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Terrorist attacks and the ongoing battle with the Islamic State cast a shadow over some of the accomplishments the president tried to highlight in his year-end news conference on Friday.

Dryness in the Great Plains and Midwest has choked out crops. Recent rains have been a godsend. Climatologists predict cooler, wetter weather that may help loosen the region's years-long drought.

President Obama unveiled a plan to overhaul regulation of the nation's financial institutions Wednesday. He blamed the current economic crisis on a culture of irresponsibility by Wall Street, Main Street and Washington. Obama also said the government had to do more to protect consumers. The effort requires congressional action and would represent the most substantial revamping of the regulatory structure since the Great Depression.

Tax credits may soon help jump start projects in the Midwest designed to fight climate change by capturing carbon dioxide emissions. However, the cost to taxpayers remains uncertain.

Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff's prison sentence of 150 years delivered a measure of relief to some of his victims. But others realize they are no better off this morning than they were the day before. And other Madoff victims worry that not enough is being done to prevent the next Madoff.

The Labor Department said Friday the nation's unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since 1983. But the economy shed a net total of 216,000 jobs, the fewest monthly losses in a year.

Police are searching a Seattle neighborhood Monday for the suspect in the shooting deaths of four police officers from a Tacoma, Wash., suburb. Earlier, a SWAT team stormed a house in the area where Maurice Clemmons was thought to be hiding, but he had already escaped.

The White House bristles at even the suggestion that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. In his speech Tuesday, President Obama listed the differences between the two conflicts. Gordon Goldstein, author of Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam, says though some of the distinctions that Obama made were fair, there are strategic parallels between the two conflicts.

President Obama said Tuesday success in Afghanistan "was inextricably linked" to Pakistan. Adil Najam, professor of international relations at Boston University and the founding editor of the blog Pakistaniat: All Things Pakistan, says events in Afghanistan have an almost-immediate impact in neighboring Pakistan.

It's been one year since flooding in Kentucky killed 45 people and displaced many others. Some moved to higher ground, others decided to rebuild and stay in their homes.

As the movie Oppenheimer plays in theaters across the country, families affected by fallout from atomic testing in New Mexico are pushing Congress for compensation.

Nat Read has ridden every mile on the Amtrak rail network. He tells NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer why he's "never grown tired" of looking at the country through a train window.

Soldiers returning from Iraq often have to confront painful memories of war. Now military and veteran hospitals are using virtual reality to help veterans relive their experiences in order to break through them.

Senior officials have been deployed by the Bush administration to plead for more time for a troop surge to show results, after Congress voted in favor of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. But two Republican senators have introduced a bill calling for a pullout.

The Senate enters the second week of debate on a defense bill setting military policies and authorizing next year's Pentagon spending. Some senators are pushing to restore the legal protections of foreign detainees deemed to be "unlawful enemy combatants."

On Tuesday, the 31 members of the NATO alliance will meet for their annual summit — the second summit held since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Relentless rains have pounded north-central Texas and southwest Oklahoma over the past two weeks. At least 11 people have died. Thousands have scrambled to safety. Fire ants and snakes are the next worry.

California lawmakers have agreed to create a conservation plan and a fund to help protect the western Joshua Tree, which faces extinction due to climate change.

Cleveland artist Viktor Schreckengost turns 100 today. He is being honored by 100 museums across the country for his work in industrial design, pottery, dinnerware, toys, sculpture and watercolors.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is making a weekend campaign swing through South Carolina. The state's January presidential primary will be the first held in the southern U.S. and could provide a key test of Obama's viability with black voters.

NPR's Michel Martin talks to Kevin James of Vienna Youth Soccer in Virginia, about soccer's popularity in the U.S. ahead of Argentine superstar Lionel Messi's arrival to Miami.

Opening statements began today in the penalty phase of the trial of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack planes and commit other crimes.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden says he consulted both his lawyers and his conscience in approving the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program. Hayden defended the spying during Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination to be the next director of the CIA.

The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is back in Russia, according to the leader of Belarus, who helped end the mercenary group's uprising against Russia's military leadership.

The Titan Arum has become a rockstar in the plant world for its unpredictable displays, and more notoriously, its putrid stench of rotting flesh.