NPR News

Starting today, America's hospitals will find that their checks from Medicare are a little bit lighter.

As part of the government's biggest effort yet at paying for performance, Medicare is withholding 1 percent of its regular hospital payments and putting that money into a fund to reward hospitals that score well on 20 different quality measures.

The White House today admitted that one of its computer networks had been targeted by a cyber attack, but it downplayed a report that sensitive nuclear networks were targeted.

There was a time — and it wasn't that long ago — when kids would leave home on a summer morning and roam free. "I knew kids who were pushed out the door at eight in the morning," writes Bill Bryson of his childhood in the 1950s, "and not allowed back until five unless they were on fire or actively bleeding." That's what kids did. They went out. Parents let them, and everybody did it. "If you stood on any corner with a bike — any corner anywhere — more than a hundred children, many of whom you had never seen before, would appear and ask you where you were going," Bryson writes.

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to speak in New York at the U.N. last week, he brought some 140 Iranians in his entourage.

It seems he went home with just 139.

Ahmadinenjad's cameraman, Hassan Gol Khaban, apparently stayed behind and is seeking asylum in the U.S., the Associated Press reports, citing New York lawyer Paul O'Dwyer.

There was no immediate word on the cameraman's whereabouts, the AP adds.

Unless Congress passes legislation in a lame-duck session, taxes will be higher by a half-trillion dollars next year, costing the average household nearly $3,500 a year, according to a just-released report by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

After studying details of the tax changes now set to take effect for 2013, the researchers were struck by "how big the tax increase is," said Eric Toder, one of those researchers. "It's a huge, huge number."

October marks 75 years since a dark period in the Dominican Republic's history. In 1937, President Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered the execution of thousands of ethnic Haitians. Guest host Celeste Headlee discusses the "Parsley Massacre" with two noted authors, one Dominican and one Haitian: Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat.

Keija Minor recently made history when she became the first African-American editor-in-chief of a Conde Nast publication. She sits down with guest host Celeste Headlee to talk about her plans for Brides magazine and how she views her historic achievement.

The Supreme Court term began Monday, and it already looks like a busy season. The high court is likely to take up affirmative action, same-sex marriage, and the Voting Rights Act. Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks with constitutional law Professor Darren Hutchinson about the Supreme Court cases.

In the fall of 1989, I was walking down a London street when someone handed me a flier that asked, "Should Rushdie Die?" The following afternoon, I headed over to the Royal Albert Hall to hear that question answered by a renowned Islamic scholar.