The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has been dropping around the country as the New Year begins. Companies are laying off fewer workers; hiring may be picking up. The U.S. Labor Department reported Friday that the unemployment rate is now 8.5 percent, the lowest level in almost three years. But that's just an average, and prospects for losing or finding a job depend on where you live. We hear voices of the unemployed from around the country.

The more Kate Wenner heard about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more she felt compelled to act. Wenner was struck by the thousands of U.S. troops returning with traumatic brain injuries. To make people take notice, she wrote a stage play about troops with TBIs. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports.

President Obama bypassed Congress this week in appointing Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and filling vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans called the appointments an unconstitutional power grab and said they were made while the Senate was still technically in session.

In a case before the Supreme Court on Monday, a couple seeking to build their dream home say the Environmental Protection Agency put a stop to their plans after accusing them of building on wetlands. Is it a case of bureaucratic power run amok, or a trumped-up case aimed at eviscerating the EPA's regulatory powers?

More hospitals are watching and waiting instead of operating on some patients with gunshot or stab wounds, a new study finds. Exploratory surgery, long the norm in such cases, may be safely skipped some of the time.

Why would a cat crave mushrooms? A scientist says it's the umami. Though cats can't taste sweetness like people can, they are aces at sniffing out the amino acids that signal protein-rich foods.

One NPR reporter's harrowing trip to cover the Iowa caucuses turned out to be the perfect start to 2012.

Hairy-chested yeti crabs, seven-armed sea stars, white octopuses — all these creatures were seen for the first time by researchers in the Antarctic. Robert Siegel talks to biologist Alex Rodgers of the University of Oxford, who led the expedition.

If you Google Rick Santorum, one of the top returns is a scatological sexual reference. It was created back in 2003, when writer Dan Savage asked his readers to make up something disgusting and sexual to link to Santorum. It was a response to Santorum's rhetoric against gay marriage.