Camila Domonoske

Five years ago, Ted Williams became famous. The Columbus Dispatch posted a video of Williams, panhandling on the side of the road, showing off a pitch-perfect announcer's voice.

The video went viral, and William's striking baritone was heard around the world. Here on the Two-Way, the story led one of ...

On Saturday, Iran released four detained Iranian-Americans and the U.S. released or pardoned seven Iranians, and dropped extradition requests for 14 more, in a highly choreographed prisoner exchange. Iran also simultaneously released a fifth American detainee.

The news comes as Iran is poised to celebrate "Implementation Day," marking the ...

Iran is releasing four Iranian-American prisoners Saturday, as part of a prisoner swap with the U.S.

The release, originally reported by Iranian state media, has been confirmed by U.S. officials. Iran is also releasing a fifth American detainee, separate from the exchange.

The released prisoners include Jason Rezaian, a Washington ...

Tsai Ing-Wen, of Taiwan's pro-independence party, claimed victory in the nation's presidential elections on Saturday night.

With the vote count still underway, Tsai led with 60 percent of the vote, indicating a landslide victory; the ruling Nationalist party conceded defeat.

That makes Tsai the self-governing island's first female president.

And ...

An hours-long attack by militants on a luxury hotel in Burkina Faso's capital has left approximately 20 victims dead. An early-morning assault by security forces killed four attackers and freed 126 hostages, officials say.

Among the victims killed was an American, identified by the U.S. State Department as Michael James ...

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories.

From national desk producer Laurel Wamsley:

Anders Kvernberg was deep in the vaults of the National Library of Norway when a beautiful atlas caught his eye.

So, you know. "It was an ordinary day at work," he says.

As a reference librarian, Kvernberg spends his days digging through the library's collections to answer questions from the ...

The company that owns the leaking natural gas well in Los Angeles understated the number of air samples showing higher-than-usual levels of benzene, The Associated Press reports.

Adding to concerns over the disaster, efforts to stop the leak appear to have destabilized the well, the Los Angeles Times reports, ...

Over the Easter holiday in 2015, millions of dollars worth of cash, gems and jewelry were stolen from a facility where London jewelers stored their wares. The audacious theft — which involved descending through an elevator shaft and drilling through concrete and metal walls — seized the attention of ...

The Episcopal Church has been disciplined by the Anglican Communion, the international faith fellowship of which the church is a part, over deep disagreements about homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

The church has not been removed from the communion. However, it will be barred from Anglican decision-making for three years and ...

The World Health Organization announced Thursday that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is over — for now.

For the first time since the outbreak began in December 2013, all three of the hardest-hit West African nations — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — have had zero reported cases of ...

Over the past two weeks, the Defense Department has transferred 14 detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

That leaves 93 detainees at the military prison in Cuba — the first time the prison's population has been below 100 since it opened in January 2002.

The most recent release was ...

So ... have you bought a Powerball ticket?

The jackpot is now at $1.5 billion — the largest jackpot in world history. (Full disclosure: NPR is playing the odds. Our CEO bought every regular full-time employee a ticket.)

And yes, $1.5 billion is a lot of money. It's a ...

Twenty-two months of searching the seabed for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has so far turned up no sign of the missing plane.

But the teams searching for MH370 have mapped new details about a long-mysterious region of ocean floor, photographed an anchor and some long-lost clumps of coal ...

The Internet had many, many responses to actor Sean Penn's account of meeting Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, which was published by Rolling Stone on Saturday: shock, anger, derision, astonishment, utter bafflement ...

But from one quarter, at least, there was pure excitement.

"EL CHAPO GUZMAN WEARING BARABAS SHIRT !" ...

A nuclear-capable B-52 bomber flew over an air base in South Korea in a move that was both a training mission and a show of force.

The low-level flight was conducted as a demonstration of U.S. commitment to South Korea, in response to a nuclear test by North Korea, the ...

Germany has started 2016 with a deep and bitter debate: How should the country respond to the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne, in which mobs of men reportedly robbed and sexually assaulted women on the streets?

Concrete information about the night is sparse, and competing narratives abound.

"A lot ...

Doctors Without Borders says a hospital it supports in Yemen was hit by a projectile Sunday morning, leaving at least four people dead and 10 injured.

The medical aid organization, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, said more victims might still be trapped in the building's rubble.

Aid is due to arrive in the besieged towns of Madaya, Foa and Kefraya soon — possibly on Monday.

Meanwhile, an airstrike in the Idlib province has killed scores of people, and Syria's government says it will be willing to join peace talks in Geneva with some opposition groups.

One number has everybody's attention this afternoon. But why stop at one?

Here's the prize jackpot, plus a few other lottery stats worth knowing:

$900,000,000

The eye-popping, record-breaking Powerball jackpot value, as of Saturday afternoon. If no one wins tonight, the jackpot could crack a billion.

That's based on a ...