NPR News

A day after delivering a defiant speech in which he proclaimed his innocence, disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich flew to Colorado and reported to prison to begin serving his 14-year sentence.

The AP reports:

Eighty percent of college students drink, and schools have had little success reducing those numbers, or the problems caused by excessive alcohol.

Targeting students who suffer blackouts from drinking may help, a new study says, because they are more likely to end up in the emergency room.

What does it mean that in 2012 Mitt Romney has, during the Republican presidential primaries, done well in some of the same Ohio and Michigan urban-suburban counties that President Obama won in 2008 — a pattern likely to be repeated in some upcoming primaries?

Like they've done in the past, the NAACP has argued before a United Nations panel that laws passed in some states that require voters to show identification suppress the votes of minorities.

Fox News reports the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People made its case in Geneva yesterday:

In someways regular life has gone on for Syrian President Bashar Assad and his family.

Despite the fact that over the past year, his government has led a bloody offensive that's killed more than 7,500 of his own people, the Syrian dictator still shopped for music and clothes as well as shared jokes and videos with friends.

A Pentagon official is downplaying the Afghan president's call for the United States to confine its troops to military bases by next year.

The AP says an unnamed "defense offical" told reporters the United States does not believe that's what President Hamid Karzai is seeking.

"We believe that this statement reflects President Karzai's strong interest in moving as quickly as possible to a fully independent and sovereign Afghanistan," Pentagon spokesman George Little said, according the AP.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We're going to check in on a number of important international stories today. In a few minutes, we will tell you about what could be a significant ruling by the International Criminal Court. The court issued the first conviction in its history. It was against a former Congolese rebel fighter who was found guilty yesterday, of forcing children to serve as soldiers. We'll take a closer look at the verdict and what it could mean in a few minutes.