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Japan has long been a friendly place for smokers. Despite tens of billions of dollars in cigarette-related health costs and damages, anti-smoking initiatives have always had trouble gaining traction.

All I want for Christmas is some toffee and navel oranges. Dry-aged steaks wouldn't be bad, either. NPR's science desk denizens share the mail-order foods they'd be happy to see land on the doorstep this week, from traditional to outrageous.

A steady stream of voters showed up Wednesday at polling centers in Suez and in eight other governorates in Egypt. Suez has suffered since the revolution, and some voters are turning to Islamists for help.

Retailers will soon start selling Lego Friends, the Danish toymaker's latest effort to boost sales to girls. But is Lego encouraging girls to build more, or is it simply reinforcing gender stereotypes?

In 1887, Julius Petri invented a simple pair of nesting glass dishes, ideal for keeping specimens of growing bacteria sterile--the 'Petri dish.' Science historian Howard Markel recounts the history of this ubiquitous lab supply, and the serendipitous discovery of the stuff in it, agar.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda the Musical, based on the beloved children's book by Roald Dahl, is taking London by storm.

Though most are known to deal with drugs and weapons, a new FBI threat assessment says street gangs have been moving into some different territory lately: human trafficking. The FBI says gang members increasingly are pushing women and children into prostitution.

Magpies and crows are well-known for their habit of collecting odds and ends in their nests. Not so very different, the thinking goes, from the way medieval cooks assembled ingredients for their pies.

The Obama administration's first attempt to try a Guantanamo detainee in a military commission began Wednesday with the arraignment of the man accused of masterminding the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. The incident killed 17 servicemen and women in Yemen in 2000. Human rights groups object to trying terrorists in a parallel justice system hundreds of miles off U.S. shores.

President Obama is visiting Nevada, a state at the center of the foreclosure crisis. His administration has some programs in place to try to help struggling homeowners. But the leading GOP White House hopefuls so far haven't said much about how they would fix the downturn.