NPR News

Gen. Carter Ham, the American officer in charge of the Libyan military operation, heads U.S. Africa Command, a job he started just 10 days before attacks against Libya began. But Ham is used to tough assignments.

They say everything comes in threes. Here's Ham's trifecta: A couple of years ago, the Pentagon turned to him to investigate the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. Ham's finding: Army officers failed in their oversight of the alleged gunman, Maj. Nidal Hassan.

Part 1 of a two-part series

In many developing countries, urbanization is leading to a huge problem — a rapid growth in the number of street children. They often flee their homes to escape abuse or just to earn extra money. Social services agencies have had limited success dealing with the problem because there are so many causes, from domestic violence to poverty.

Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, is a major port. The city's many waterways are lined with rickety shacks and houses thrown up quickly to house new arrivals.

European leaders meet in Brussels Thursday with the nuclear disaster in Japan very much on their minds. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for the European Union to have common safety standards for nuclear power plants, but agreement will be difficult.

On Monday, energy ministers could not even agree on how and when to conduct stress tests on European nuclear plants. Reactions to the Fukushima accident have differed sharply across Europe.

My old friend the Sports Curmudgeon has been on hiatus for a while, just stewing in his own bile as he watches the idiotic graphics on ESPN grow and swell and get stupider and get in the way of the picture, but he told me he figures if Tiki Barber thinks he can return to the NFL to play running back after four years, the Sports Curmudgeon can come back and be crabby again. Hello, Curmudgey.

It seems impossible to get through winter without hearing a news story about some poor guy who drops dead of a heart attack while shoveling snow.

And TV dramas love the scene where the guy expires while in bed with a beauteous babe. Now it looks like both scenarios have a basis in science.