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Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to prosecute corrupt officials, and said the country would control it own security within five years. Karzai's comments came in an inauguration speech that kicked off his second term of office amid a growing Taliban insurgency and a cloud of corruption allegations.

The Senate needs 60 votes to bring its health care bill to the floor. To round up those votes, the bill unveiled Wednesday costs less than the House version, and delays the effective date for many provisions to 2014. Republicans are denouncing the cost cuts as mere gimmicks. Will those measures be enough to persuade wavering Democrats to vote at least to bring the bill up?

A tornado that tore through a Pfizer factory in North Carolina could exacerbate drug shortages. Records obtained by NPR show the plant made dozens of products, including painkillers and anesthetics.

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Hoppy Kercheval, host of MetroNews Talkline in West Virginia, about why former President Donald Trump wants to relocate his trial.

Tahir Hamut Izgil is one of the best-known living Uyghur poets. He left Xinjiang amid a Chinese crackdown on the Uyghur people — an escape at the heart of his book, Waiting To Be Arrested At Night.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Asli Aydintasbas from The Brookings Institution. Sweden's admission to NATO may depend on Turkey's admission to the EU, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Across the street from the jazz icon's home in Queens, a site of pilgrimage for fans from around the world, sits the new Louis Armstrong Center, which brings his 60,000-item archive back to the block.

Bruce Hoffman, a terror expert and professor of security studies at Georgetown University, talks withe Renee Montagne about the release of an updated White House document titled the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.

Vice President Cheney paid an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Wednesday, where he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. As NPR's Jamie Tarabay tells Robert Siegel, the idea of "benchmarks" aren't yet part of Iraq's political discourse.

A Kansas law with widespread restrictions on transgender rights goes into effect on Saturday, and there's uncertainty about how it will be enforced.

Protesters say the release, which won the endorsement of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog last week, sets a bad precedent that may encourage other countries to dispose nuclear waste into sea.

In a year-end press conference, President Bush said Wednesday that the U.S. needs a bigger military. And the president said he knows he'll need to work with Democrats in the new Congress to make progress with his domestic agenda.

The White House is defending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against Republican criticism that her desire to travel in a long-distance Air Force plane is an extravagance. Republicans have taken issue with the size of the plane in which Pelosi would need to fly to reach her hometown of San Francisco without refueling.

An explosion tore through the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament building Thursday, apparently from a suicide bombing. The Baghdad Convention Center is within the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least eight people, including lawmakers, were killed.

Kennebunkport, Maine, is the site of a visit between President Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Marshall Goldman of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies offers his insights on the meeting.

Researchers in upstate New York are working to rehome some tiny, rare snails. Understanding their decline could help mitigate broader climate changes.

Set in a neighborhood where Blacks and immigrant Jews have lived next to each other for decades, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels critic Maureen Corrigan has read this year.

Most American's don't eat enough fiber and there are a lot of products out there promising to help boost fiber intake. Why is fiber so important, and how can we eat more?

Large employers like the Miami-Dade school district pay for employees' health insurance, but are often forbidden from knowing how much providers charge and insurers pay for care.

Donald Trump cancelled a campaign rally in Chicago last night after his supporters clashed with protesters inside an arena where thousands were gathered.

Stanford professor Jonathan Berger turns golf stroke data into sound. A nice sound means it's a good swing, a sour sound means something's not right. He tells Scott Simon how that helps people learn.

Nothing about Donald Trump's presidential campaign has been traditional. But even veteran political watchers are surprised at how Trump eschews campaign staples, such as volunteers and handlers.

The woman behind "You're So Vain" has stories for days about love and music. On the occasion of a new memoir, she joins NPR's Scott Simon to unfold a few of them.

NPR's Lynn Neary speaks with author and trivia master A.J. Jacobs about everything you always wanted to know about the Kentucky Derby.

"The real hallmark of an effective political artist is that the politics is accepted with the art," said Baraka. A new career-spanning anthology collects his work from 1961 to 2013. He died in 2014.