NPR News

You thought this happened only to Homer Simpson.

But, no, it happened in real life to oilfield workers in Texas: During the course of their work, they lost a radioactive rod. That's the story our friends at State Impact Texas are telling this afternoon.

We'll let you click over to get the full story about how even the National Guard has been enlisted, but here are the basics:

Cold Specks is the stage name of 23-year-old Canadian-bred singer-songwriter Al Spx, but it's not as if "Al Spx" isn't a pseudonym itself; she created the moniker out of respect for her parents, who don't approve of her music career. The London-based singer started Cold Specks as a small acoustic project to showcase her soulful voice and thoughtful lyrics, but it's only grown from there.

The big names on the Internet are forming a new lobbying group they hope will influence lawmakers when it comes to privacy and piracy.

The Washington Post reports that Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook and 10 other Web companies formed the Internet Association to counter any efforts to issue new rules for their industry.

The Post adds:

Ahead of high-profile talks in China by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, there was a high-impact leak. Photos emerged of a second Chinese stealth fighter jet — one that had been rumored but never seen before.

The J31, as analysts call it, shows how fast China is moving.

A lot of medicine's direst emergencies come down to one problem: lack of oxygen.

Cardiologist John Kheir started thinking about that when a little girl in his care, drowning from lung hemorrhages, died before she could be hooked up to a heart-lung machine that would have kept her blood oxygenated while the damage was repaired.

Scientists have known for a long time that rice — often babies' first food and the staple of much of the world's diet — is good at absorbing inorganic arsenic from soil during the growing process.

Two separate analyses, one by Consumer Reports and one by the Food and Drug Administration, have raised concerns that we might be getting too much of this known human carcinogen in our diets.