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Rebecca Paul Hargrove, who created two state lotteries and now runs a third, understands what makes a lottery program work.

Using figures that were made for miniature train sets, a former Las Vegas crime reporter is finding big success creating and selling tiny imaginary crime scenes. Abigail Goldman's macabre, and sometimes funny, "Die-O-Ramas" are selling out before she's even completed them.

The Tour de France reaches its conclusion on Sunday. This year, angry competitors said they were sick of riding under the cloud of dopers from the 1990s and 2000s. The current race appears to be dope-free, but one can't be sure about that yet.

Congress this week has convened its first hearings about the Voting Rights Act since the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of that law last month. The meetings offer some insights into what, if anything, lawmakers will do to restore the stricken section that enables the Justice Department to review in advance changes to state voting laws.

The Russian lawyer for NSA leaker Edward Snowden predicts his client will soon get temporary asylum in Russia. Snowden and his allies say his laptops contain files that could be highly damaging to NSA operations. Security experts say it would be challenging but by no means impossible for Russian (or Chinese) cyber technicians to gain access to the files Snowden has with him, in spite of his promises to safeguard them.

Congressional inaction let the interest rate for some student loans double at the start of the month, even though lawmakers' preferred solutions don't seem that far apart. The Senate is planning to vote Wednesday on a proposal that would bring rates back down for one year.

Was the change in Egypt's government a coup or not? For members of Congress, the difference is more than a question of semantics. U.S. law requires that aid be cut off to a country that undergoes a military coup — which, if it were to happen in the case of Egypt, would bring on dramatic consequences.

A massive car bomb explosion in one of Hezbollah's Beirut strongholds left dozens of people wounded. It's the latest and deadliest response to the militant group's moves to support the embattled Syrian government's battle against rebel forces.

Have you ever found yourself in the library or a bookstore, about to go on vacation, with no idea what books to bring? NPR's Lynn Neary talks to three book critics about the best reads of the summer.

Lawyer turned author Robert Rotenberg takes great pains to re-create the relatively calm atmosphere of Canadian courtrooms in his suspense novels. But not all of his characters play by the rules. "Well, they are murder mysteries," he says.