NPR News

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan used an appearance at an annual gathering of his party's social conservatives Friday to pointedly criticize President Obama's foreign policy record and to testify to his own Catholic faith and opposition to abortion.

"We're all in this together," said Ryan, a representative from Wisconsin, echoing a theme of Obama's convention speech. "It has a nice ring."

The Brits are in the middle of another scandal involving a semi-nude royal: After issuing a strong condemnation, the royal family said it would sue a French magazine for publishing photos of a topless Duchess of Cambridge.

The Duchess, if you're not a royal watcher, is Kate Middleton, Prince William's wife and ostensible the future queen of England.

A squadron of Chinese patrol vessels has turned back from a tense standoff with the Japanese coast guard near a small group of islands claimed by both countries.

The uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, known to Japan as Senkaku and to China as Diaoyu, have been the subject of a decades-long dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.

Update at 3:00 p.m. ET. No Settlement Expected Today:

NPR's Ken Barcus says that no settlement is expected today. The most likely scenario is a contract vote sometime on Sunday, he says.

The Chicago Tribune reports quotes a union attorney who said that the outlines of an agreement are there, but a vote on ending the strike is not likely until Sunday.

Our Original Post Continues:

In an election that's supposed to be about the economy, tragic deaths overseas push foreign policy onto the political stage in the race between Mitt Romney and President Obama. While Romney seems to have lost the initial battle, questions remain about the administration's Middle East goals.

Join NPR's Ron Elving and Ken Rudin for the latest "It's All Politics" roundup.

Our impulse to share intimate details about our lives within our social networks (and even sometimes with complete strangers) seems to know few bounds.

There's no question that cilantro is a polarizing herb. Some of us heap it onto salsas and soups with gusto while others avoid cilantro because it smells like soap and tastes like crushed bugs.

After the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya earlier this week, Google took down the YouTube video said to have sparked the violence — but only in Libya and in Egypt, where anti-American protests also flared up.

It's an example of the challenges of balancing U.S. free speech concerns and of something known as the "heckler's veto."

The Innocence of Muslims isn't the only YouTube video that can be seen in the U.S. but not elsewhere. Nazi propaganda is banned in Germany, for example, and slurs against Turkey's founder don't appear in that country.

Update at 12:57 p.m. ET. University of Texas Reopens:

The University of Texas has reopened, after a phoned bomb threat prompted the evacuation of its entire Austin campus this morning.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with a do-it-yourself downsizing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Home Depot, the U.S.-based home improvement big box chain, says it's going to leave some big boxes behind. It's going to close seven of its stores in China. The company says it's moving away from the do-it-yourself model in China.