Rupert Murdoch's media company News Corp. seemed to catch everyone off guard when the company took an unexpected step Thursday. Murdoch's son James announced that Sunday would mark the last edition of the scandal-tarred but top-selling U.K. tabloid News of the World.

The move revealed the typically masterful and influential Murdoch clan scrambling desperately for once to contain damage — and its willingness to kill one of its own titles in the effort to do so.

In the original trailer for John Singleton's 1991 film Boyz N The Hood, violent images play over a thudding drum track, as voice over introduces viewers to the hard heart of South Central Los Angeles. "This is Los Angeles, gang capital of the nation." Then, "In South Central L.A., it's tough to beat the streets."

Six months after Jared Loughner allegedly fired a fusillade of shots into a crowd of people in Tucson, Ariz., gun control advocates are asking why there has been no change to the policies that let him buy and carry a semi-automatic weapon without a permit.

Even the staunchest gun control activists suppressed their disappointment when President Obama skirted the issue during his speech in Tucson four days after the shooting, which left six people dead and more than a dozen wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

This may be the most harrowing assignment I have ever tackled for NPR: spending a day watching Oprah Winfrey's new cable channel. Winfrey has admitted she could have done a better job with OWN, which launched in January. Ratings have been disappointing and the original CEO has left. Now that her daily talk show is over, Winfrey says that she's going to focus her attention on making OWN more successful. I figured I could check it out to see how it's doing.

Betsy Brooks remembers her father, Charles, as a "razor-sharp" former Marine. The two had their share of arguments, she says. But that all changed late in her father's life, as Betsy recently told her boyfriend, John Grecsek.

Charles was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease when he was 78. Betsy tells John about her relationship with her dad before, and after, the diagnosis.

"We butted heads from the moment we could," Betsy says.

Her father was a Marine — and very proud of it.

Michel Kilo's book-lined apartment in a Christian neighborhood in Damascus is a quiet contrast to streets where protesters demand an end to Syria's repressive regime.

But Kilo has never been silent, despite years in jail for directly criticizing what he calls a military dictatorship run by one family. At 71, Syria's best-known dissident watches the protest movement that has thrown the country into turmoil and reflects on the failures of his own generation.

In an interview with CNBC, Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and one of the world's wealthiest men, took sharp shots at politicians in Washington negotiating over raising the debt ceiling. Buffett said if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the U.S. would default on its debt and that is unprecedented and we simply don't know how that would turn out. That's why he compared the situation to a game of russian roulette. He said five times out of six everything would be fine but that one bullet could do a ton of damage. Playing, he said, is "silly."

The scene has become strikingly familiar over the 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration: congressional leaders footslogging in front of cameras to the White House for another "bipartisan" meeting to resolve yet another stalemate.

This time, however, the Thursday morning debt-ceiling confab in the Cabinet Room opened with a slightly different feel.

Scientists have finally demonstrated that sex is useful.

A team from Indiana University found that worms that have sex were better able than asexual worms to stay one evolutionary step ahead of dangerous parasites.

The finding, published in the journal Science, provides the first direct evidence that sexual reproduction improves a species' ability to survive in a fast-changing environment. And it suggests that parasites, including bacteria and viruses, are one reason species developed sexual reproduction in the first place.

A Florida panther ended up dead after it got into a fight with another panther. The story wouldn't be remarkable, if it weren't for the fact that scientists say only about 160 Florida panthers remain the wild.

The AP reports:

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission panther team leader Darrell Land says the male panther was between 7 and 9 years old. Its carcass was found Wednesday by a citrus grove manager near Immokalee.

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