NPR National Stories

It's the season for dusting, scrubbing and digging into the inner confines of the cupboard, where a stash of daunting ingredients may await.

Rather than generate more food waste, consider tapping the wisdom of the crowd through NPR's new Cook Your Cupboard project.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan tells NPR that he's "cautiously optimistic" that a budget deal can be reached with the White House.

Speaking to NPR a day after President Obama unveiled a 2014 budget proposal that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as tax increases and new investments in education and infrastructure, Ryan said he was encouraged by the broad outlines from the White House.

Play has begun at the 77th Masters in Augusta, Ga., and again this year the big question is whether Tiger Woods is really "back" and will win his first major championship since 2008.

Host Michel Martin continues her interview with Senator Rand Paul. She asks whether his actions really line up with his libertarian philosophies.

Senator Rand Paul is reaching out to African-American voters. He recently visited Howard University, one of the country's most prominent historically black universities. Senator Paul talks to host Michel Martin about why he's reaching out, and what his message is for minorities.

The first national gun control legislation since the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., is going to be debated on the floor of the Senate and appears headed for a vote sometime next week.

Supporters in the Senate on Thursday morning rounded up more than the 60 votes necessary to clear a procedural hurdle that could have held up consideration of the Democratic-crafted package. The vote was 68-31 in favor of blocking a bid by some Republicans to filibuster the legislation.

The Mountaintop is an award-winning play about the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died. But some critics don't love playwright Katori Hall's portrayal of the civil rights icon as a regular guy. Hall tells host Michel Martin why she found it important to focus on the man, not the myth.

Sales of new PCs plummeted nearly 14 percent globally in the first three months of the year, and much of the blame is being placed on Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system.

International Data Corp. reported Wednesday that shipments of PCs totaled 76.3 million worldwide in the first quarter of 2013, down 13.9 percent from the same period the previous year.

There's been a bit of a brouhaha over the Federal Reserve's inadvertent early release Tuesday evening of minutes from its closed-door March 19-20 policy meeting.

As The Associated Press writes, "employees at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo and Citigroup were among those to receive [the] market-sensitive information."