News from NPR

To physician Larry Shore of My Health Medical Group in San Francisco, it's no surprise that patients give doctors low marks for time and attention.

"There's some data to suggest that the average patient gets to speak for between 12 and 15 seconds before the physician interrupts them," Shore says. "And that makes you feel like the person is not listening."

One day last week, I was entering the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., where John Edwards is on trial, when a U.S. marshal took my local newspaper. A moment later, he told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff to hand over his morning paper.

"We can't have newspapers?" I asked.

"You guys know the rules," the smiling marshal said.

It came as no surprise to us when outrage over "pink slime," the catchy nickname given to lean finely textured beef (LFTB), went viral a couple of months ago.

Murky government rules, off-limits meatpacking floors, and a "gotcha" media mentality have created a fear and mistrust that's left the public highly opinionated but often woefully misinformed about where our food comes from.

In 2004, singer-songwriter Regina Spektor was a staple of the so-called anti-folk scene when she sat down for one of her first public-radio interviews with the now-defunct WNYC program The Next Big Thing. In the interview, she joked that she stayed up until 3:30 a.m. writing a song, trying not to wake the neighbors, but never wrote anything down.

She still doesn't.

We like when conventional wisdom is challenged. And during the past couple of days, we stumbled on two stories that challenged assumptions both the news media and Americans seem to make.

First, Reuters compares Americans to anorexics when it comes to taxes. Essentially, they say when Americans respond to polls, they see themselves as "fat with taxes." It's the one thing both political parties agree on. But taking a look in the global mirror, Americans are actually quite skinny.

Forgive me, if you're suffering from PSA policy fatigue.

But there are a few more things I thought you might want to know about the new guideline from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that says men of all ages should forgo routine blood tests to detect prostate cancer.

Research from Johns Hopkins suggests the chances that doctors will listen aren't great.

In its yearly report on Human Rights, the U.S. State Department noted that 2011 was tumultuous. Some countries — for example, Tunisia, which kicked off the Arab Spring — made strides while others fell back on their human rights records.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

"I just don't like seeing those signs and I kind of wanted to put a stop to that."

That's 9-year-old Josef Miles' simple explanation for why he held up a notepad that said "GOD HATES NO ONE" as supporters of the tiny Westboro Baptist Church staged another small demonstration featuring their signs that say God hates homosexuals.

Do state capitals relatively distant from the major population centers have more corruption than those in more densely populated areas?

Researchers report that they have found an intriguing correlation between political corruption in state capitals and population density.

"Iran and world powers have agreed to meet in Moscow next month for another round of negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program," The Associated Press reports.

Protests in Montreal and Quebec resulted in the arrest of almost 700 people overnight.

The Toronto Star reports that the demonstrators protested tuition fee increases and they've been ongoing for about three months. But, yesterday, police rounded up hundreds of protesters — 518 in Montreal alone.

The Star reports:

The drive to wipe polio from the face of the earth is in jeopardy.

Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan are the only three countries left where poliovirus remains endemic. But work to put the paralyzing virus on the ropes there is in danger of failing. Cases in all three countries jumped last year.

Weak public health systems, armed conflicts and corruption have hurt vaccination efforts. Now leading public health officials have proposed an emergency plan of action to get things back on track..

Some Indiana third graders are already planning for summer school. They're preparing to retake a new statewide test, which they'll need to pass to go on to 4th grade. Host Michel Martin speaks with StateImpact Indiana reporter Kyle Stokes and NPR's Tovia Smith about the effects of these tests on kids and implications for states across the country.

The highly respected journalists at New Orleans' Times-Picayune last night found out the hard way — from another news outlet — that they're about to face deep staff cuts and that the newspaper will soon only print three days a week.

The New York Times' Media Decoder broke the story Wednesday just before midnight ET.

If you had hoped to bid on the medical-lab vial that purportedly contains the dried remains of a blood sample from President Ronald Reagan taken on the day he was nearly assassinated in March 1981, you're out of luck.