Earl B. Reynolds Jr., 60, grew up in Roanoke, Va., where his father cut hair in his own store, the Virginia Sanitary Barber Shop. And as a little boy, Earl often shined customers' shoes in the shop.

As Reynolds tells his daughter, Ashley Reynolds, a visit from the Godfather of Soul set him on a path in life that eventually put Earl at odds with his father.

Working in the store one day, Earl watched a tour bus pull up to a theater near the shop. The doors opened — and out stepped James Brown.

The first and last men to walk on the moon told a congressional committee today that the United States needs to figure out a way to get back into space.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that NASA needs a "master plan" to get Americans back in space.

Since the space shuttle program was grounded earlier this year, the only way for American astronauts to get into low Earth orbit or to the International Space Station is to hitch a ride with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

I logged on to Facebook this week to check out the changes so many people had been griping about in person. "Top News" blared above my News Feed and even more updates spewed in a stream in the right-hand corner of the screen. I reflexively closed the boxes on my profile that explained the "upgrade" and cluttered my view. I was suddenly in the dark, not knowing how to control the information.

The high noon deadline for bioethicist Arthur Caplan's $10,000 challenge to Rep. Michele Bachmann has come and gone without a peep from the Republican presidential hopeful. But damage from her statement linking the HPV vaccine with mental retardation has already been done, Caplan says.

When Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, announced earlier this week that he was stepping down from the number three position in the Senate GOP leadership, his move got the rumor mill going.

Was it because the 71-year old senior senator from the Volunteer State sensed that he wasn't perceived as hardline enough in the Tea Party-era to advance to the the number two position?

Facebook took a leap Thursday towards making itself into what it hopes will be the social center for entertainment and media. You'll be able to see what movies and TV your friends are watching, what music they're listening to and what news items they're reading.

The nation's for-profit colleges and universities have reaped a windfall from the new post-Sept. 11 GI bill.

The top for-profit companies brought in around a billion dollars in benefits in the last year alone.

Some lawmakers say federal regulations encourage these schools to target current and former members of the military.

At a Senate hearing Thursday, lawmakers and witnesses praised the two-year post-Sept.11 GI bill, saying it had helped many vets and active-duty service personnel go to college.

It seems that all the big farm groups - from beef and pork producers to sugar and soybean growers — have been paying attention to those "Know Your Farmer" bumper stickers.

As was widely expected, Hewlett-Packard announced that Meg Whitman, the one-time CEO of eBay and former gubernatorial candidate in California, would be its next president and chief executive.

At one point in trading today, the Dow Jones was down close to 500 points or about 4 percent. The U.S. markets followed the earlier global slide as investors grappled with a gloomy forecast from the Federal Reserve and fears of a global economic downturn.