NPR Blogs

The Justice Department has closed an investigation into the deaths of two detainees in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan without bringing any criminal charges.

Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors had declined to proceed "because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt."

This paragraph from NASA worried us:

"In one study, astronomers used WISE to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes across the full sky, stretching back to distances more than 10 billion light-years away. About two-thirds of these objects never had been detected before because dust blocks their visible light. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light."

A 100-year-old driver accidentally backed up his car onto a sidewalk full of children in south Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Times reports nine children and two adults ranging in age from 14 months to 48 years old were injured seriously but were in stable condition.

Women who had multiple abortions before giving birth to a first child were more likely to have that child very prematurely or to deliver a child with a low birth weight, according to one of the first large-scale studies to look at the issue.

Good morning, we're following these stories:

A Weakening Isaac's Rain Could Still Cause Significant Flooding.

At Non-Aligned Conference, Egypt's Morsi Slams Iran Over Syria Position.

And here are other headlines:

A secret service agent accidentally left her gun inside the lavatory of Mitt Romney's campaign plane.

CBS News reports that the loaded gun was found by one of its reporters who was travelling with the Republican presidential nominee from Tampa to Indianapolis, Ind., where Romney was scheduled to deliver a speech.

Cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis are increasing around the globe, and at a faster rate than previously thought. And if that weren't enough, TB is quickly building resistance to more and more of the drugs commonly used to fight it.

The troubling picture emerged in a study just published in The Lancet.

No surprise, but still impressive: mobile content is rising and rising ... and rising. [The Hollywood Reporter]

It's a little hard to believe, but apparently the NFL is going to open its regular season with replacement officials — or at least it says it will. [ESPN] [caution, opens a video]

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment remained flat, last week, the Employment and Training Administration reports. In the week that ended Aug. 25, a seasonally adjusted 374,000 claims were filed, matching the previous week's total, which was revised up.