Search results for

The National Book Awards, announced Wednesday night, honored both longtime writers and new authors, from Louise Erdrich for her novel The Round House, to Katherine Boo for her debut nonfiction work, Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook made news by announcing the company will start manufacturing a line of Mac computers in the U.S. But Cook, like Steve Jobs before him, says the main reason Apple produces most of its products overseas isn't about price. It's about a lack of skilled workers in the U.S.

Overnight air raids on Gaza pushed the Palestinian death toll to more than 80, with more than 700 wounded. The numbers on the Israeli side are dramatically lower — with three dead. And the Israeli prime minister says Israel is prepared to escalate the fight with ground troops. As the fighting drags into a new week, the United Nations and the Arab League are stepping up efforts to mediate.

A nurse at a London hospital who took a hoax call about Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge was found dead on Friday. Jacintha Saldhana let through a call from an Australian radio station purporting to be the Queen calling about the ailing Duchess.

A bottle of Scotch recently sold for $94,000, which obviously is a lot. But one went for $460,000 just two years ago. We awarded the record to the wrong whisky in an earlier version of this post, according to the folks at Guinness World Records.

The United States has added one of Syria's main rebel groups to its list of terrorist organizations. Jabhat al-Nusra has claimed responsibility for several bombings that killed and wounded Syrian civilians since the uprising against the Assad government began in March of 2011. The U.S. describes the group as an outgrowth of al-Qaida in Iraq.

It's Inauguration Day in Mexico. New President Enrique Pena Nieto inherits a country with a mixed record. Most of Mexico is embroiled in a deadly drug war, but also boasts an economy that is doing surprisingly well — thanks to the outgoing head of state, many say.

NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates profiles novelist Susan Straight, who is putting her hometown of Riverside, Calif., on the literary map. Straight herself is white, but she weaves the black, working-class voices of Riverside into her work.

Eating foods that cause your blood sugar to rise – like bagels, candy bars and juice – may be tied to acne flare-ups. How? Those blood sugar spikes can also increase hormones that stimulate oil production, researchers say.

There are two very different movies going on in Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's new drama, Snitch: One stars Johnson as a concerned father, the other stars The Rock as an undercover drug dealer. The warring conflicts make for a film that works against itself.

http://66.225.205.104/SO20081121.mp3David Murdock's thirst for knowledge is about equal to his quest for longevity. And both passions have taken root at…

Novelist Don DeLillo collects his short stories, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reflects on his career, Lawrence Lessig looks at money and power in politics, and comedians Ellen DeGeneres and John Hodgman poke fun at life's sunny and gloomy sides.

Gov. Mitt Romney started his campaign calling for big tax breaks for the middle class. Over time his goals for those breaks have expanded to maintaining the government's flow of income and creating jobs. In the end, will a middle-class tax cut still be possible?

As a multibillion-dollar environmental effort gets underway, the state has to figure out what the landscape used to look like. Ninety-seven percent of the original wetlands in the inland delta near the San Francisco Bay are gone, so California is turning to historians for help.

Some farmers growing shrimp in Midwestern ponds say they do it for love, not money. Despite recent advances in feed and efforts by several states to make shrimp-farming here a viable business, it's still fraught with too much economic risk to attract many growers.

The university's new stadium will be named after a private prison company. The GEO Group gave FAU a $6 million gift that "delighted" the administration but prompted protests from students. Friday, university President Mary Jane Saunders said the deal was a "closed book," despite allegations of abuse at the company's institutions.

The Taliban tried to ban all music in Afghanistan. But now, 48 young Afghans — boys and girls — make up an orchestra that is coming to the U.S. to perform at a couple of the most prestigious venues in America.

A skeleton discovered under what's now a parking lot in the English city of Leicester is that of the warrior king, researchers say. They identified him by matching DNA to that of a distant relative who's alive today.

EpiCenter. Photo: Jason E. Miczek A judge in the EpiCentre bankruptcy case has disbanded the committee of unsecured creditors, the latest twist in the…

Many comparisons have been made between Paul Thomas Anderson's film The Master and the history of Scientology. But, as David Edelstein explains, the challenge of balancing the search for surrogate family with American individualism dominates the film. (Recommended)