NPR News

Sen. John Ensign said it himself. It was going to be ugly if the Nevada Republican ran for re-election, no doubt about it.

Assuming he emerged the victor after a near certain primary challenge, which was a big if, there would have likely been a very nasty general election campaign.

Democrats, desperate to keep control of the Senate, had a lot to work with, given Ensign's well publicized extramarital affair with a political aide who was married to one of his staffers. Then there was the large payment from Ensign to the couple and a Senate ethics investigation, to boot.

Could life have rained down on Earth from outer space? That tantalizing prospect has been raised by a new scientific paper by NASA scientist Richard B. Hoover of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The only problem with the research seems to be that most scientists who have seen the work think it's probably wrong.

Parents who fear that video games are turning their children into tubs of lard can now say with confidence that playing Dance Dance Revolution burns more calories than sitting on the couch.

In fact, active video games like Dance Dance Revolution give kids a better workout than walking on a treadmill at 3 mph, according to new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. And even the overweight kids say they liked playing the games.

Once upon a time, being a "diehard fan" meant buying a band's album, show ticket, T-shirt, limited edition signed LP — anything your earnings would allow. Today the term can have a very different meaning. You can be a "diehard" by blogging about everything the band puts out, posting links to your Facebook wall, re-Tweeting the band's messages, and commenting on its Soundcloud page, all without paying a dime.

After she stepped forward last year to take a job no one else wanted because of the drug-related violence — police chief in the Mexican border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero — Marisol Valles was called the "bravest woman in Mexico."

Now, she's the ex-police chief. Valles, 21, was "fired Monday for apparently abandoning her post after receiving death threats," the Associated Press reports. [The AP says Valles is 20; we're relying on the PBS News Hour for her age.]