News From NPR

A smoldering epidemic already affects an estimated 4 million Americans, most of whom don't know it.

It's hepatitis C, an insidious virus that can hide in the body for two or three decades without causing symptoms — and then wreak havoc with the liver, scarring it so extensively that it can fail. Half of all people waiting for liver transplants have hepatitis C.

America's military future is decidedly undecided.

Looming sequestration cuts of massive proportions, coupled with a U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan are adding to the boiling partisanship over nominating Chuck Hegel as defense secretary. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that some of the biggest challenges for the Department of Defense come from inside U.S. borders.

France says its military operations in the African nation of Mali have stopped the advance of Islamist militants.

"Stopping the terrorists, that's done," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told RTL radio on Sunday.

Without France's intervention, the Islamists would have advanced to Bamako, the Malian capital, he said.

The head of the National Rifle Association said Sunday that there's little appetite on Capitol Hill for a ban on assault weapons.

"When a president takes all the power of his office, if he's willing to expend political capital, you don't want to make predictions, you don't want to bet your house on the outcome. But I would say that the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this Congress," NRA President David Keene said on CNN's State of the Union.