NPR News

Update at 3:00 p.m. ET. No Settlement Expected Today:

NPR's Ken Barcus says that no settlement is expected today. The most likely scenario is a contract vote sometime on Sunday, he says.

The Chicago Tribune reports quotes a union attorney who said that the outlines of an agreement are there, but a vote on ending the strike is not likely until Sunday.

Our Original Post Continues:

In an election that's supposed to be about the economy, tragic deaths overseas push foreign policy onto the political stage in the race between Mitt Romney and President Obama. While Romney seems to have lost the initial battle, questions remain about the administration's Middle East goals.

Join NPR's Ron Elving and Ken Rudin for the latest "It's All Politics" roundup.

Our impulse to share intimate details about our lives within our social networks (and even sometimes with complete strangers) seems to know few bounds.

Update at 12:57 p.m. ET. University of Texas Reopens:

The University of Texas has reopened, after a phoned bomb threat prompted the evacuation of its entire Austin campus this morning.

Twice in all of history, humans have managed to eradicate a devastating disease. You've heard of the first one, I suspect: smallpox. But rinderpest?

That's a German word for "cattle plague" a feared companion of cattle throughout history. When outbreaks occurred, as in Europe of the 1700s or Africa in the 1880s, entire herds were wiped out and communities went hungry. Now the disease is gone, eliminated from the face of the earth.

The Obama administration has stepped back from remarks by the president earlier this week in which he suggested that Egypt was something less than a firm ally.

Following unrest in Egypt and the killing of four Americans in Libya that was sparked at least in part by a film seemingly aimed at stoking Muslim anger, Obama, referring to Egypt, told the Spanish-language Telemundo: "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy."

The film Innocence of Muslims, which denigrates Islam and its prophet, Muhammad, has put the spotlight on a little-known community, Coptic Christians.

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