's Wednesday and time for an...

MITT ROMNEY: Obamaloney...

GJELTEN: Edition of the Political Junkie.

(MONTAGE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS)

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?

Everybody knows that one good way to prevent a sunburn is to stay inside, where you're safe from the sun's ultraviolet rays. Right?

Well, that may not be true anymore if your house is lit with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Last month, researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook showed in a paper that tiny defects in the bulbs can let through UV light that can damage skin cells and lead to cancer.

Allyson Felix has won the women's 200 meter race in London's Olympic Stadium, running a time of 21.88. Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce took the silver medal at 22.09, as she wasn't able to track Felix down in the closing stretch.

The four center lanes were stacked with speed, with Jamaica's Fraser-Pryce and defending gold medalist Veronica Campbell-Brown in lanes 4 and 5, respectively. Just outside of them were Americans Sanya Richards-Ross and Felix, in lanes 6 and 7. And on the outside, in lane 9, was Carmelita Jeter.

Australia's privacy commissioner is asking Google to delete all personal data its Street View vehicles collected from unsecured wi-fi networks. The directive comes a little more than a week after Google said that in error, it had kept a small portion of the 600 gigabytes it collected.

As we reported, the slurped data is known to include passwords, emails, pictures and web searches.

This month we are collecting your stories about the good things Americans are doing to make their community a better place. Some of your contributions will become blog posts and the project will end with a story that weaves together submissions to make a story of Americans by Americans for Americans.

There seems to be a vague logic that dictates which Olympic sports are conducted against a backdrop of noise, and which operate in a cone of silence.

For the most part, the more a sport depends on a fine motor skill, the quieter the spectators are meant to be. Shooters squeeze triggers before mostly hushed crowds. But in many shooting disciplines, the competitors line up in a group and can shoot at any point during their time allotment. So not only is gunfire ringing in their ears, crowds often become noisy, depending on the results.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

There are some new developments in the case of the Wisconsin man who opened fire on a Sikh temple last Sunday. The man at the center of the attack is a 40-year-old Army veteran named Wade Michael Page. Page killed six people at the temple and wounded three others, including a police officer. Page himself died at the scene.

Wade Michael Page, the man authorities say killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday, appears to have "died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," FBI Special Agent in Charge Teresa Carlson told reporters in Milwaukee this morning.

After a Oak Creek, Wis., police officer shot Page in the stomach, she said, video from the scene appears to show Page taking his own life.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Earlier we talked with Dr. Carl Bell. He is a psychiatrist and a professor at the University of Illinois. He's the president and CEO of the Community Mental Health Council in Chicago, Illinois, and we've spoken with him on a number of occasions about issues in mental health, but he has a particular interest in the issue of violence. In fact, he's the founder of the Institute for the Prevention of Violence, has done extensive research in this area, and we caught up with him on Tuesday.

Dr. Regina Benjamin wants a culture of fitness, and she's asking black women to stop worrying about their hair, and hit the gym. She's promoting a contest for the best gym-friendly hairdos.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We'd like to take a moment to think more deeply about what seems like a barrage of mass shootings this year alone.

In May, a belligerent man in Seattle shot up a cafe, killing five people after he was denied service. Nearly three weeks ago, 12 people were killed and close to 60 people were wounded in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater. This past Sunday, six people died in Wisconsin after being gunned down in a Sikh temple.

It should come as no surprise that Olympics organizers take brand endorsements and official suppliers very seriously. That extends beyond logos on shorts and shoes — up to, and including, condoms. That's right, the Olympics has an "official" condom — and organizers want to get to the bottom of how a bucket of rogue condoms reached the Olympic Village.

As has happened before at the London Games, it started with a tweet.

Good morning. Only five days remain in the Summer Games, and China leads the United States in the medal count, with a total of 73 (34 gold) to America's 71 (30 gold). Here's other news that caught our eye this morning:

Sunday's attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, which left six people and the gunman dead, has for many of us opened a window on a religion, a culture and a people we know little about.