National News from NPR

Today Hindus across the world are celebrating Diwali, or the festival of lights. There's plenty of coverage about the celebrations, and the Hindustan Times has a good overview.

Police crackdowns in Atlanta and Oakland, Calif., to disperse protests affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement could mark a turning point in the tactics of both the demonstrators and the authorities dealing with them, experts say.

Oakland police equipped with riot gear fired tear gas and, according to demonstrators, used rubber bullets and flash grenades on Tuesday to clear Frank Ogawa Park in front of City Hall. In Atlanta, helicopters circled over a small city park just after midnight Wednesday as officers moved in to arrest about 50 protesters.

Opening statements are set to begin Thursday in Boston at the trial of Tarek Mehanna, a 29-year-old American charged in U.S. District Court with conspiracy and providing material support to al-Qaida, as well as planning to attend training camps abroad and making false statements to authorities. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

Bloomberg dug through quite a bit of government data to answer a question that's been talked about quite a bit over the past few months: Has President Obama ushered in an era of costly business regulation? Republicans have made the claim regularly. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, said, "President Obama has vastly expanded the regulatory reach of government."

Kudos to the SF Weekly for their fascinating in-depth cover story last week on bug eating. The City by the Bay has become a "hotbed of insect cuisine," David Gordon, an entomophagist (bug eater) and author of The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, tells the alternative weekly.

The drive to test healthy people for common cancers rests on the idea that finding malignancies early can trigger life-saving treatment. But the evidence that some of the tests will actually reduce mortality is sometimes lacking or is less than clear cut for the people who'll get tested.

The Obama administration is revising some rules on federally guaranteed student loans. The administration says the changes will make it easier for graduates to repay them. It's making it easier for students to consolidate loans into a single payment and expanding a program that bases payments on a graduate's income. The new rules will affect 7 million of the 36 million student loan borrowers.

Wednesday night's E.U. summit in Brussels was at first heralded as the venue for a comprehensive deal that would help Europe's debt crisis — then E.U. leaders started ratcheting back the expectations. Melissa Block talks to NPR's Jim Zarroli for more.

Tom Waits generally sings like a psychotic carnival barker or a drunken lounge crooner. And I really mean that as a compliment.