Linton Weeks

(The National Puzzlers' League prides itself on being able to solve all kinds of puzzles. Especially "flats", described by the group's Enigma magazine as "puzzles in verse form that have proven over our 130-plus years to provide endless opportunities for creativity and continuous solving enjoyment." In ...

­­My friend Mark Leibovich — a New York Times reporter — has written a book about the inner watchworkings of Power Washington called This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital. Among the incestuous cognoscenti of the Capital City, This Town has more buzz ...

Perhaps you've seen the signs in your town: Preschool of the Arts.

There are variations in Ellington, Conn.; New York, N.Y.; Wilmington, N.C.; and other U.S. cities.

The mind reels with thoughts of petite portrait artists and baby ballerinas. Can't you just imagine a studio full of ...

Appetizer: Hogs In A Sleeping Bag

These hearty kielbasas, partially hidden in puff pastries, represent Paula Deen's first catering company The Bag Lady — begun in 1989. It offered "lunch and love" ... in a bag.

Salad: Georgia Cracker Salad

In 2002, the Food ...

"Novak Djokovic

reached the Wimbledon final

with a five-set win."

From a caption on ESPN.com

Submitted by: Ryan Eshleman, who listens to NPR on 90.7 WMRA in Harrisonburg, Va.

(If you find examples of Haiku in the News, please send them to: protojournalist@npr.org. You could win a Protojournalist Prizepak.) ...

Like a circus parade, the cutting-edge pet stories just keep coming.

Plastic surgery for dogs. Designer kitties — poodle cats and jungle hybrids. Medicinal marijuana for ailing pets.

Can gender reassignment for pets be far behind? Actually, some veterinarians, like Christie Cornelius ...

For some, divorce is a painful event; for others, it's like Independence Day — a time for revelry. "I've been in the fireworks business since 1995," says Harry Gilliam of Skylighter pyrotechnics in Virginia. "My divorce was finalized in 2001. We were actually amicably divorced, but since a ...

You've seen the lists of Things to Hoard Before the Apocalypse.

Nearly every survivalist checklist includes fresh water and nonperishable food. Gold is on a lot of lists. As well as weapons.

For visionary Joel Garreau, one of the most important items that many preppers forget is ... toilet paper.

"Plenty of people

Say bad things about me. I

See it on Twitter."

— NASCAR driver Danica Patrick responding to criticism, according to UPI.

(If you find examples of Haiku in the News, please send them to: protojournalist@npr.org. You could win a Protojournalist Prizepak.)

For a nation dealing with serious and tragic firearms issues — trying to balance personal rights with potential lethality — we use guns an awful lot. Metaphorically speaking. Football teams employ pistol formations and shotgun offenses. California proposes a bullet train. Uberinvestor Carl Icahn figuratively "fired both ...

"We're undergoing a cultural change in this country, brought on by the communications revolution and the capabilities that we now have, and with the coming of the social media," Bob Schieffer of CBS News said recently at a high-powered forum on PRISM, the National Security Agency's program for monitoring ...

Maybe it was the Coney Island with cheese and grape jelly that put you off hot dogs for so many years. Maybe you had a bad bout with Jello and whipped cream. Strange food combinations can be life-enhancing; ask devotees of peanut butter cups. But sometimes ...

Sure, at certain public libraries around the country you can check out ebooks and audiobooks and DVDs and iPads and Nooks and Kindles. Paintings to hang on your walls at home? Yep. Bridal magazines? Yep, those too. You can also check out a bunch of strange stuff, including:

Arguably, Barack Obama is the best president in American history, says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, because Obama "has managed to do what no African-American ... has ever been able to accomplish — win the White House and then be re-elected handily; ...

When archaeologists in Virginia uncovered the skeletal remains in 1996 of one of Jamestown's first settlers — a young European male designated as JR102C in the catalog — they said he was the victim in what was perhaps Colonial America's oldest unsolved murder.

At the time, archaeologist William Kelso, now ...

Does extreme mean anything anymore? Take the X Games. When the competitions began in 1995, the idea of defying gravity with skate- and snowboards was fringey and far out. Now the X games seem to come around every month or so. Snowboarder Shaun White has chewing ...

"How much of China

Owning our food supply is

Enough, is too much?"

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), commenting on the proposed sale of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods to Chinese-owned Shuanghui on CNBC, June 20, 2013

(If you find examples of Haiku in the News, please send them ...

Starter: Yeah, have you heard of this new group in San Francisco called Raise Labs?

Explainer: It's all about microfunding for scholarships. High-schoolers sign up and if they make good grades and participate in certain school and community activities, they earn college-scholarship money along the way.

Impressive Depth: ...

Today's phrase: "search engines that do not collect personal information."

We Googled it this morning (with the quotation marks) and got one measly hit — a 2012 forum in LinuxQuestions, a message board that explores the open-source operating system.

When the challenge was posed in the forum, nine people ...

"Citizens who choose ...

To be defined by a wall,

or ... to tear it down. "

From Remarks by President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate. June 19, 2013.

****

(If you find examples of Haiku in the News, please send them to: protojournalist@npr.org)