When she hit the tape Sunday at the Powerade Great City Games in Manchester, England, Britain's Jessica Ennis hadn't only beaten Olympic heptathlon champion Dawn Harper.
Ennis had also run a personal best 12.75 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles — 0.04 of a second faster than she'd ever run that race.
It was her personal best, that is, until 2004 Olympic heptathlon bronze medalist Kelly Sotherton, also of the U.K., tweeted this question:
In recent years, critics have questioned the need for a U.S.-European alliance, originally formed to confront the Soviet Union. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright argues the president and NATO leaders must reaffirm the importance of their union to U.S. security.
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Only a little over half of fulltime students graduate with a bachelor's degree within six years of starting college. Educators blame the low rate on students who decide to adjust their course loads, take time off or drop out of school altogether.
Advertising executives gathered in New York City last week to get their first look at the fall primetime television lineup. The four big networks announced decisions to cancel some shows, including stalwarts like "CSI: Miami" and "Desperate Housewives." And they also welcomed newcomers, including lots and lots of new comedies. But this is all happening against the backdrop of a dwindling audience. It used to be that the network's losses were cable televisions gain, but cable ratings are also down.
We'll get back to real news in no time, but we just couldn't resist a couple of curious details that a Sunday Times' interview (pay-wall) with Queen Elizabeth's sylist for 11 years revealed.
At Forward Operating Base Payne in Afghanistan's Helmand province, Marine Cpl. Jonathan Odriscoll looks at pictures of his sister on Facebook. Troop access to social media has been both a blessing and curse for the military.
Inside a plywood shack at a combat outpost in Marjah, in Afghanistan's Helmand province, three Marines sit before a bank of computers provided by the military to help keep up morale. The dingy outpost is made up of a collection of tents where troops live among swarms of flies and the constant hum of generators.
It turns out we may not know nearly as much about all the money spent on health care in the U.S. as we thought we did.
But there's a new group that wants to, well, remedy that.
The problem, Martin Gaynor, chairman of the Health Care Cost Institute, told Shots, is that "two-thirds of the population has private [health] insurance, but most of the information comes from Medicare."
After a weekend of intense protests, Chicago is bracing for more today. Marking the last day of the NATO summit, protesters planned to demonstrate in front of Boeing headquarters and at a community that could become the site of a detention facility for undocumented immigrants.
After emotional appeals from parents on both sides of the case, Dharun Ravi was this afternoon sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation for bias intimidation and invasion of privacy when he used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate at Rutgers University in September 2010.
John Fullbright's voice rises up and around the guitar chords in "Me Wanting You," his tone intended to haunt the person he's addressing. His desire, his "me wanting you," is as direct as he can possibly make it — it's not a cry of despair or hope or lust. It's the sound of someone intent on making as strong a connection with the listener as he possibly can.
Actor and writer Sacha Baron Cohen is famous for taking his characters — Ali G., Borat, Bruno — into the real world, interacting with people who have no idea that they're dealing with a fictional character. But his new movie, The Dictator, is a scripted comedy about a tyrant on the loose in New York.
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, we want to talk about the hottest spring trends, but - no - we're not talking fashion. We're talking about food. Washington Post food critic, Tom Sietsema, gives us a few things to chew on in just a few minutes.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko waits for the beginning of a joint hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Clean Air and Nuclear Safety in December.
Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced he would resign as soon as his replacement is confirmed.
"After an incredibly productive three years as Chairman, I have decided this is the appropriate time to continue my efforts to ensure public safety in a different forum," Jaczko said in a statement today. "This is the right time to pass along the public safety torch to a new chairman..."
Without commenting on the merits of the case, the Supreme Court this morning let stand a $675,000 jury verdict against a 25-year-old Boston University student who downloaded 30 songs nearly a decade ago and then shared them with others on a peer-to-peer network.
The court denied Joel Tenenbaum's "write of certiorari," which means his appeal of a lower court's ruling and the judgment were turned down.
That's the question of the day along the coast of Southern California as authorities try to figure out how four tons of marijuana — more than 150 bales — got into the Pacific Ocean near Orange County's Dana Point Harbor. They were found this weekend about 15 miles out to sea.
Just after the start of trading, the social media giant's shares were trading around $33, down 13 percent about $5 from Friday's close. At close, it ended 11 percent lower at $34.03.
As President Obama and other NATO leaders wrap up a two-day summit today in Chicago, the ongoing dispute with Pakistan over reopening supply routes from that country into Afghanistan threatens to "put a crimp in the Obama administration's efforts to lay out a clear strategy for winding down the war in Afghanistan," NPR's Jackie Northam tells our Newscast desk.
