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Seattle broke the Guinness World Record for largest snowball fight in January with 5,834 participants. St. Paul, Minn., hopes to top that next month during its Beer Dabbler Winter Carnival. For more, Melissa Block speaks with Joe Alton, a project manager for the carnival and its snowball-fight organizer.

Scientists are developing new gigapixel cameras that take extremely high-resolution images with astonishing detail. Who needs to see the world with this kind of super-eye?

Utah's surprise decision to legalize same-sex marriage caps a landmark year for gay rights. The last 12 months saw a huge string of victories, from state legislatures, to Congress, to the Supreme Court.

To mark Cinco de Mayo, NPR revisits a "Found Recipes" story from Washington, D.C.-based Mexican cook, Pati Jinich. For years she'd heard about these soft, cakey cookies cut out in the shape of pigs.

The City Council of Birmingham, England, has been promoting a wedding fair on its website. But the event is taking place in Birmingham, Alabama. This wasn't the first time for the misunderstanding.

College football's champion will be decided Monday night at the Rose Bowl. No. 1 Florida State plays No. 2 Auburn in the last Bowl Championship Series game. It will be replaced next year with a playoff.

People tend to hate to lose stuff they already own. This trait, known as the endowment effect, is likely handed down to us by evolution, since it is visible cross-culturally as well as in non-human primates. However, new research suggests certain cultures place a brake on this evolutionary trait, whereas capitalistic societies put it on steroids.

Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram claimed credit for abducting more than 200 schoolgirls. The girls remain missing, and parents are pressing the government to find and bring them home.

Recruiters for political parties say it's hard to get women to run for office. They're happy to join a campaign and raise money for others, but put themselves forward? That's a tougher proposition.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan announced a bipartisan budget proposal Tuesday. For more details on the plan, Steve Inskeep speaks with Murray, who led her party in the negotiations.

The once-sleepy tourist town of Noel, Mo., in the heart of the Ozark Mountains, is now home to hundreds of immigrants and newly arrived refugees, thanks largely to the huge Tyson Food Inc. poultry plant. And since the town lacks the infrastructure to serve these new residents, schools have become the de facto safety net.

Federal regulators moved to tighten banking rules to curb risky trading on Wall Street Thursday. The so-called Volcker rule, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, would preclude banks from making risky bets on their own accounts. Audie Cornish talks to Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, for more on what the rules will mean.

Tens of thousands of South Africans, joined by global dignitaries, gathered at Johannesburg's FNB Stadium in Soweto Tuesday to honor Nelson Mandela, who died last week.

The good news is that air travel to and from Venezuela is dirt cheap due to the difference between the official cost of tickets and the black-market currency rate. The bad news is that many flights are booked up months in advance.

Before Syria's civil war, there was no real need for a clinic that could teach the disabled how to walk on artificial legs. Now there's huge demand, not only for the legs, but also for training.

NBC Sports has made a bet on the English Premier League, and the network is making matches all ten Boxing Day matches available to paying cable subscribers. Matt Weiland, co-editor of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, joins Robert Siegel to talk about why the Premier League games are worth watching.

Staffers at Bloomberg News accused editors of spiking an investigative story to avoid the wrath of the Communist Party. But analysts say accusations of self-censorship go far beyond this one case. One American academic compares China's censorial authority to a "giant anaconda" — its mere presence enough to make people limit their behavior.

For years, there's been talk in Washington, D.C., about the "grand bargain" — a big deficit-reducing budget deal that rewrites the tax code and trims from the long-term costs of Medicare and Social Security. Tuesday night, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan announced what can only be described as a small bargain. But if it's approved by the House and Senate, it would avoid another government shutdown in January.

Audie Cornish talks to Fawn Johnson, correspondent for The National Journal, about the pitfalls of immigration reform for its Republican opponents.

Adrian Moncrieffe was deported to Jamaica after police found a small amount of marijuana in his car. The Supreme Court decision means that he can now ask immigration authorities to allow him to return to the U.S., and to his wife and five American children.

Once the Cold War ended, much of Russia's surplus uranium from thousands of decommissioned weapons wound up in crumbling military facilities. In 1993, the U.S. Department of Energy made a deal to have the material converted to fuel for U.S. power plants. The last shipment arrives today.

The ongoing anti-government protests in Kiev, Ukraine, seem to be cresting toward new confrontations between police and demonstrators as the numbers of both are increasing.

Democrats who control the Senate invoked the so-called "nuclear option" to make it easier for them to approve President Obama's nominations several weeks ago. On Tuesday, they put that option to use, ramming through approval for a new appeals court judge and unblocking the nomination of a new director for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

In a new poll, parents of girls were more likely to say no when asked if schools were sufficiently preparing students for the world of work. And with many well-paying trades still dominated by men, girls may have a harder time succeeding in the workplace without some kind of higher education.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it provided over 8,000 subway delay verifications to commuters in October.