NPR

npr.org — The rise of curbside recycling programs in the last few decades has meant more glass recycling. But for a long time, many recycling centers didn't have the technology to turn recycled glass into the raw material for new bottles. Instead, recycled glass often wound up being used as a cheap construction material, or even to cover landfills.

npr.org — Actor James Gandolfini, 51, has reportedly died. Variety magazine reports that he suffered a "sudden stroke." The star of the HBO series The Sopranos was reportedly in Italy.

npr.org — Last year, more U.S. service members took their own lives than died in combat. And despite the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, the pullout in Iraq, and hundreds of new programs designed to help troubled servicemen and women, the number of suicides continues to rise.

npr.org — Ever heard of the World Food Prize? It's sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for food and agriculture," but it has struggled to get people's attention. Prize winners tend to be agricultural insiders, and many are scientists. Last year's laureate, for instance, was Daniel Hillel, a pioneer of water-saving "micro-irrigation."

npr.org — A vaccine against human papillomavirus - the most common sexually transmitted infection and the cause of almost all cervical cancer - is dramatically reducing the prevalence of HPV in teenage girls. The first vaccine against HPV, Merck's Gardasil, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006.

npr.org — Carla Dove smiles as she tears open a small, flat cardboard box. She is sitting at a lab bench in her office at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. "It's kind of like Christmas for me because I never know what's going to be in the packages," she says.

npr.org — When the factory she worked at closed down, Tammy Thomas reinvented herself as a community organizer; and when Dean Price's truck stop business went belly up, he became a champion of biofuel. In a new book, George Packer examines how ordinary people are adapting to a new America.

npr.org — Two men in upstate New York have been arrested for planning to build a "radiation particle weapon" that could be mounted on a vehicle and used to target people, according to a report by the Albany Times-Union Wednesday. The men allegedly planned to sell the device to either the Ku Klux Klan or Jewish groups.

npr.org — Robert Siegel talks to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) about the legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Ron Wyden, to limit the federal government's ability to collect data on Americans without links to terrorism or espionage.

npr.org — Antonia Opiah and her sister Abigail wanted to start a conversation about hair, but they ended up inspiring a protest. The controversy began with an essay that Antonia wrote for the Huffington Post in which she argued that no one should say, "Can I touch your hair?"

npr.org — "Ugh," my sister exclaimed one evening as we were making dinner. It was supposed to be an easy poached chicken with a ginger-scallion sauce, eaten with cold cucumber wedges, and we had just discovered that what we had bought at the store was not cucumber, but zucchini.

npr.org — Alessandro Bianchi /Reuters /Landov Against all Vatican expectations, the pope's Twitter account in Latin has gained more than 100,000 followers in six months and continues to grow. Followers are not exclusively Roman Catholics or Latin scholars, but represent a wide variety of professions and religions from all over the world.

npr.org — Marsa Alam is a region of more than 100 miles of beautiful coastlines, coral reefs and diving spots. But the city itself is a microcosm of neglect in Egypt since the revolution. It is a ghost town of unfinished construction and promised infrastructure that still doesn't exist.

npr.org — Tourism workers in Luxor, Egypt, are threatening protest over the appointment of the region's new governor. Over the weekend Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi appointed Adel el-Khayat to lead Luxor. El-Khayat is a member of a political party strongly associated with the Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya, a group connected to attacks in Luxor in 1997 that killed 58 tourists.

npr.org — A conflict over alcohol is escalating in the tiny town of Whiteclay, Neb., which sells millions of cans of beer annually to residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. While protesters are trying to block beer deliveries to the town, some tribal leaders are considering legalizing alcohol at Pine Ridge.