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Correction: the Runner's World calculator discussed below is used for training purposes. A pace calculator estimates that Ryan would have needed to run at about 6:50 per mile to complete a marathon in 2:59.

Our original post:

Lawyers for 270 miners in South Africa are threatening legal action if their clients are not released from prison today. The mine workers were charged with murdering their own colleagues after police opened fire on a crowd of about 3,000 striking workers two weeks ago, killing 34 people.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton tells us the government charged the miners with murder using an obscure legal doctrine employed by the apartheid government.

Update at 10:40 a.m. ET:

NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson tells our Newscast unit the Taliban is claiming responsibility for both attacks, and that two U.S. soldiers are among the injured. One of the bombs exploded about 40 miles west of Kabul, on a road leading to a nearby U.S. military base. The deaths are numerous because there's a busy shopping center there. The other bomb went off near the district governor's compound.

Every nation stockpiles vital resources — think of the U.S. Petroleum Reserve, for instance. In Canada, they have warehouses holding millions of pounds of maple syrup. And recently, one of them was the site of what may be "the sweetest heist of all time," as The Vancouver Sun reports.

You've probably heard of thalidomide, the infamous sedative that ended up causing birth defects in the children of mothers who took it.

Back in the late 1950s, the drug was sold in 46 countries, though not the U.S., and was particularly popular in then-West Germany, the U.K. and Australia. But in 1961, the drug was taken off the market after the link to birth defects emerged.

If you've paid any attention to the last day of the Republican National Convention, you've no doubt heard about Clint Eastwood's strange performance in which he laid into President Obama, whom he pretended was sitting in an empty chair.

This summer has had its fair share of newsmaking disease outbreaks.

It's probably no exaggeration to say that Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for the senate race in Missouri who caused an uproar with his comments about abortion, became one of the least popular figures within the GOP.

How unpopular? Just look at the joke Republican master strategist Karl Rove made during a fundraiser:

When you can't beat the slowness of late summer as an entertainment season, you can at least embrace it, and that's what we did this week. Dog days of summer winding down, you say? We say it's time to talk about pop culture dogs. Not dogs in the "lousy product" sense, but dogs in the sense of literal, actual dogs. Faithful, friendly, silly, whether the size of an ottoman or the size of a wallet.

Among the little treasures, Stephen is fond of this slightly obscure dog — at least these eight minutes of him.

As the AP reads it, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stopped just short of "committing the Fed to any specific move, such as another round of bond purchases to lower long-term interest rates."

Bernanke gave a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wy. today. As with all his speeches, it was being closely watched for signs on what the Federal Reserve would do next.