Bill Chappell

A group is calling on back-to-school shoppers to boycott Macy's and Kroger stores in Texas this weekend, in retaliation for the national retailers' efforts to quash a bill that would have strengthened the state's wage discrimination law.

The bill was vetoed in June after winning bipartisan approval in the legislature. ...

"You're up next."

Those three words are what any athlete longs to hear. For linebacker Brian Banks, it took more than 10 years for that sentence to be addressed to him by an NFL coach. When he heard it in a preseason game Thursday night, Banks got a taste of ...

Calling a lawsuit's potential results "absurd" for cities around the United States, Major League Baseball asked a federal judge to dismiss a challenge to its antitrust exemption filed by San Jose. The city filed the suit to press its case for relocating the Oakland A's there.

NPR's Richard Gonzales filed ...

A U.S. radar system that tracks thousands of objects orbiting Earth — from satellites to harmful debris — has been slated for a shutdown, according to the Space News site. The ground-based network known as the "Space Fence" may cease to operate in October.

"This is your notice to begin ...

A Virginia man has caught the largest northern snakehead on record with a rod and reel, landing a 17-pound, 6-ounce specimen of the fish often called "Frankenfish" for their monster-like appearance and tenacious survival skills.

Caleb Newton, a plumber who lives in Spotsylvania County, Va., caught the fish in June ...

Driven by a recovery in the U.S. housing market, mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae netted profits of $10.1 billion in the second quarter, its sixth-straight quarter with positive results. The company, which has operated under federal conservatorship since 2008, reported its earnings Thursday.

Fannie Mae cited "a significant increase ...

The house of kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro, the man who was sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years last week, has been razed. Michelle Knight, one of the three women for whom the house became a prison for nearly a decade, was on hand for the demolition Wednesday.

The widow of a man who died fighting a wildfire this summer as part of a "hotshots" team based in Prescott, Ariz., says her attempts to be paid her late husband's lifetime benefits have been denied. The city's explanation is that Andrew Ashcraft, 29, was a seasonal employee, Juliann Ashcraft ...

A city in South Korea flipped the switch on a road this week that will provide an electric charge to commuter buses on an inner-city route, officials say. The wireless power will be used to run two buses on round-trip routes of 24 kilometers (nearly 15 miles).

The charging road ...

Freddie Mac racked up a $5 billion profit in the second quarter, the mortgage backer said in its quarterly report Wednesday. The earnings are the second-highest in the history of Freddie Mac, which has now extended its streak of profitable quarters to seven in a row.

The mortgage giant also ...

A gay couple who were asked to sit in the back of a bus in New Mexico because they were holding hands have received an apology from the company that operates the shuttles at the Albuquerque International Sunport, where the incident took place earlier this summer.

The couple, Ron McCoy ...

Thousands of California drivers are ordering specialty vintage license tags for their cars, in a program that lets people choose new tags based on designs from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. The throw-back plates will let drivers put iconic blue, black, or yellow plates on their vehicles.

And in a ...

The complex and interconnected topics of adoption, race, and culture will form the backbone of a new online magazine that is starting this week. Gazillion Voices was begun with those goals in mind, says Kevin Vollmers, who created the magazine as an extension of his blog, Land of ...

Civilian workers for the Department of Defense will have to take six mandatory unpaid furlough days instead of 11 days, according to an Associated Press report that the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday afternoon.

Update at 2:20 p.m. ET: Pentagon Confirms Reduced Furloughs

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Pentagon have ...

It's being called a destroyer, or perhaps a helicopter carrier. But by any name, Japan's new warship, unveiled Tuesday, is the largest it has built since World War II. The ship was shown to the public on the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and at a time ...

Today is Andy Warhol's birthday, marking 85 years since the artist was born. To honor the icon of pop art, the Andy Warhol Museum, located in his hometown of Pittsburgh, is streaming video from his gravesite.

The museum calls the project Figment — a reference, it explains, to this ...

Logan Stevenson, the terminally ill two-year-old who acted as best man at his parents' wedding Saturday, has died, according to media reports and his mother's Facebook page. The family's story touched many people who learned about Logan's parents' rush to get married in time for him to be part of ...

By suspending New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez for 211 regular-season games — through the end of the 2014 regular season — Major League Baseball stopped short of the lifetime ban that had been threatened.

But a look at MLB's history shows that its lifetime bans often have ...

A cyclist who commutes to work in Vancouver, Canada, was surprised and angered last week when she found a note from her office building on her bike that threatened its confiscation. Her offense? Parking in the "15-minute-only" bike rack.

"So I got a ticket from #CadillacFairview for parking my bike ...

Dozens of police officers acted outside the rules and could be disciplined for their role in a massive car chase in Cleveland last fall, according to city leaders, after an official review of the 19-mile pursuit that resulted in two deaths. The review found that 13 officers fired 137 shots. ...