Search results for

Former House Speaker Tom Foley has died. The Washington Democrat spent 30 years in the House until he lost his seat in the 1995 Republican revolution. He went on to serve as ambassador to Japan under Clinton. Foley was 84 years old and died of complications from a stroke.

Like many public universities before it, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has made the move to the top level of college football, known as Football Bowl Subdivision. The program is now in its second year of play. The team is struggling and attendance is weak. The school is pumping more money into football, and some faculty are questioning the investment. But others are calling for patience.

When Congress voted to end the shutdown, the measure also included $2 billion for a troubled lock and dam project on the Ohio River. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a supporter of the project, has been attacked by hard-line conservatives who call it pork-barrel spending, but he says he didn't put it in the bill.

When Saudia Arabia cut off direct oil shipments to the U.S. 40 years ago, the country was thrown into shock. Calls for energy independence grew louder. The U.S. is now producing more of its own oil and natural gas than ever, but the commitment to efficiency has been uneven.

Solomon Northup, an African-American musician from New York, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. He was eventually freed and wrote about his experience in Twelve Years a Slave, a memoir that has inspired a new film adaptation. But by the end of the Civil War, he dropped off the public record.

Dina Moreno of Seattle describes how her family built a "Little Free Library," one of thousands of miniature lending spots popping up around the country. The library, the size of a doll house, has helped bring the neighborhood together.

The name of Washington's football team has been hotly debated: criticized for being a racial slur but defended but the team's owner as actually being a kind of tribute to Native Americans. Host Scott Simon talks to Forbes senior editor Kurt Badenhausen about the economics of the Washington Redskins brand.

The Associated Press reports that two convicted murderers from Florida who used phony documents to escape prison were arrested Saturday night without incident at a motel in Panama City, Fla.

Bandleader Wallace Hartley is thought to have kept playing the instrument as the ship went down. It was later found, in a leather case, floating among the wreckage.

Multiple news outlets, including NPR, have been told that the bank and the Justice Department are zeroing in on that figure. At that level, the settlement would be the largest in U.S. history.