State and National News

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. There's news today that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, or USADA, has brought formal doping charges against seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. USADA is the body that fights performance-enhancing drug use in Olympic sports.

This one probably isn't over yet. A local Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan applied for permission to conduct regular trash clean ups along a state road, as part of the Adopt-A-Highway program. In exchange, Georgia usually posts a couple of small road signs honoring volunteers. This group's sign would read: IKK Realm of GA, Ku Klux Klan.

It would get your attention.

Female genital mutilation is still remarkably common — mainly in Africa, but also in some countries in Asia and the Middle East and in immigrant communities in Europe and the U.S.

A NASA mission aimed at surveying black holes and supernovae, among other things, launched successfully today at noon ET from beneath the belly of a wide-body jet flying approximately 40,000 feet above a darkened Pacific Ocean.

The 772-pound NuSTAR X-ray observatory was carried into an equatorial orbit about 400 miles above the Earth by a Pegasus rocket, which fired its three-stage motor for 13 minutes after being dropped by the L-1011 jet.

A new study shows that in coming years, the frequency of wildfires will increase because of climate change. Audie Cornish talks to Max Moritz, lead author of the study at University of California-Berkeley.

Colorado's High Park Fire northwest of Fort Collins has topped 46,000 acres, making it one of the largest wildfires in the state's history. It's also destroyed more than 100 buildings. But firefighters are beginning to gain ground and have started containing the blaze.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Wildlife researchers estimate that each year nearly seven million migrating birds die because of communications towers. The big problem, according to researchers at the University of Southern California, are the solid red lights on these towers - lights required by the FAA - in order to that are meant to warn aircraft pilots.

Scientists say the light causes a kind of vertigo and a recent effort in Michigan to temporarily turn the lights off during migrating season cut the number of bird deaths there by more than half.