NPR News

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said that Iranian warplanes fired on an unarmed U.S. drone in the Persian Gulf on Nov. 1.

According to Reuters, Little said the MQ1 Predator drone, which returned safely to its base, was in international waters at the time. Reuters adds:

Nigeria is the world's epicenter for polio. It's the only place where cases are ticking up, and it's been the source of outbreaks in other countries since 2003.

There was a disappointing update from public health officials Thursday about the polio situation in Nigeria. Despite beefed-up efforts to vaccinate kids and a flood of new resources, Nigeria still hasn't turned the corner on polio.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Before the election recedes too far, there are a couple more takeaways that deserve attention. One is the money. Spending in the 2012 campaign reached record heights. Some estimates put the total at more than $6 billion, and the new outside groups, the superPACs and the nonprofits, spent more than a billion to buy maybe one million television ads. In a moment, the effect of that unprecedented flow of cash.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

The contrast couldn't be clearer. On Tuesday night, crowds gathered to watch election returns. The candidates and their nervous supporters had no way to know who'd win. In Beijing, as the Communist Party Congress gathered, the government cleared Tiananmen Square to create an eerie scene one observer described as post-apocalyptic. China's new leaders are being chosen in secret and few have any idea how they proposed to direct policy.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

With all the election news, we couldn't get to it earlier, so it's Thursday and time to get to your comments.

While we were busy paying attention to storms and presidential politics earlier this week, we missed a story from Oklahoma that may just (insert four-letter euphemism for urine here) you off.

It seems that when 3-year-old Dillan Warden of Piedmont, Okla., (no joke!) had to "go" on Sunday he did what many little guys will do:

Florida is again having problems determining the winner of its presidential vote. But its difficulties are entirely different from the ones that kept the nation in suspense for more than a month back in 2000.

"It was just a convergence of things that were an embarrassment to Florida," says Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

On Monday morning at about 5:30 (I'm an early riser), I woke up, swung my legs out of bed, and stepped into water.

I live in a basement apartment where I've been for four years, and almost exactly a week after I was blessedly lucky to avoid the superstorm — and at a time when some of my New York and New Jersey friends were still in the dark — a freaky plumbing/heating mishap wound up filling my entire apartment with about an inch of water.