Search results for

Zynga, the company behind popular Facebook games such as Farmville and Cityville, is expected to have its initial public offering before the end of the year. Zynga is a phenomenon. More than 200 million people play its games each month. One person who doesn't feel Zynga's success is cause for celebration is video game designer Ian Bogost. Bogost thinks Zynga's games are mindless, designed to suck money out of players' pockets. To make his point he created a parody game of his own. As On the Media's P.J. Vogt reports, what Bogost didn't expect is that his satire would become one of the most popular games he's ever made.

"The rich are not only getting richer — they are becoming more dangerous." That's according to Wall Street Journal writer Robert Frank, whose new book, The High-Beta Rich, shows how the spending of the top 1 percent has become "the most unstable force in the economy."

Veterans Day was last week, and with it came a reminder of a World War 1 strategy. Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on the fake city France was creating in hopes German bombs wouldn't hit the real Paris. The sham city was never finished because the war ended.

Police say a man in Boise, Idaho, went running naked through a park. Police gave chase. When they caught up to him, the naked man had become entangled in the barbed wire on top of a fence.

Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's arguments for free-market capitalism and against socialism and central planning made him a popular figure in 1940s America — and again today. His book got a boost last year when Glenn Beck discussed it on air. But some say Hayek and his book are misunderstood.

Though most are known to deal with drugs and weapons, a new FBI threat assessment says street gangs have been moving into some different territory lately: human trafficking. The FBI says gang members increasingly are pushing women and children into prostitution.

President Barack Obama is meeting with the leaders of Asian and Pacific countries in Hawaii this weekend. The president is expected to use the Asia-Pacific economic summit to emphasize his effort to pivot the U.S. away from Europe and towards the Pacific in the coming century. NPR's Ari Shapiro is travelling with the president and has more.

Cement plants, like Ash Grove in Chanute, Kan., burn hazardous waste for fuel, causing anxiety for nearby residents despite assurances of regulators.

Huntsville is the shining star in Alabama's economy. Scientists there designed the rockets that put man on the moon. In the past 50 years, it's become a magnet for high-tech space and defense jobs. But with NASA downsizing and the specter of defense cuts looming, Huntsville finds itself in limbo.

Huntsville is the shining star in Alabama's economy. Scientists there designed the rockets that put man on the moon. In the past 50 years, it's become a magnet for high-tech space and defense jobs. But with NASA downsizing and the specter of defense cuts looming, Huntsville finds itself in limbo.