NPR News

Just last week AIDS researchers were excited about a Mississippi toddler whose blood has remained free of HIV many months after she stopped getting antiviral drugs – what doctors call a "functional cure."

A federal appeals court has rejected an effort by the CIA to deny it has any documents about a U.S. drone program that has killed terrorists overseas, ruling that the agency is stretching the law too far and asking judges "to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible."

Casey Fury, the civilian employee who set fire to the USS Miami nuclear-powered attack submarine in Maine was sentenced to 17 years in prison, today.

Fury pleaded guilty to two counts of arson, one for the Miami fire, the other for a fire he set weeks later.

Sea Coast Online reports:

"'From the bottom of my heart, I'm truly sorry,' Fury said during his sentencing hearing. 'I can't put into words the remorse I feel. I had no intention of hurting anyone.'"

In the '60s, some fervent rock groupies formed a band called the GTOs — short for "Girls Together Outrageously" — and while it didn't last, the name captures the impulse behind stories in which women chafe against the male-centric society that pulls their strings. This week you can see a girls-together-outrageously triple bill: Spring Breakers, Ginger & Rosa and Beyond the Hills.

Microbes may once have happily existed on the surface of Mars, according to chemical analysis of a sedimentary rock in the Red Planet's Gale crater. NASA geologist and exobiologist David Blake discusses evidence for an ancient freshwater lake in the crater, and describes the mineral-chomping microbes that may have thrived there.

By combing through 100 million search queries on Bing, Yahoo and Google, Microsoft Research Lab co-director Eric Horvitz and his colleagues were able to discover a previously unknown interaction between two commonly prescribed drugs. Horvitz says the method might detect dangerous drug interactions earlier than the FDA's warning system.

Kathy Reichs, the writer and scientist behind the TV show Bones, is back with a new novel for young adults. Code: A Virals Novel stars Tory Brennan, great-niece of Reich's famed crime-solving heroine Tempe Brennan. Reichs discusses the book, co-written with Brendan Reichs.

What can you find underneath a British railroad or parking lot? These days it could be skeletons, and probably a lot of them. Last month, researchers announced the bones of a man discovered underneath a British parking lot were actually King Richard III. Today, a British rail project says some of its staff stumbled upon skeletons of people who may have died of the Black Death nearly 700 years ago, during an outbreak of bubonic plague.