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The White House Conference on Aging is meeting in Washington this week. But President Bush is skipping the conference -- the first president not to address delegates in the event's 50-year history. Instead, he took his message on Medicare to a select, private group of senior citizens.

Lebanese voted for a new parliament Sunday against the backdrop of an economic meltdown that is transforming the country.

In a land where the ground is always frozen, one creature has nourished man both physically and spiritually. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky discusses The Reindeer People, his book about the Eveny herders of Siberia.

We've all had these moments in movie theaters or in meetings when we hear the annoying ring of a phone and suddenly realize, to our horror, that it's our own phone. Engineers are trying to solve this problem. They're developing polite cell phones that can tell when to keep quiet, and when it's OK to interrupt.

A tiny group of enthusiasts in California say they've demonstrated how to push your Prius to get as many as 99.9 miles per gallon -- if you're willing to plug it in overnight. Toyota says that although the idea is intriguing, it's not ready for prime time.

The Soviet Union's dominance of world figure skating collapsed along with communism. But since the last Winter Olympics, the Russian government has increased funding for the sport by a factor of 10.

The Catholic mass Beethoven called Missa Solemnis is rarely performed. But considered in partnership with the much more famous Ninth Symphony, it sheds light on the composer's spiritual view.

The beginning of January marks the deadline for most college admissions applications. The Unversity of Virginia's freshmen may not be anxious to revisit this period, but they can anyway: A play called Voices of the Class, 2009 offers adaptations of their application essays.

The massive, fatal waves that resulted from Sunday's powerful earthquake in Southeast India are among the most destructive tsunamis of the past 50 years. Hear NPR's Jacki Lyden and Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center in Hawaii.

Foreign aid can be a mixed blessing. For a while, in one small Nigerian town, the money flowed. Five years later assistance came to an end, and that left thousands of orphans to fend for themselves. NPR’s Brenda Wilson reports.