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A new study finds that green tea significantly reduces the risk of death from many causes, including heart disease. The study did not find, however, that green tea has any effect on cancer, as has been previously claimed.

Now that the Iraq Study Group report is out, conservatives are no happier than they were with the leaked information about it. Many say it amounts to a call for surrender. Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been among those calling for more U.S. troops to fight the insurgency.

The new Leonardo DiCaprio movie Blood Diamond, set in 1990's Sierra Leone, has raised awareness about so-called "conflict diamonds" -- diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance insurgent warfare. Michele Norris talks with Alex Yearsley, with Global Witness, about what consumers can do to avoid buying these gems.

Signs of possible voting trouble are popping up ahead of midterm elections. The reports range from hackers getting into an official registration database to ballots being printed incorrectly.

Melissa Block talks with Ken Pollack, senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Pollack worked with Robert Gates at the CIA and NSC, and will talk with us about what kind of Secretary of Defense he may make.

Former president Jimmy Carter is monitoring Nicaragua's presidential elections. This is President Carter's fourth time monitoring Nicaraguan elections with the Carter Center. He talks with host Debbie Elliott about how the elections -- and Ortega himself -- look different this time around.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in Jerusalem to start a Middle East tour aimed at nudging Israelis and Palestinians toward peace talks. She has no specific proposal to offer, and U.S. relations with Iran complicate the mission.

On Dec. 26, 2004, the biggest tsunami in recent memory killed more than 250,000 people around the coast of the Indian Ocean. Two years after the tsunami, people displaced by the disaster are still living intents or makeshift homes. The Red Cross promised to build 50,000 homes; so far, there are only 8,000. Host Robert Siegel speaks with the United Nations' Miloon Kothari.

NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr looks back on many years of Washington scandals -- usually involving sex or money.

This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to a biologist. Roger Kornberg at Stanford University is being honored for figuring out the details of how our cells read DNA. He's not the first in his family to win a Nobel Prize. His father, Arthur Kornberg, won in 1959.

American Roger D. Kornberg, whose father won a Nobel Prize a half-century ago, was awarded the prize in chemistry Wednesday for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.

More than 300,000 passengers have ridden China's railway to Tibet since it opened to traffic two months ago. China sees it as a historic event, but the train's long-term effects on the remote Himalayan region remain to be seen.

Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering "RNA interference," a way organisms turn off individual genes. The discovery is considered by many scientists to be a breakthrough in modern biology.

Many adults in Mexico don't have any kind of bank account, and a lot of those people are young and tech savvy. Financial tech startups see this as a big opportunity for online-only banks.

Raul Castro, 75, now holds power in Cuba as older brother Fidel Castro recovers from surgery. The development has intensified power struggles in Havana between two sets of loyalists: Fidelistas and Raulistas.

It will also set up a process for ex-spouses who make alimony payments to seek modifications to alimony agreements when they want to retire.

A shortage of medical specialists means some patients face long wait times for care in the ER. And the problems is expected to get worse in many places in the coming years.

On a non-stop circuit of birthday parties, sports events, holidays, and grandma's special treats, kids often find themselves bombarded with unhealthy food. A weight-control program in Stanford, Calif., has come up with a "traffic-light" system to help kids make better choices about what to eat and when.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) talks about the language of politics, the public spotlight, upcoming elections, and his new book, The Audacity of Hope.

Re-entry to society from prison is hard. A simulation exercise by the Department of Justice is meant to show just how many barriers formerly incarcerated people face after their release.

The Blackwater security firm, subject of headlines related to deadly shootings in Iraq, would like to get more business working on natural disasters in the United States. In fact, it already has: its employees provided security to FEMA staff after Hurricane Katrina. But its future plan has made some people edgy.

President Bush tightened U.S. sanctions against Sudan on Tuesday, saying Darfurians deserve the help. It has been three years since his administration first called the conflict genocide. The action bars 31 more companies from accessing the U.S. financial system and targets three individuals.

President Bush named Robert Zoellick as the next president of the World Bank. Zoellick was President Bush's first Trade Representative and then the No. 2 official at the State Department. He will replace Paul Wolfowitz, who resigned two weeks ago after a bitter battle over charges of ethical lapses. Zoellick will have to heal a World Bank sharply divided over Wolfowitz's leadership.

Democrats in Congress are no longer pushing for troop withdrawal timelines as part of an Iraq war funding bill. The emergency war spending bill they intend to pass this week and send to the White House only asks the President to report on how benchmarks for progress in Iraq are being met.

The United Nations Security Council is discussing a proposal to set the province of Kosovo clearly on the path to independence from Serbia.