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Photographer David Binder began documenting stories about AIDS in the late 1980s and became well known for humanizing the epidemic for various publications, including Life magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Like many high school students, Thomas Martinez and Tamara Hardy dreamed of leaving for college and finding their futures away from home. But both grew up on a Navajo reservation and were torn, between those aspirations and their strong ties to their poverty-stricken community.

Martinez struggles to balance the needs of his family with plans to run track in college. Hardy wants to earn an engineering degree away from home, yet like many Native parents, her mother and father are reluctant to see her leave.

This August, physicists are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays, showers of particles raining down on us from outer space. Although much has been learned about the nature and composition of cosmic rays, many puzzling questions remain. No one knows what physical processes could possibly accelerate particles to energies millions of times higher than those reached at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was recently discovered.

The New York Police Department has shown "a pattern of abusive and unaccountable protest policing" during the Occupy protests, a wide consortium of legal experts detail in a report (PDF) issued today.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. W will skip the GOP convention, the presidential rivals vie for the vet vote, and Romney lambasts White House leaks. It's Wednesday and time for a...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Contemptible...

CONAN: ...edition of the Political Junkie.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?

SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

The Boy Scouts of America recently reaffirmed its longtime policy of excluding openly gay members. While some praised the group, a growing number of adult Eagle Scouts are returning their badges in protest of the policy, including Kelsey Timmerman, who worries about the moral integrity of the BSA.

As drought and high temperatures continue to devastate much of the country's corn and soybean crops, the USDA reports that food prices will continue to rise at least into 2013. NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax and The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown discuss the rising cost of food.

(Sean Carberry is a producer on NPR's foreign desk. From Kabul, he sent us this glimpse into the challenge of reporting on events in places such as Afghanistan.)

A story broke Tuesday that an Afghan police commander had defected to the Taliban along with a number of officers under his command. Early statements from the governor's office in Farah province said that "Mirwais," the commander of a police checkpoint, had poisoned seven of his men who refused to go along with the defection, and then he and 13 others disappeared with weapons and police vehicles.

Four years ago, a Vatican group called "The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" began an assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a member organization founded in 1956 that represents 80 percent of Catholic nuns in the United States. The assessment was designed to take a careful look at whether the nuns were acting in accordance with the teachings of the church.

There's an account in today's Denver Post of the huge problems first responders faced early Friday when they got to the scene of the shooting rampage at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater where 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded.

According to the Post:

Taxes may be certain, but growth and job creation aren't.

As the U.S. edges closer to a year-end "fiscal cliff," Democrats and Republicans haven't budged in their fight over expiring tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — and how best to help the middle class and get the country back to work.

Update at 5:36 p.m. ET. U.S. Attorney Will Investigate:

During a press conference today, Mayor Tom Tait asked for calm. He also said that the Office of the U.S. Attorney had agreed to investigate the shootings.

"The first step is to get to the truth," Tait said according to the Orange County Register. "That takes some time and patience, and that's what I'm asking for."

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