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Historians tell us that caffeine in coffee helped Western civilization "sober up" and get down to business. Now scientific research shows that at low doses, caffeine improves performance on mental tasks, especially in people who are already tired.

David and Charles Koch, billionaires known these days for their politics, are interested in acquiring a collection of daily newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun. If they bought those papers, what would they do with them?

About 200 community members turned up in a school auditorium in Watertown Thursday night in a showing of regional support for Fort Drum. The event was…

Chinese leaders and the state-run media keep talking about the Chinese dream. So NPR's Beijing bureau asked the Chinese to define their dreams. Here's what they said.

Hamid Karzai was responding to a New York Times report that his office took secret CIA money for a decade.

The election in Iceland over the weekend marked the first time members of the international online freedom movement were elected to the highest levels of a government.

The country is preparing to host the 2014 World Cup by refurbishing its stadiums for soccer's biggest event. But some of the venues are behind schedule, and the preparations are costing taxpayers more than they expected. Some now wonder if all of the fanfare is worth the effort.

Charles Darwin is known as the father of evolution. But another British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, played a major role in developing the theory of natural selection before fading into obscurity. A trip to what's now Sulawesi in Indonesia, and the unique animals he found there, helped form his seminal ideas.

That debate has been a partisan one. Democrats wanted the tax high, saying consumers will gladly pay. Republicans wanted a lower tax, saying if not, a black market will develop.

Also: A letter from Kurt Vonnegut to JFK; F. Scott Fitzgerald's financial records; Michael Wolff calls for an end to The New York Times Book Review.