According to the BBC: "At least 63 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack during a rehearsal for a military parade in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, officials say. The assailant, who was reportedly wearing an army uniform, blew himself up among a group of soldiers at al-Sabin Square, near the presidential palace."
New York has its first million dollar parking spot. The 12 by 23 foot space in lower Manhattan's East Village comes with its own deed and maintenance fees just like the luxury condo it's attached to. The New York Post calculates the investment this way: It's the same as paying $115 parking ticket every day for the next 24 years.
"That's got to be the prettiest thing I've ever seen," Brent Veltri of Salida, Colo., told The Associated Press, when asked about the eclipse of the sun that was visible across the western U.S. on Sunday afternoon and in much of Asia earlier today.
The celestial show attracted quite a crowd. According to the AP:
Brandon Arnold of Arizona was camping this month when a rabid mountain lion leaped out of the bushes. It attacked his dog. Arnold chased the big cat and hit it with a frying pan.
For the most part, Democrats love, and Republicans detest, the gov. recall in Wisconsin. Which is the opposite of how they saw the 2003 California recall.
Ron Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Even Ron Paul knows it. His acknowledgement that Mitt Romney will be the nominee is just stating the obvious.
But what exactly did he mean when he said last week that he will "no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not voted"? Was he telling us that he was dropping out of the race?
With world leaders gathered for a NATO summit in Chicago, high on their agenda is the future of Afghanistan once Western troops withdraw. Among the leaders there is the president of Pakistan. Pakistan has been keeping NATO from using critical military supply routes running through that country to Afghanistan, something that's irritated NATO countries, whose troops are fighting in Afghanistan.
The TV show House is airing its final episode Monday night on FOX, Desperate Housewives on ABC ended last week and NBC has announced that 30 Rock will have its final episodes this fall. TV and media critic Eric Deggans of the Tampa Bay Times explains why choosing to end a show, rather than getting canceled, presents a creative opportunity for the producers.
Prosecutors say Rajat Gupta, a former member of the board of Goldman Sachs, passed on information about Goldman to billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, who is in prison for insider trading. Jury selection gets underway Monday.
NATO commanders say the mantra of the Afghan alliance has been "in together, out together." That means keeping combat forces in the country through 2014 — even though some member countries like France plan to bring their troops home sooner.
Douglas Harlow Brown, 80, of East Lansing, Mich., watches birds inside a medical rehab facility.
Credit Bill Serne for NPR
Marty Clear, 60, is a freelance writer based in Tampa, Fla., who has no health insurance. Last November, Clear went to an emergency room, and doctors discovered a cancerous tumor on his kidney. He's fine, but he says he'll never be able to pay off the resulting bills.
Credit Tom Smart / NPR
Andrew Dasenbrock, 32, was sent to two separate health care facilities owned by the same network and had to submit to, and be billed for, the same tests twice because of their inability to communicate.
Credit David Sanders / For NPR
Aimee Snyder, 28, had a blood clot in her leg that could have killed her. She's fine now, but she's had to pay more than $15,000 in medical bills so far.
Credit Courtesy of Jacki Bronicki
Douglas Harlow Brown, 80, of East Lansing, Mich., with his daughter Jacki Bronicki. After Brown was hospitalized with broken ribs, Bronicki says, his doctors failed to communicate about his medication.
To get a feeling for what being sick in America is really like, and to help us understand the findings of our poll with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, NPR did a call-out on Facebook. We asked people to share their experiences of the health care system, and within 24 hours, we were flooded with close to 1,000 responses.
Congress, shown gathered for President Obama's State of the Union in January, is speaking at about a grade level lower now than in 2005, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
Members of Congress are often criticized for what they do — or rather, what they don't do.
But what about what they say and, more specifically, how they say it? It turns out that the sophistication of congressional speech-making is on the decline, according to the open government group the Sunlight Foundation. Since 2005, the average grade level at which members of Congress speak has fallen by almost a full grade.
In the Saudi capital Riyadh, two women stroll into a cosmetics shop in a luxury mall. The desire for greater personal freedoms has prompted Saudi rulers to relax some restrictions.
The shock waves of the Arab Spring continue to reshape countries like Egypt and Syria. But the kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains largely unaffected. King Abdullah and the Saudi ruling family are in firm control of the country's massive oil wealth and Islam's two holiest sites — Mecca and Medina.