Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway is accusing Marathon Petroleum Company of price gouging during a state of emergency.  The legal brief has been added to an ongoing lawsuit against Marathon for alleged price gouging during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The Chicago Fire Department was told by a federal appeals court today that it must hire 111 African-Americans who successfully argued that they were discriminated against in 1995.

And, the Chicago Sun-Times writes, the court ordered that "tens of millions of dollars" in damages be paid to 6,000 other blacks.

The latest financial checkup for Medicare finds the health program for the elderly and disabled won't be able to pay for all benefits due starting in 2024.

The insolvency date for Medicare comes five years sooner than the estimate in last year's annual report by its trustees. A crummy economy shoulders a lot of the blame for the deterioration.

Jonathan Coulton's songs almost never get played on the radio. He doesn't have a contract with a music label. Yet he's a one man counterargument to the idea that musicians can't make money making music.

In 2010, Coulton's music brought in about $500,000 in revenue. And since his overhead costs are very low, most of that money went straight to him.

Did he ever expect to make that kind of money as a musician?

"Of course not," he says. "This is absurd."

It was reported today that Humana intends to stop hiring smokers, where the action is legally permitted. The company wants to encourage healthy behavior among workers and already has a policy of not hiring smokers in southwestern Ohio.

One of the few Western journalists who has been able to get in to Syria to see the protests there and the crackdown by the regime of President Bashar Assad says he was "surprised at how much support President Assad himself still has."

Martin Fletcher, associate editor at The Times of London, spoke with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel earlier today.

As part of a series on obesity, NPR is working on a story about clothing. Finding the perfect fit has been elusive — for instance, she's a size 8 at Barney's and at Chico's she's 0. Except that over the last 5-10 years spandex has made it easier. We're looking for women who've noticed the trend and would like to talk about it. Fill out the form below and we will be in touch. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio.

More than 200 billboards began springing up around Los Angeles today in an attempt to identify two men police suspect were involved in the brutal beating of a San Francisco Giants fan in Dodger Stadium on opening day.

In Depression-era New York jazz clubs, "Fats" Waller was known for getting the party jumping. Now, musicians Jason Moran and Me'Shell Ndegeocello are collaborating on a new project that transforms Waller's rollicking stride piano style into contemporary dance music.

Syrian security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters Friday, killing at least six people as soldiers tried to head off demonstrations by occupying mosques and blocking public squares, human rights activists said.

A leading activist told The Associated Press that three people were killed in Homs, two in Damascus and one in a village outside Daraa, the southern city where the nationwide uprising began in March. He asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals by the government.