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Risking failure is part of the job for explorers. Salomon August Andrée's failed attempt to reach the North Pole in 1897 motivated others to try. National Geographic examines why failure matters.

The White House is pursuing a major effort to persuade members of Congress to support a military strike in Syria. Estimates show the number of House members publicly against a strike near an outright majority. Renee Montagne talks to Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma who is opposed to military action.

Michael Turner wanted to propose to Jamie Story before he was deployed so he invited her to dinner in Virginia Beach, Va. According to the Virginian-Pilot, that's when the flash mob appeared. Turner arranged for 50 dancers to do synchronized steps on the street as he proposed. She said, "Yes."

Millions of Syrians have poured into refugee camps, where food, water and health services are scarce. As the U.S. prepares for possible military action, aid agencies are preparing for thousands more people to flee and worsen the humanitarian crisis.

His new book, Dissident Gardens, follows three generations of an activist family, from Rose, a secular Jew and communist, to Sergius, her commune-raised grandson. The book is fiction, but its characters were inspired by Lethem's own family story.

Two centers of culture are in conflict on the banks of the Thames in London. One is the world renowned South Bank Center of the Arts, with four resident orchestras, including the London Philharmonic. It also has conservatories, the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The other cultural landmark is the Undercroft, a dark, concrete cavern, covered in graffiti, that lies beneath the Arts Center and looks out on to the Thames. It's the birthplace and temple of British skate boarding. For forty uninterrupted years it has been hallowed ground for those who regard skate boarding as an art form every bit as legitimate as anything performed in the concert halls above. But now the South Bank Arts Center is trying to force the skateboarders to a different location, so the Undercroft can be leased to restaurants. And the skate boarders are mobilizing to resist.

As expected, the Kremlin-backed incumbent won Moscow's mayoral election, but the surprising thing was that he garnered barely enough votes to avoid a run-off election. The main opposition candidate, Alexei Navalny, walked away with at least 27 percent of the vote. His campaign strategists have said it would be a victory if he got more than 20 percent, because that would energize the opposition and show that Muscovites want a more democratic future.

The basic economics of the Internet are at stake in a lawsuit that went before a federal court on Monday. Verizon is suing to overturn FCC rules that govern Internet service providers. The "Open Internet Order" prohibits companies such as Verizon from blocking or discriminating against certain kinds of websites.

The Congressional Gold Medals for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley come 50 years after the black girls were killed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb. Just as the federal recognition is long in coming, so was justice.

An Indian court has convicted four men involved in a gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus in December. The men are expected to be sentenced Wednesday.