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NPR's Steve Inskeep profiles Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, a moderate Republican who cast a crucial vote against President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal. Sen. Jeffords' tie-breaking ability on close votes in the evenly divided Senate gives him considerable influence. He used it to help reduce the size of the tax cut by about a fourth and divert more than $200 billion of it to pay for special education. Jeffords was just re-elected and has received less criticism in his home-state than from conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C.

Guinness World Records has declared them the tallest family in the world. The family has five members. The shortest is 6 feet, 3 inches and the tallest is 7 feet, 3 inches.

Many polls weren't even open when Dixville Notch and Hart's Location announced their results Tuesday. For 60 years, the two small villages in New Hampshire have observed a tradition of having the first Election Day ballots. In Dixville Notch, Obama defeated John McCain by a count of 15 to 6. Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in candidate Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns' ballots but got no votes.

About 6 percent of the fuel in reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan is made of a "mixed-oxide" fuel, which contains plutonium — which stays hazardous for tens of thousands of years --as well as uranium. But it does not significantly add to the dangers, officials say.

For the first time in five years, the poverty rate in the United States did not increase, according to new numbers released by the Census Bureau. The national poverty level remained steady at 12.6 percent. That's about 37 million people living in poverty, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

As part of StoryCorps' National Day of Listening project, Simon explains how he responds when asked, "Where did I come from?" by his 6-year-old daughter, Elise. NDOL encourages people to sit down with a loved one the day after Thanksgiving and record a meaningful conversation.

Two shootings wounded five people in the city this past weekend. A curfew will go into effect late this week requiring that people be off the streets between midnight and 6 a.m.

Former president Trump's hold on the GOP's response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol still looms large a year later.

As the president's rules for handling detainees accused of terrorist acts are debated in Congress, the impact of the latest changes on America's allies is uncertain. On Sept. 6, President Bush announced that 14 high-profile detainees would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged and tried under military commissions. At the end of his speech, the president sought to quell international criticism, saying that he wants to work with allies by providing what the administration considers a fair legal basis to hold and try suspected terrorists. The commission rules that President Bush proposed at that time have undergone both criticism and alterations -- but it might not be enough to end calls to close the Guantanamo facility.

Microsoft Corp. is spending $6 billion to acquire the online advertising firm aQuantive Inc. The offer is a huge premium over aQuantive's Thursday closing stock price — a situation that a Microsoft official said is because "we believe it's exactly the right company to buy." Microsoft is playing catch-up in the quickly growing Internet advertising field.