Search results for

The U.S. military commander alleges that Iran's ambassador to Iraq belongs to an elite force of the Iranian revolutionary guard that has targeted U.S. forces.

Writer F.X. Toole. At age 70, he's just published his first book. It's a collection of short stories about boxing called Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner. (ECCO/HarperCollins) For twenty years, he's been a cut man, stopping the bleeding so fighters can go on to the next round. Toole has been writing for 40 years, but it was the publication of his first story last year in a small literary magazine that caught the attention of a book agent. Writers James Ellroy and Joyce Carol Oates have praised this book, the former calling it "the best boxing fiction ever written." Others have compared his literary style to Frank McCourt's. Toole worked as a cabbie, bartender and bullfighter before entering the world of boxing.

The right to choose the school you want your child to attend has been the subject of court battles and bitter political debates. Still, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have made school choice a cornerstone of their efforts to reform public education.

NPR's longest-serving reference librarian, Kee Malesky, is the author of a new book, Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life. Malesky offers facts for each day of the year, from the landing on the moon to the invention of sliced bread.

Here's a word you don't associate with the school cafeteria: fresh. But last year, Abernathy Elementary School in Portland, Ore., bought a second-hand stove and a big mixer and started cooking all its food from scratch. Success is measured by the trash: Kids are throwing less food away.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian strongman who rose to power as president of Yugoslavia, then found himself indicted on more than 60 counts of war crimes, is buried in his hometown. Serbs faithful to Milosevic pay tribute at a Belgrade rally.

Could you be happy in a condo unit in a building next to an 800-bed jail? What if the jail had shopping on the ground floor? Brooklyn's corrections commissioner is proposing just such a project.

The sickest heart attack patients in states that report publicly on quality may get less treatment than those in states that don't. Public reporting is supposed to help patients shop intelligently for health care. But do doctors and hospitals game the quality systems?

The group Ollabelle came out of an open mike night in New York City called, "Sunday School for Sinners." Their music captures the sound and feeling of the American South, from it churches to its porches and honkytonks.

She's a spider's spider — sophisticated, pretty (by her own account), authoritarian — and she says something profound about love and commitment. Melissa Block looks at the heroine of Charlotte's Web.

County Sheriff Lee Baca faces what may be the toughest fight of his 14-year political career. A scathing report issued Friday includes accusations of misconduct in his jails, such as deputies beating inmates, cover-ups and a persistent culture of violence.

West Nile virus has arrived in California, and experts are carefully monitoring its spread through measures such as placing sentinel animals, like chickens, near mosquito breeding grounds. As NPR's John Nielsen reports, health officials hope to stall the disease and spare the state costly public health measures.