NPR Blogs

From Russia Today:

"Russia's counterintelligence agency has detained a CIA agent in Moscow trying to recruit an officer of the Russian secret service, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced. The agent was operating under guise of career diplomat."

According to Reuters, the Russian foreign ministry has summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul for a discussion.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Actress Angelina Jolie Shares Story Of Her Double Mastectomy.

-- Russian Security Service Claims To Have Uncovered CIA Agent.

Since 2008, the Afghan government has assessed nearly $1 billion dollars in taxes — sometimes erroneously — on U.S. contractors working in the country, according to a new report from the Pentagon's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, NPR's Tom Bowman tells our Newscast Desk.

John Sopko, the special inspector general, says the tax confusion has led to the arrest of contractors for nonpayment, increased costs to the U.S. government and interruptions to American military operations.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Saying she is "writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience," actress Angelina Jolie reveals on the op-ed pages of The New York Times that she had a double mastectomy earlier this year to substantially reduce the chances she will develop breast cancer.

O.J. Simpson, shackled and wearing a blue prison uniform, was back in court on Monday asking for a new trial in the 2008 robbery-kidnapping case that landed him in prison.

The Associated Press described 65-year-old football star and TV pitchman as "Looking grayer and heavier ... flanked by guards as he nodded and raised his eyebrows to acknowledge people he recognized in the audience."

The Associated Press news agency says that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months of telephone records on 20 lines used by its reporters and editors.

The records covered April and May 2012, and according to the AP:

Dr. Joyce Brothers, whose long-running television show dispensed advice on life and relationships to her viewers, has died in New York at age 85, according to her publicist.

She died on Monday of natural causes, Sanford Brokaw said.

Brothers, who was a pioneer of the television advice show, first gained fame as a winning contestant on the television game show "The $64,000 Question" in 1955, becoming the only woman ever to win the top prize. The AP says:

Americans appear to be split over the Obama administration's handling of the aftermath from the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.