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Almost the entire country has signed onto the Common Core Standards Initiative. The standards incorporate more nonfiction texts across all subjects to improve reading scores. But some fear the push for nonfiction reading could lead students away from passionate engagement with literature.

Hundreds of thousands are converging on Washington, D.C., for the festivities surrounding president Obama's second presidential inauguration. One large Chicago contingent took to the rails to make the trip, and many on board said the event is especially meaningful for them as they see their hometown hero welcomed back to the White House.

Who pays for this quadrennial party? When does Beyoncé sing? If I'm going to the National Mall, how do I find a bathroom? And beyond the oath, what's the point of the whole thing, anyway?

Every president gets sworn in once, but it's a smaller club of presidents who manage to get there twice. Here's a look at some recent presidents who served two terms. See who changed the most (or the least) in four years.

More bodies have been reported found at the gas plant in Algeria where a four-day standoff with Islamist militants came to a bloody end on Saturday.

Like his father, John, Lennon prefers collaboration. That spirit comes through in his two new albums — one improvisational and the other a film soundtrack. Long resistant to the idea, Lennon is becoming more like his parents in another way: He's taken up a cause.

Modern society has become adversarial in its relationship to nature, Yale scholar Stephen Kellert argues, having greatly undervalued the natural world beyond its narrow utilty. In his new book Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World, he tells stories of the environment's effect on us, and ours on it.

One of the chief expectations of those who voted for President Obama is that he moves assertively to pass climate change legislation, whatever the political climate in Washington. But that won't be easy given the polarization in Washington.

Steve Inskeep talks with Michele Flournoy, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration. Flournoy weighs in on foreign policy challenges facing the president in his second term.

"That is our generation's task — to make these words, these rights, these values — of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — real for every American," President Barack Obama said during his speech.