The U.S. government has been working for years to crack down on Americans dodging taxes overseas. In 2009, under intense pressure, the Swiss bank UBS released the names of its American customers.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has acknowledged that he had money in a Swiss bank account until 2010. Romney says he wasn't trying to hide the money, since he reported the account to the government.
Even so, he closed the account at a time when the federal government was in the middle of a major crackdown on offshore tax havens — a crackdown that has made it harder for Americans to hide their money overseas.
Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, will stand trial on charges related to the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Here, the couple is shown in 2007 attending Bo's father's funeral.
Credit Kyodo / Reuters/Landov
Gu Kailai and her husband, Bo Xilai, in 2007. Her trial involving the murder of a British businessman begins Thursday.
Credit Reuters/Landov
British businessman Neil Heywood, seen here at a gallery in Beijing last April, was found dead in his Chongqing hotel on Nov. 15, 2011. Heywood had ties to Bo Xilai's family, helping organize the education of son Bo Guagua, who studied at the exclusive British boarding schools Papplewick and Harrow.
One of China's biggest criminal trials opens Thursday, and its lurid details make for a sort-of Communist Party film noir. The wife of an ambitious Chinese politician is accused of murdering a British businessman. Her powerful husband allegedly blocks the police investigation, and the police chief, fearing for his life, takes refuge in a U.S. consulate and implicates the wife in the killing.
Republican activist David Barton speaks before testifying before the Texas State Board of Education in 2009.
Credit Historical archives / Warren Throckmorton
Barton claims Jefferson, unlike the other presidents, closes his documents "In the year of our Lord Christ." It's actually a standard form of closing documents, used here by James Madison.
Credit Jack Plunkett / AP
Diana Gomez and Garrett Mize rally before a state Board of Education meeting in Austin, Texas, in 2010.
David Barton says Americans have been misled about their history. And he aims to change that.
"It's what I would call historical reclamation," Barton explains, in his soft but rapid-fire voice. "We're just trying to get history back to where it's accurate. If you're going to use history, get it right."
Simi, a professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and co-author of American Swastika, realized that he had talked to Page at length during his research on the white power movement in the United States.
It's gotten to that point in the dog days of August where the air is stale and nothing seems to be moving. But sometimes all it takes to snap me out of a late-summer heat coma is the sound of a new and electrifying voice — like that of Lianne La Havas.
A visitor lays flowers on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, five years after a lone gunman killed 32 people. Many colleges formed threat assessment teams in the aftermath of the Virginia massacre.
Credit University of Colorado / AP
James Holmes, the former University of Colorado student accused in the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., by the University of Colorado. The university is reviewing whether more could have been done to prevent the shooting.
A Colorado judge on Thursday will consider whether to lift the gag order in the case of James Holmes, 24, who's accused of killing 12 and wounding dozens more at a movie theater last month.
NPR and other news organizations want access to case files, including a notebook that Holmes reportedly sent to a university psychiatrist before withdrawing from the school that may have described an attack.
While President Obama and Mitt Romney offer competing visions every day on the campaign trail, there's also a more superficial aspect to their campaigns.
And on the surface, Obama and Romney events feel completely different.
Take a recent summer night in Leesburg, Va. Dorothy Fontaine had been standing outside of a local high school since the sun was high in the sky.
When asked why she would spend that much time waiting, Fontaine replied: "It's the president of the United States! I mean, isn't it cool to go see the president of the United States?"
