NPR Staff

The Obama administration is still fighting for a ban on assault weapons to be included in a larger bill in Congress, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with NPR.

After the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., last December, President Obama appointed Biden to lead a task force that ...

Companies are licking their chops at the prospect of a wave of baby boomers leaving their jobs with trillions of dollars in 401(k)s and other savings accounts, so older Americans may find themselves bombarded with ads for annuities. And younger boomers, too, may be targeted, since many are helping their ...

Colin Wolfe was killed in Iraq in August 2006. A roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Anbar province just a few weeks after he arrived. He was one of almost 4,500 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012. Nearly seven years later, on the heels of ...

Is a strong U.S. dollar a good thing, or is it overrated as a policy goal?

Some argue that a policy aimed at keeping the dollar strong would hurt U.S. economic growth because it would make American goods and services more expensive, lessening global demand for them. Others say having ...

The subject of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's relationship with the Jewish community is complicated, multidimensional and contentious. On the one hand, the former New York governor won Jewish votes by landslide margins and led the Allies to victory in World War II, defeating Nazi Germany. Some of his closest advisers ...

March Madness is officially here. Starting Tuesday, 68 college teams will compete for a spot at the NCAA men's championship on April 8. As millions across the country fill out brackets and enter office pools, this season has left longtime sports columnist Dave Kindred yearning for the good old days.

Ten years ago this week, U.S. troops invaded Iraq. NPR's David Gilkey was there and shares his memory of a photograph he made that first night.

The photos that David Gilkey took the night of the Iraq invasion were among the first pictures of U.S. troops in combat to come ...

As the 2013 South by Southwest festival was winding to a noisy end — sirens, car horns and even a helicopter passed could be heard on the streets of Austin, Texas — there were plenty of smaller, quieter moments worth singling out. On the festival's final night, the All Songs ...

Sonic Trace is a multimedia project that follows Latinos living in Los Angeles travelling back to their families' native lands. Led by radio producer Anyansi Diaz-Cortes, it examines the link between what some Latinos consider home – before and after they or their families came to the U.S.

It's the last day of SXSW and now it's time to go on that smoothie detox to cleanse five days worth of BBQ, beer and breakfast tacos. With what energy we had left, we caught rapper Earl Sweatshirt's impressive festival debut (with Flying Lotus making beats and spitting ...

Many of the 35 million Americans of Irish descent are here due to the worst famine to hit Europe in the 19th century, the Irish potato famine.

It drove more than a million people to flee mass starvation, many climbing aboard ships they hoped would ferry them to a better ...

Here's the plan: Find someone, get married, grow old together. But what if you've done that, and suddenly you find yourself back at square one?

For those 50 and older, AARP is helping to find that special someone.

"I never expected to be single and 50," says Dina Mande of ...

America loves beer.

In the U.S., we drink $200 billion worth of the hops-brewed libation annually. What many Americans might not know is that most domestic beer, 90 percent in fact, is dominated by just two companies: Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors.

Innovators, however, are challenging that dominance in the ...

Alpine is a band from Melbourne, Australia, that will make their U.S. debut with A Is for Alpine, an album coming out later this spring.

The band, formerly known as Swiss, was chosen as the iTunes Australian alternative album of the year, and now the group is building buzz in ...

A Tale for the Time Being presents the diary of a friendly, funny and strong-willed 16-year-old girl named Nao. Nao spent her formative years in California, but her family has returned to Japan, and when the book begins, she's living in Tokyo.

Nao tells readers right up front that her ...

What's your first memory? You're a baby or a toddler. Maybe it's a specific experience, maybe an impression. Maybe someone's face, or just a kind of feeling or sense. Or maybe it's a compilation of stories over years. And maybe it's less true than you think it is.

In his ...

You can depend on Solange to be the best dressed anywhere — that pink suit! — but her commanding live presence at SXSW is a thing of wonder, even if her funky R&B can be quiet and unassuming. We also took in the crushing doom metal of

"I'm all about small towns," Kacey Musgraves says. "I think it's a great place to grow up. But I think it might be a little more comforting to some people to hear it from a real perspective, instead of one that tries to sweep things under the rug."

The 24-year-old ...

Ten years ago this Tuesday, the U.S. invaded Iraq, and by any count — and there have been many — the toll has been devastating.

So far, about 4,400 U.S. troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and the combined costs of the war come to an ...

Writer Michael McCann is a legal analyst for Sports Illustrated. He's been covering Lance Armstrong's legal issues for the past year, following the allegations that Armstrong doped and used performance-enhancing drugs.

McCann regularly responds to readers' questions on Twitter, too. About a month ago, he tells All Things Considered host ...