Search results for

North Dakota's booming economy has created a modern-day wagon trail of people coming to the state for oil jobs. But finding affordable housing is a sometimes insurmountable challenge, and the number of homeless people, has risen dramatically. Meg Luther Lindholm reports that even cities like Fargo-Moorhead, where there are several shelters and services, are often stretched beyond their capacity. Some, like Fargo's mayor, say the cities can't do it all and more help is needed from the state.

Delays continue to beset a proposed bilateral security agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan. The pact would govern U.S. troops if they remain in Afghanistan past 2014. Deadlines have come and gone, but still no agreement has been signed by the two parties. Now, the situation seems to have deepened into a political standoff between the Pentagon and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. To understand how it got to this point, Robert Siegel turns to Sean Carberry, reporting from Kabul, and Tom Bowman, NPR's Pentagon correspondent.

President Obama is hosting business leaders at the White House in order to discuss possible solutions to long-term unemployment. The president says that he hopes for companies to revise their hiring practices, which often appear to be stacked against those who have been unemployed for six months or more.

The Syria peace talks in Geneva adjourn with no breakthroughs or substantive signs of progress. But international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi says there is some common ground between the government and its opponents, and he announced that the talks will resume on Feb. 10.

Patty Chang Anker recommends a cookbook that eases the anxieties of anyone trying to cook Chinese-American meals, and Lev Grossman reminds us that there is a Seussian storm comparable to the one that shut down Atlanta this week.

Consensus might be hard on the issues of the debt ceiling and immigration, where the Tea Party wing has little in common with Speaker John Boehner and his allies in the House leadership.

During his 10-year career, Sean Morey absorbed countless hits, more than a few of which resulted in concussions. "Every time I hit somebody it was like getting tasered," he says. Now, he suffers from lingering conditions, like debilitating headaches, and is an advocate for players' health.

The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve's new leader, has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Now global financial markets will be watching her every move.

After the worst year for shrimping in recent memory, fishermen in the Southeast U.S. say they're thankful to catch jellyfish for the Asian market. But conservationists say the expanding jellyfish fishery is a sign of the ocean's decline.

Paul Sereno is a globe-trotting paleontologist and a professor at the University of Chicago. Since he's an expert on dinosaurs of the past, we'll ask him about a friendly purple dinosaur of the present.