During a recent photo shoot, Andrej Pejic poses on a rooftop in New York City. The 20-year-old has modeled both menswear and women's wear for some of the world's top designers.
Aziz Ansari is about to hit the road. The 29-year-old comedian and star of Parks and Recreation is embarking on a multicity comedy tour, where he'll be riffing on what he calls the "fears of adulthood."
The table saws in David Butler's (left) workshop are outfitted with prototypes of his "Whirlwind" safety brake system. He and his lifelong friend Robert Calhoun filed their first Whirlwind Tool Co. patent in 2009.
Credit Chris Arnold / NPR
David Butler designed his safety brakes so they could be easily installed on existing saws and machine tools. This prototype is installed on a Delta 15-inch scroll saw, a model that has been used for decades in schools.
When you think of cutting-edge technology, power tools don't generally come to mind. Take the table saw: Many woodworkers are using 30-year-old saws in their wood shops and, among the major tool companies, there hasn't been much innovation since those decades-old tools came out.
But more and more inventors are trying to make these saws safer — and David Butler is one of them. At his home in Cape Cod, Mass., Butler flips on the fluorescent lights in his basement turned wood shop.
There was a 1.1 percent decline in spending on construction in February vs. January, the Census Bureau just reported. But spending was still 5.8 percent above the level of February 2011.
According to the bureau, spending on home construction was unchanged in February from the month before. Public construction spending was down 1.7 percent.
House prices have crashed. Banks and businesses have failed. Jobs have been axed. People are struggling to make the mortgage.
The Republic of Ireland's 4.6 million people have suffered considerably since the financial crisis began four years ago, forcing their government to turn to the European Union and International Monetary Fund for a $90 billion bail-out.
The biggest female box-office star in Hollywood history, Doris Day started singing and dancing when she was a teenager, and made her first film when she was 24. After nearly 40 movies, she walked away from that part of her life in 1968, and started rescuing and caring for animals.
Mothers of new babies might be forgiven for turning to caffeine to get through those sleep-deprived months. And they might worry that drinking coffee interferes with the sleep of breast-fed babies — the Web is full of such questions. But a new study says it's not so.
Instead, researchers in Brazil found that the babies of heavy coffee drinkers were no more likely to wake up than were babies whose moms didn't have a serious espresso habit.
Crying and colic at 3 months old, as well as frequent night waking at 12 months, were not affected by a mom's caffeine intake.
"A Pakistani court on Monday convicted Osama bin Laden's three widows and two of his grown-up daughters of illegal residency, sentencing them to 45 days detention and ordering their deportation," Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reports.
An enumerator interviews a woman for the 1940 census. Veiled in secrecy for 72 years because of privacy protections, the 1940 U.S. census is the first historical federal decennial survey to be made available on the Internet initially rather than on microfilm.
Nylon stockings became all the rage. Black fedoras were the "pure quill" — meaning the real deal. Bing Crosby crooned Only Forever on the console. And Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actor ever to take home an Oscar.
Ah, 1940. Three score and 12 years ago, America was in a very different place — economically and culturally.
But on April 2, 2012, when the National Archives releases detailed data from the 1940 census, we will get an even keener idea of how much — or how little — this nation has really changed in the past 72 years.
Queen Elizabeth is marking 60 years on the throne, and Johnny Walker wanted to do something special. The whiskey label released a new blend called Diamond Jubilee. It's been distilling since 1952, and a bottle costs $200,000.
Over the weekend, The Orlando Sentinel reported that two experts it consulted believe the voice heard calling for help in the background during a 911 call to police is not that of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who says he acted in self defense when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla.
We have all felt the ethereal siren song of other universes — the thrilling suspicion that touching a certain ring may in fact suck you into a Wood Between the Worlds, or that if you walk just so between platforms nine and 10 at King's Cross Station, you might find yourself departing from platform nine and three-quarters. For some, the tingling sensation of magical lands fades after leaving childhood behind. But I still peer curiously into wardrobes, and thus here are three blazingly intelligent adult novels for the untamable Alice in all of us.
The GOP candidates for president have seized on high gas prices as a line of attack against President Obama, largely saying the answer is more domestic oil drilling.
But GOP front-runner Mitt Romney used to have a position seemingly at odds — at least in emphasis — with what he and the other Republicans are now advocating.
As Massachusetts governor, Romney said high gasoline prices "are probably here to stay," and he advocated policies to cut energy demand.
A FedEx hybrid delivery truck. In FedEx's fleet of over 90,000 vehicles, 408 are hybrid or electric, and 4,000 are fuel-efficient, lower-emitting "Sprinter" vans.
Credit Stephane de Sakutin / AFP/Getty Images
FedEx CEO Fred Smith, seen here in 2005, says he's is concerned about the effect oil consumption has on the U.S.
The rising cost of oil isn't just a hit to the family budget. Businesses are hurt, too. Few are more affected than firms like FedEx. It deploys nearly 700 planes and tens of thousands of trucks and vans every day to deliver packages around the world. And few business leaders are more focused on finding alternatives to petroleum-based fuels than FedEx CEO Fred Smith.
Shortly after Smith founded Federal Express, the 1973 Arab oil embargo almost killed it. The experience imprinted Smith with a keen interest in the price and availability of oil.
A pile of IRS Form 1040 tax documents is seen in this file photo. Personal finance experts recommend keeping most records for three years after they're used in a tax return.
Credit NPR
Personal finance software such as Pageonce, seen here in a demonstration, can help reduce the amount of paper tax records we keep.
Tax Day 2012 is looming — and after we file our returns, many of us will try to figure out what to do with the seemingly innocuous but possibly crucial documents we use to prepare our returns. Filing electronically can make those records easier to manage. But what should we really keep, and for how long?
Most experts recommend holding on to financial records for three years after they're used in a tax return — that's the amount of time the IRS has to audit taxpayers.
Why are these hard-to-pronounce ingredients added to everything from a burger served in schools to veggie burgers in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store? We try to answer that on this edition of Tiny Desk Kitchen.
It turns out the answers are as varied as the ingredients. But as we yearn to know what's in our food and how it's made, these kinds of ingredients with unfamiliar names make people suspicious.