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Ann Powers picks her favorite chart-topping, radio-dominating songs of 2012.

At the end of a year in which pop songs were a constant, provocative part of the national conversation, NPR Music critic Ann Powers sifts through the 100 most popular songs of the year to highlight 10 pure pop pleasures worth remembering.

Dig below the strata of pop songs so ubiquitous you can't stand to hear them anymore, and you'll find plenty of riches in the Top 40, from country crossover to innovative R&B and classic pop.

After a defense attorney for one of the “Broadview Six” protesters on Tuesday accused U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros of having personal contact with members of the grand jury, Boutros’ office said he has not presented evidence “before any grand jury on any particular case.”

A host of beloved authors have new books hitting shelves this week, including a memoir by humorist Barry, a Mark Twain bio by Chernow and essays by Richard Russo.

Toni Morrison's 1987 work Beloved is the best American novel of the past quarter-century. That's according to a vote of writers and critics who were invited to weigh in with their choices by The New York Times Book Review.

A toponym is a word derived from a geographical place name, like "champagne" or "sandwich" — play along as we ask them to identify other (lesser-known) toponyms.

Forget the typing etiquette you learned in school. In this game, we ignore most of the keyboard to focus only on the 10 letters to the right of the Tab key. House musician Jonathan Coulton leads this game and shows us just how many words we can spell with Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U, I, O and P.

Police are still not saying what motivated the gunman who walked into a crowded Aurora, Colo., movie theater and opened fired. Suspect James Holmes, 24, was apprehended immediately after the attack. Until recently, he was a grad student studying neuroscience.