NPR News

A quick update on the Decorah Bald Eagle cam that we've been keeping track of and became quite the sensation last year.

As U.S. Supreme Court justices opened their historic three-day hearing of arguments on President Obama's health care plan, hundreds of protesters from across the country flocked outside the court singing, chanting and arguing with one another.

Supporters and opponents of the law engaged in a sing-song call-and-response debate just in front of the court's towering marble steps.

"We love Obamacare!" shouted supporters.

"No, we don't!" responded members of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the most vocal and disapproving groups of the law present at the court Monday.

The documentary Bully will be released unrated.

The decision from the Weinstein Company comes after a very public appeal for the Motion Picture Association of America to overturn its decision to give the bullying documentary an R-rating, which meant anyone younger than 17 would not be permitted without a parent.

A new study finds that people who eat chocolate several times a week are actually leaner than people who don't eat chocolate regularly.

Really, we asked? Last time we checked chocolate was loaded with fat and sugar. But this new research, along with some prior studies, suggests chocolate may favorably influence metabolism.

If on winning the Republican presidential nomination Mitt Romney needs a vice presidential running mate with the proven ability to use a New York Times correspondent as a rhetorical punching bag, Rick Santorum could be available.

In the aftermath of the Toulouse shootings, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said his country would bar some Muslim clerics from entering the country.

According to Al Arabiya, Sarkozy said he spoke to the Emir of Qatar to request that Yousef Al-Qarwadi, an Egyptian who is considered one of the most prominent Sunni Muslim clerics, not be allowed to travel to France.

When Fahad A. Alhomoudi was studying for his doctorate in Islamic studies at Canada's McGill University in 2000, he discovered something that bothered him.

"There is, in almost every American and European university, a center for Middle Eastern or Islamic or Arab studies," the Saudi professor recalled in a recent interview in his office in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. "But there was not a single center with a focus on the West in the Middle East."

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday opened three days of oral arguments over the constitutionality of the insurance requirement embedded in President Obama's landmark health care law with a simple question and an obscure 1867 law.

The question: Does the court even have the right to hear the health care challenge, given that the Anti-Injunction Act prevents federal courts from taking cases where taxpayers are trying to prevent the government from "assessing or collecting" taxes?

Surgical procedures that are commonly used to help obese people lose weight can also dramatically improve — even reverse — diabetes, according to two studies released Monday.

Tim Ferree of Macedonia, Ohio, struggled with his weight for years. He knew his out-of-control blood sugar would eventually cause serious problems.

"You're looking at losing your vision, losing your feet, having problems with your kidneys, going blind — you know, heart disease, strokes," Ferree said.

Beef Products Inc., which turns fatty beef trimmings into a lean beef product that ends up in ground beef, announced today it is suspending operations at three of its four plants. But a company spokesman says the fatty trimmings that safety experts admit can harbor pathogens will still end up in the ground beef supply.