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Credit card companies' practice of charging excessive interest rates hurts consumers — and it should be illegal, says financial historian Charles Geisst. The author of a new book about consumer debt, Geisst says one small change helped to shift attitudes about debt: what we call it.

FBI agents fanned out across northern New Jersey today and made arrests in a corruption investigation that includes two mayors. Officials say politics and religion were used to cloak crimes and enrich the suspects.

Warmer air temperatures have triggered the collapse of an enormous ice shelf along the coast of Antarctica, scientists say.

The final details of the government program that encourages people to trade in older, gas-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient ones will be released Friday. But car dealers have been using the program to sell cars for weeks.

Did President Obama overstep his bounds when he stepped into the debate over Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s altercation with police at Gates' Cambridge, Mass., home? NPR news analyst Juan Williams tells host Scott Simon that Obama's handling of the controversy has hurt the president in the eyes of the nation.

This week, Starbucks opened a remodeled café, and a key ingredient was missing. Not Caffe Verona Blend or Iced Grande Lattes, but the name — a name that may now be better known in the U.S. than any car company. Host Scott Simon talks with ad critic Barbara Lippert of AdWeek magazine about why the company is trying this new strategy.

Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., respected as one of the nation's lead scholars, was arrested last week on his porch in Cambridge, Mass., after authorities mistook him for reported a burglar, described to police as a black male. But although Gates presented identification as a resident of the home, he was still taken into custody. Charles Ogletree, Gates' attorney, discusses the case and why his client believes he was racially profiled.

Irish-American writer Frank McCourt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling memoir Angela's Ashes, died Sunday. He was 78.

The health condition of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, is a closely kept secret, but there have been whispers that he is suffering from pancreatic cancer and may be dying. The line of succession is the subject of world speculation.

A group of police officers are standing by the sergeant who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and called on President Obama to apologize for his comments on the arrest. Obama said Wednesday that Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" during the arrest.