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Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday morning, and some notable names went missing. But, as NPR film critic Bob Mondello observes, in such a strong year for movies and performances, there were bound to be a few deserving ones that got snubbed.

Russell Johnson, the actor whose job it was to be the voice of reason and calm on an island of shipwrecked ninnies, reportedly died of natural causes at his home in Washington state. Johnson's role as the Professor on the 1960s comedy Gilligan's Island endeared him to audiences.

Consumers are beginning to buy Internet-connected appliances, but companies haven't done enough to protect the machines from hackers, says an information security expert.

Republican hopes of picking up the six seats needed to capture the U.S. Senate include a suddenly interesting race. Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a top White House aide to President George W. Bush, announced that he'll challenge popular Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.

For nearly three decades, until 1974, Lt. Hiroo Onoda lived in a Philippine jungle. During those years he continued to battle with villagers. As many as 30 people were killed. It wasn't until his former commander ordered Onoda to lay down his arms that he surrendered. Onoda died Thursday. He was 91.

The president said intelligence agencies would now need court approval before accessing phone data of hundreds of millions of Americans. He also directed the agencies to stop spying on the leaders of friendly nations. The changes come amid criticism directed at the NSA.

The team at Dartmouth College mined 180 million tweets from 900,000 users to understand word clippings — like "awks" as "awkward." The researchers want to understand how such words originate and how they spread.

Author and sociologist David Cunningham speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the origins of cross burnings and white hoods, and why North Carolina had more Klan members during the height of the civil rights movement than all other Southern states combined.

Tom Clancy's wonkish spy returns in a new thriller from Kenneth Branagh, with Star Trek's Chris Pine in the title role and the director playing a menacing Russian bad guy out to bring the U.S. to its knees.

The Oklahoma senator, a leading conservative, will retire two years early. He's battling cancer but says his decision is based on serving his family by "shifting my focus elsewhere."