Just as the public has lately been surprised to discover that football is really a very perilous game for your head, those Americans who do not pay that much attention to sports have been brought up short recently to learn better what an incredibly hypocritical and autocratic cartel is the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

At a press conference in Tulsa, Okla., following the targeted shootings of five African-Americans last week, the optics were as important as the substance of the news.

The mayor and police chief pleaded for the public's help in capturing the suspects, while behind those two white men stood a pair of Tulsa's most influential black leaders — the lone African-American member of the City Council and the president of the local NAACP.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

In Sanford, Florida, there's been a new development in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. Late today, attorneys for the admitted shooter, George Zimmerman, said they are no longer representing him. Attorney Craig Sonner says they haven't spoken to Zimmerman since Sunday.

It may sound counterintuitive, but a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine has concluded that the best way to slow the nation's breakneck spending on medical care is to impose a tax on every health care transaction.

Iranian officials spoke out Tuesday to insist that reports that the country is killing access to the Internet are grossly exaggerated. Several news outlets had picked up on a report from Reporters Without Borders — a report that contains the information that "Iran has announced the launch of a national Internet."

Lawyers for George Zimmerman in the case of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin say they are no longer representing the man who killed the unarmed Florida teenager.

Defense attorneys Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig announced their decision in an appearance outside the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford, Fla.

The two lawyers said that they had fallen out of contact with Zimmerman.

Uhrig also said that he "heard today" that Zimmerman had been in direct contact with the special prosecutor in the Martin case, according to Reuters.

After more than a year of fighting in Syria, the peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan appeared to be the most serious effort yet to end the bloodletting.

But on a day when Syrian army tanks were supposed to pull back from Syrian cities, opposition groups said there were fresh attacks Tuesday in the central city of Homs and several other cities.

On a bright Sunday morning in the tiny town of Heathsville, Va., Jeffrey Cerar surveys the church he's preached in for the past 15 years — its 130-year-old wooden pews, its stained glass windows, its paschal candles, its cross.

"Virtually everything you see here is going to stay; the high altar, the credence table, the hymnals and books of common prayer will all stay," he says. "The Bibles will go with us."

Earlier this month, tenor Juan Diego Florez made headlines when he sang the aria "Una furtiva lagrima" in the Donizetti opera L'elisir D'Amore at the Metropolitan Opera — not once, but twice.

The audience responded so enthusiastically that after well over a minute of applause and shouts of "Encore!" he sang the whole thing again — all five minutes of it.

U.S. beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh is honing her game for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she and her playing partner, Misty May-Treanor, hope to continue a streak of dominance that goes back to the 2004 games in Athens and Beijing in 2008.

Speaking with Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne, Walsh says the duo's effort to represent the United States this summer is going well.