Daily Briefing
Deep buzz for the content-deprived
Every weekday, while you get showered and dressed, we pluck these dewy- fresh, breaking stories from the info-clogged byways of the datasphere. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and stoke up on everything you need to know, or at least enough to fake it.
Congress dealt a setback to public broadcasting Thursday, approving in two separate votes funding cuts that conservatives, in particular, have long sought. The House voted Thursday to eliminate NPR's federal funding – and to prohibit public radio stations from using taxpayer money to pay NPR dues or to buy NPR programs. At the same time, the Senate approved a three-week budget resolution that includes a $50 million cut to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parent of NPR and PBS...
The main details of UN Resolution 1973 authorising action to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gaddafi...
Hours after the United Nations Security Council voted to authorize military action and a no-fly zone, Libya executed a remarkable about-face on Friday, saying it would call an “immediate cease-fire and the stoppage of all military operations” against rebels seeking the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi...
Amid widening alarm in the United States and elsewhere about Japan’s nuclear crisis, military fire trucks began spraying cooling water on spent fuel rods at the country’s stricken nuclear power station late Thursday after earlier efforts to cool the rods failed, Japanese officials said...
USA TODAY takes an in-depth look at every NCAA tournament game on Thursday's schedule, broken down by region...
Looking back, Emiko Chiba has no idea how long her silver Suzuki rode the waves of a giant tsunami or even whether she had trouble breathing inside of it. What's clear is that she ranks among the very lucky in what may be Japan's most unfortunate town...
Efforts to extinguish smoldering spent fuel were thwarted Wednesday, after high radiation levels above forced the cancellation of a plan to dump water from a helicopter on the power plant at the center of Japan's escalating nuclear crisis. And suggesting the spreading of problems at the reactor, officials said the waste fuel kept at a storage pool at one of the reactors appeared to be heating up...
With a new film version of Jane Eyre now in theaters and an adaptation of Wuthering Heights coming later this year, fans of authors Charlotte and Emily Bronte are choosing sides. Jennie Yabroff examines which sister was the better author...
The king of Bahrain declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon, a day after Saudi troops entered the country to help prop up the tiny nation’s Sunni monarchy. The state of emergency, which is one level below martial law, was announced by the Bahrain Information Affairs Authority and broadcast on state TV. It will last three months, according to the state television channel, the Associated Press reported. The government did not explain what the state of emergency entailed...
Japanese officials and safety workers struggled to reassert control over badly damaged nuclear reactors on Tuesday after the situation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant appeared to verge toward catastrophe, with a huge spike in radiation levels after a new explosion and fire...
