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African-Americans suffer some of the highest rates of HIV and AIDS in the country. The NAACP says it's time for one of the most important institutions in the black community, the church, to help combat those numbers. The NAACP has released a manual especially designed for clergy to assist in discussions about HIV-AIDS as a social justice issue with their parishioners.

Batman may be able to save Gotham from villians but the rules of physics apply to him. Four British graduate students produced a paper called "Trajectory of a falling Batman." It says Batman could glide off a 500-foot building as he does in the 2005 movie but he'd hit the ground at a life-threatening 50 miles-per-hour.

Firefighters have been able to make progress against blazes in other Western states. But the Kinyon Road Fire in Idaho has doubled in size since Sunday.

U.N. Special Envoy Kofi Annan and Syrian President al-Assad met Monday to save a peace deal that's failed to end ongoing violence. Opposition leaders say it has left more than 17,000 dead. NPR's Deborah Amos talks about the effects the fighting is having on people in the country and the region.

NASA has enlisted a crew to test how astronauts will cook and eat on years-long missions to Mars. The volunteers are learning to make French bread and Puerto Rican white bean stew out of shelf-stable ingredients in a low-gravity environment because you can only eat so much freeze-dried ice cream.

As Patrick Somerville read the scathing New York Times review of his book This Bright River, he realized the whole thing hinged on a factual error. To clear up the mistake, an editor at the Times emailed one of the book's main characters. The two developed what Somerville calls a "ghost relationship."

There's been an explosion in apps designed to help people stay healthy and manage chronic diseases. The Food and Drug Administration has announced plans to regulate some of these apps to make sure they're not putting patients at risk. But that's triggered a debate over whether government regulation may end up doing more harm than good.

Tens of millions of Americans are still struggling, despite the slow economic recovery. In Reading, Pa., the nation's poorest city, local nonprofit Opportunity House provides a lifeline for families trying to stay afloat by offering day care, housing and other assistance. But many in Reading are still left behind.

The Justice Department on Tuesday apologized to Kirk Odom for the "terrible injustice" of more than two decades spent in prison for rape and robbery. "There is clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Odom is innocent," the government now says, based on DNA tests and hair analysis.

Several urban thinkers joined us on Twitter, including Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, Carol Coletta of ArtPlace America, writer and blogger Aaron Renn, The Atlantic Cities editor Sommer Mathis and Diana Lind of Next American City.