Food banks around the country are trying to keep their shelves stocked as more people in the U.S. struggle to get enough to eat. Increasingly, that means finding new ways to salvage food that would otherwise go to waste.

One innovation is being tested at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee. In a back room at the food bank's warehouse in Gray, Tenn., dented and crushed cans containing everything from green beans to beets are piled high on a counter.

Nik Wallenda — of the famed Flying Wallendas circus and stunt performers — hopes to walk over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. But first, he needs the help of the New York government. Right now, it's illegal to walk across the landmark on a high-wire.

This week, the state legislature passed a bill to lift the restriction; it isn't known whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo will sign it. Many, including the mayor of Niagara Falls, say the high-wire act would give the town's lagging economy a much-needed boost.

Wallenda says the feat "has been a dream of mine forever. It's in my blood."

We've seen the graph, before, but the liberal leaning site Talking Points Memo points it out again, today, and it's interesting enough that we'll pass it along.

The legal hunting of sandhill cranes in Kentucky has moved another step closer to becoming a reality, but final approval is still pending.  Earlier this month, the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously approved a sandhill crane hunting season in Kentucky. The season, with a mid-December start, would last for 30 days, or until 400 of the huge, migratory birds have been killed, whichever comes first.

There were two words, said Michele Norris, missing in Jose Antonio Vargas' New York Times Magazine piece. Vargas, as we reported, is the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who came out as an undocumented immigrant in a detailed story to be published on Sunday.

President Obama spent Friday pushing job creation in manufacturing, but he's getting increasing pressure for job results from a key part of his base: African Americans.

The unemployment rate for black men is about double the national average — and economists don't expect that number to fall to the single digits anywhere in the near future.

This is a post for all the kids who stick their tongue in places they shouldn't, and the parents who tell them not to.

Late one afternoon last September, an EMT crew delivered a 9-year-old boy to the emergency room at Duke University Hospital in North Carolina. His problem was obvious. His tongue was stuck inside a metal drinking bottle. Really stuck.

The boy was drooling and unable to swallow. He was scared and in pain.

Will Johnson may be one of the hardest-working people in indie rock. He leads two bands, records as a solo artist and plays as a sideman in a host of other projects. Johnson is originally from Denton, Texas, and his music — be it the lonesome balladry of South San Gabriel or the rock 'n' roll machine that is Centro-Matic — is inspired by the distinctive sounds of that state.

For decades, AARP — the nation's largest advocacy group for seniors — has been viewed as the most powerful defender of Social Security. As a result, any hint that the organization might entertain benefit cuts would be seen as an abrupt about-face.

But that's precisely what happened a few days ago, when a front page story in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that the organization had dropped its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits.

Irish mob boss James J. "Whitey" Bulger's scheduled arraignment in a Boston courtroom Friday after 16 years on the lam will open yet another chapter in the violent crime-and-politics family saga that has consumed Beantown reporters since the 1980s.

"I've spent half my career chasing Whitey Bulger around," says Gerard O'Neill, retired head of the Boston Globe investigative team, which in 1988 outed Bulger as an FBI informant since the mid-1970s.