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The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has been stung by a string of prominent defections, from the prime minister to a leading general to a military aviator who was Syria's first man in space.

Ra'ed, a soldier from Syria's most prestigious military unit, the Republican Guard, is among the defectors.

The guard's chief duty is to protect the Syrian leadership. But Ra'ed says he never felt proud to serve after he was drafted in June 2010 at age 19.

Ra'ed, who is now living in Lebanon, asked that NPR use only his first name out of concern for his safety.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, has staked out a reputation in Congress as a fiscal conservative. He has spoken out against President Obama's efforts to jump-start the economy with the stimulus law and, after a conversion a few years ago, now opposes earmarks. But when it comes to helping out his district in southern Wisconsin, Ryan's principles have been flexible.

The national recession may be over, but local governments around the country are still hurting. Core services and programs are being scaled back, cut or privatized. In Upstate New York, county officials are scrambling to sell off nursing homes that have been taxpayer-funded for generations.

Horace Nye Nursing Home in Elizabethtown, N.Y., a modest brick building that sits a stone's throw from the village square, has 100 beds, and that's how many elderly people live here. There is always a waiting list.

This is the face of perfection:

The Seattle Mariner's Felix Hernandez is now a part of baseball lore, joining 22 others when he threw a perfect game in a 1-0 win against the Tampa Bay Rays, this afternoon.

That means Hernandez retired 27 batters in a row, throwing 113 pitches, 77 of them strikes. No one got on base.

What's incredible is that this is the third perfect game this season. USA Today reports:

Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer is throwing more punches in her contentious relationship with the federal government.

Today, she issued an executive order that says young people granted a deportation deferral under President Obama's new policy will still be considered undocumented and won't be granted public benefits.

Obama's new policy went into effect today.

NPR's Ted Robbins sent this report to our Newscast unit:

The diplomatic battle in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken a dramatic turn today: In an angry press conference streamed live on the Internet, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Britain threatened to storm their embassy in London if Assange was not handed over to police.

"Ecuador is not a British colony," Patiño said. "The days of colonialism are over."

He added that "such a threat is improper of a democratic and civilized country."

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the newly chosen vice presidential running mate for Republican Mitt Romney, was in Ohio on Wednesday to speak at his alma mater.

Ryan graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1992 with degrees in economics and political science. And his ascension to the GOP ticket thrills Rob Harrelson, a member of the school's College Republicans (as was Ryan, two decades earlier).

This week, Bill Gates was at a summer fair in Washington State, but he was not eating deep-fried butter on-a-stick, or checking out livestock.

Gates was inspecting cutting-edge toilet technology on display at an event his foundation hosted in Seattle — the Reinvent the Toilet Fair.

A judge's decision Wednesday to uphold the new Pennsylvania voter identification law shifted attention to the state's highest court, which could now determine if the requirement will be imposed on Election Day.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs had asked the judge to stop the law from taking effect as part of a constitutional challenge. Their complaint claims the law would make it disproportionately harder for seniors, minorities and others to vote in the Nov. 6 general election.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors to be careful with codeine to relieve children's pain.

The agency noted reports of three kids who died and one who almost did after taking codeine following surgery. The kids had their tonsils or adenoids removed to treat obstructive sleep apnea.

An analysis by USA Today says this Congress may be the least productive since the end of World War II. Sixty-one bills became law so far this year, 90 bills last year. So it's not surprising that Congress' approval rating is 10 percent.

In Georgia, among those returning when school resumes this month are several thousand students who attend private religious academies on scholarships paid for by taxpayers. Georgia is one of several states that allow businesses and individuals to receive tax credits for contributions to scholarship programs for kids, kindergarten through 12th grade.

The tax credit scholarships are popular with school choice advocates. Like vouchers, they use public money to pay for private education. But in Georgia, even some supporters say the scholarships may be open to abuse.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. This presidential campaign season features not only battles between candidates, but fights over how the voting process should work. Today in Pennsylvania, a judge refused to block the state's new voter ID law from going into effect before the election. The law requires voters to show identification at the polls.

As we hear from NPR's Pam Fessler, opponents of the law say they will appeal.

All this week, All Things Considered will listen to dispatches from the campaign trail. On Tuesday, we checked in on President Obama — today, a bit of Mitt Romney's stump speech.

The question many young immigrants have had since President Obama's Deferred Action policy was announced is whether their new status would allow them to pay in-state tuition at state universities. Audie Cornish speaks with Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Boston Globe, about how various states are handling tuition matters.

The question of whether GOP vice presidential pick Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will ultimately help or hurt Mitt Romney's quest for the White House is the subject of fierce debate.

But some politicos are calling Ryan a kingmaker following former longtime Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson's slim victory Tuesday in the hotly contested, four-way Republican U.S Senate primary.

Why? Ryan gave Thompson a shout-out at a Badger State homecoming rally Sunday, and the former governor quickly incorporated the veep pick's endorsement-of-sorts into a campaign ad.

The most valuable player of this year's All Star Game has been suspended for 50 games, Major League Baseball announced today.

Melky Cabrera, MLB tweeted, tested positive for testosterone and the suspension knocks him out for the rest of the season.

An experimental aircraft that designers hoped would hit 3,600 mph in a test flight over the Pacific on Tuesday "suffered a control failure" and failed in its attempt to go hypersonic, The Associated Press writes.

Its report follows earlier word from Wired magazine's Danger Room blog that it had been told by an "insider familiar with the test" that:

It seemed normal enough when President Obama chatted with a coffee shop patron about beer in Iowa Tuesday. The president has shown he's a fan of beer — and it's the most politically expedient, "everyman" beverage a candidate can drink. But then the president told a man at Knoxville, Iowa's Coffee Connection cafe that he travels with his own home-brew — and gave him a bottle to prove it.

The world of competitive Scrabble was jolted yesterday: One of the games' most promising players admitted he was hiding blank letter tiles.

As Mark wrote last year, a similar accusation of cheating was made at the World Scrabble Championships in 2011. But officials refused to strip search the man as an opponent demanded, because there wasn't sufficient evidence.

The first excerpts are out from journalist Joe Posnanski's upcoming biography of former Penn State head football Joe Paterno.