NPR Blogs

A startling new report finds freshly graduated college women will likely face this hurdle when entering the work world: they're worth less than equally educated men.

The American Association of University Women is releasing a new study that shows when men and women attend the same kind of college, pick the same major and accept the same kind of job, on average, the woman will still earn 82 cents to every dollar that a man earns.

Surf Beach near Vandenberg Air Force Base along California's central coast is closed after the death of a 39-year-old man who was attacked by a shark Tuesday while surfing.

The man's death came two years and a day after a shark killed a 19-year-old man along the same stretch of the coast.

A Fandango poll says that The Avengers is leading the pack for Halloween costume choice, and then goes on to explain that most of the top picks across the board are action heroes. Which does make some sense, as dressing up like a rom-com heroine would make it hard for people to tell who you are. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Reuters and Fox News have obtained copies of an email sent about two hours after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the White House, Pentagon and other agencies are told that the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia had "claimed responsibility."

Good morning, here are our early stories:

'God Intended' A Pregnancy Caused by Rape, Indiana Candidate Says.

Developing: Four-Day Truce Coming In Syria, U.N. Envoy Says.

And here are more early headlines:

Earlier ceasefire deals have quickly fallen apart in Syria this year, so this news should be viewed with some skepticism:

Two weeks after Matthew Spencer got a spinal injection for his chronic back pain, he felt "not quite right." Nothing too specific: worsening headache, nausea.

Then he saw a TV report on a recall of contaminated steroid medication used for back pain.

"I thought, well, I don't know if I had that medicine or not, but maybe I'd better go check it out," Spencer says.

An estimated 59.2 million people tuned in Monday night to watch President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in their third and final debate before the Nov. 6 election, The Nielsen Company reports.

Baseball manager Ozzie Guillen's difficult year, which began with him getting suspended for telling Time magazine "I love Fidel Castro," has not surprisingly ended with him being fired by the Mia

Wall Street's bad day — the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 240 points (1.8 percent) — has been followed by something unusual these days: good news about Facebook's shares.

Update at 6 p.m. ET:

Our original headline on this post was "U.S. Pledges Exceed Pakistan's Spending On Its Own Flood Relief." As we reported, the Christian Science Monitor has looked into the details of a Congressional Research Service report and concluded that U.S. aid to Pakistan for flood relief exceeded that country's own spending.

But Ben Edwards, a spokesman at the U.S. Agency for International Development, tells us in an email that:

No, the Nite Moves strip club in Latham, N.Y., can't claim that lap dances, pole performances and other moves in its ladies' repertoire are "art" and therefore exempt from sales taxes, New York State's highest court ruled today in a 4-3 decision.

According to The Associated Press:

Austerity measures continue in Greece as the country sinks deeper into a recession. Incomes have dropped nearly 50 percent in some cases, but food prices are at record highs. The Greek newspaper Ekathimerini recently reported that the country has some of the most expensive food and the costliest dairy products in the entire European Union.

See if you agree with most of the nearly 600,000 people who have seen this photo and think it should inspire others to vote this year.

As The Associated Press writes, it shows 93-year-old World War II veteran Frank Tanabe casting what's almost surely to be his last vote — from a hospice bed in Hawaii. He has liver cancer.

This message was posted with the photo:

Health policies for kids are back, now that heath insurers who stopped selling them after the health care overhaul passed are reopening shop, according to a recent report from the Commonwealth Fund.