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Vladimir Putin got off to a great start, then it all turned sour. Bashar Assad looks to be better positioned today than back in January. Perhaps the pope had the best year of all.

In 1981, Mehmet Ali Ağca shot the pontiff twice at close range as the pope's open motorcade passed through St. Peter's Square. He was jailed for three decades before his release in 2010.

One of the primary tools that U.S. transportation departments count on to keep roads safe is road salt. But that has meant rising levels of chloride in many northern streams.

The president knows he was once regarded as having limitless promise, and realizes as well how disappointed many of his acolytes have been.

A zoo in Japan takes its penguins on a 30-minute waddle twice a day during the winter to keep them from getting too chubby. Visitors line the route and snap pictures of the penguins.

The Asian characters in the original Star Wars films are few, fleeting and often forgotten. But the manager of the "Holocron" database at Lucasfilm helps uncover their back stories.

It's hard enough to get kids in for one flu shot, let alone two. But when parents got texts that explained why the child needed a second dose, they were much more likely to get the job done.

Authorities say two suspects fired at a patrol car with a rifle. Both officers survived without injuries. One suspect was arrested.

Humor is both a creative and a cognitive process, says Bob Mankoff, who has contributed cartoons to The New Yorker since 1977. His memoir is called How About Never — Is Never Good For You?

"Any successful lyricist has to be part playwright and has to be able to put himself into the minds and the hearts and the souls of the characters," Sheldon Harnick tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.