State and National News

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

New research out today indicates that a popular medical test may increase the risk for some forms of cancer. A large international study found that CAT scans, which are also known as CT scans, can increase the risk for leukemia and brain cancer in children.

NPR's Rob Stein joins us now to talk about the new findings. And, Rob, I understand the concerns about these scans have been building for a long time. So what's the specific source of worry here?

For its YA-themed 2012 Summer Books series, NPR Books is featuring first-person submissions from acclaimed authors remembering the novels that exposed their young minds to new, provocative themes of adulthood. As a fun parallel (and nostalgic indulgence) we asked NPR staff members to do the same.

$400 million in damage to the Navy's fast attack submarine USS Miami was caused by a fire started by a vacuum cleaner.

That's what a preliminary report about the May 23 fire has found. The vacuum cleaner, the Navy said in a statement, was "used to clean worksites at end of shifts, and stored in an unoccupied space."

There's still no indication how the vacuum cleaner caught fire to begin with.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker triumphantly returned to the Wisconsin Capitol Wednesday, fresh off of his decisive victory in Tuesday's bitter recall election.

The governor appears to be emerging from the tough recall fight stronger, and with his national profile rising.

Dandelion Wine -- first a short story in 1953 and then a novel in 1957 — may not wield as much name recognition as Fahrenheit 451, but it is the late Ray Bradbury's most personal work. This sensory tribute to his boyhood summers in Illinois begins:

Barely a day after she competed in the Miss USA beauty contest, Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin tore off her sash and fired a scorching resignation:

"In good conscience I can no longer be affiliated in any way with an organization I consider to be fraudulent, lacking in morals, inconsistent, and in many ways trashy."

Trashy? There's a surprising perjorative from a woman who says on Facebook she's spent a decade associated with the pageant.

You are invited to a special NPR event to help dissect a lie.

NPR Science Desk Correspondents Jon Hamilton, Alix Spiegel and Shankar Vedantam will be on stage at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, June 14, at 7 p.m., to explore the science behind deception and self-deception with live storytelling, audience discussion and original multimedia.

China's first national survey of tuberculosis has produced some of the worst TB news in years.

Out of the million Chinese who develop TB every year, researchers say at least 110,000 get a form that's resistant to the mainstay drugs isoniazid and rifampin. Patients with such multidrug-resistant or MDR tuberculosis have to be treated for up to two years with expensive second-line drugs that are toxic and less effective.