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NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Snowflake by Winona Wendth of Lancaster, Mass., and Geometry by Eugenie Montague of Los Angeles.

The congressional hearings about the IRS's handling of Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status raise the question of why and how tax-exempt groups engage in politics in the first place.

The bus caught fire when the driver tried to switch from using gasoline to natural gas. The driver fled the scene.

Nearly 18 million tourists descend on our nation's capitol every year, and most of them are keen to spend time at the many free museums in Washington, D.C. But only about 100,000 people take the trip across the river to a museum of a different sort: the Pentagon. The Pentagon's exhaustive historical displays offer fresh insight into the range of the Defense Department's activities.

The complex identities navigated by black Puerto Ricans play out in the music of hip-hop artist Tego Calderón and one of his inspirations, Ismael Rivera.

The presidential salute actually breaks with military decorum and was started by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have been friends for decades, but they're known for their differences when it comes to constitutional interpretation. In those dramatic clashes, recent law school graduate Derrick Wang heard an opera.

The Senate Agriculture Committee met Wednesday afternoon to hear testimony about the acquisition of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company. Smithfield CEO Larry Pope tried to defend the proposed deal, but most committee members made their opposition clear.

When Twinkies hit the stores again on July 15, their shelf life will be nearly twice as long as it used to be: 45 days. (We were surprised it wasn't longer.) There's a whole lot of food science employed to help the creme-filled cake defy the laws of baked-good longevity.

House Republicans huddled behind closed doors to consider their options on immigration on Wednesday. The Senate passed an immigration overhaul that includes a path to citizenship, but conservatives in the House reject the plan.