Featured Articles from the Washington Post

Chris Paine is a filmmaker whose documentaries include "Who Killed the Electric Car?" ,"Charge" and "Revenge of the Electric Car. " The troubles of electric-car-maker Fisker Automotive have fueled another round of debate about whether plug-ins can live up to their promises. The California start-up, which had already halted production and laid off most of its employees, missed a federal loan payment Monday and told a congressional hearing on Wednesday that bankruptcy may be unavoidable . This is likely the end of the road for Fisker.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama's economic advisers and outside experts say the nation's much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind , including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

Q: DEAR TIM: Cleaning a tile floor is my next big project. The grout lines are filthy, and I haven't discovered an easy way to restore the tile. Is there a magic product that will clean floor tile? Once the grout is clean, what's the easiest way to keep it that way? Should I invest in a cleaning machine? -- Michelle S., Corvallis, Ore. A: DEAR MICHELLE: We had a boatload of tile floors in our last home, and cleaning them was a nightmare. To make it worse, we had brilliant white tile with light gray grout in our kitchen and breakfast area.

Do you have refinance envy? Come on, you can admit it. You've been at an event or to church or having lunch with co-workers and someone brags about the interest rate she just got when refinancing her mortgage. You stay silent, grieving that you can't take advantage of the low interest rates for mortgages. You grumble when you read news stories like this one from The Associated Press on April 18: "Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages fell closer this week to their historic lows, making homeownership more affordable and refinancing more attractive.

Earlier this spring, Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, invited a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network into their Kentucky home for what turned into two full days of reality TV. In a half-hour special, "At Home With Rand Paul," the couple are seen bird-watching in the woods, going to McDonald's and, especially, talking about religion — their belief in traditional marriage and the senator's call for a "spiritual cleansing" in America....

CORNWALL, N.Y. — Most compact sedans with small four-cylinder engines stumble up Mine Hill Road here, which rises nearly 1,500 feet above sea level. It matters not the manufacturer. Small cars that might have zoomed along the nearby Palisades Interstate Parkway or adjacent Interstate 87 suddenly turn timid when beginning the climb up winding, twisting Mine Hill Road. They cough, stutter and stumble, a motorized whining that becomes especially evident if they are carrying cargo weighing 200 pounds or more.

T-Mobile is taking a new approach to wireless billing by charging separately for devices and data and doing away with the traditional two-year contract. In a major media event Tuesday, T-Mobile chief executive John Legere said that the new T-Mobile plans could save consumers a whole lot of money compared to other carrier plans. But how does that claim match up? It can be a little difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison — features such as hotspot capabilities or unlimited talk and text differ from carrier to carrier — but T-Mobile's math does work out in some cases.

Linda Davidson The Washington Post Mark and Jackie Barden hug their 11-year-old daughter, Natalie, before she goes to school in Newtown, Conn., in May. T hey had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel. The families of Sandy Hook Elementary were collaborating on a Mother's Day card, which would be produced by a marketing firm and mailed to hundreds of politicians across the country. "A difference-maker," the organizers had called it. Maybe if Mark could find the most arresting photo of his 7-year-old son, people would be compelled to act. It hardly mattered that what Mark and his wife, Jackie, really wanted was to ignore Mother's Day altogether, to stay in their pajamas with their two surviving children, turn off their phones and reward themselves for making it through another day with a glass of Irish whiskey neat.

PHILADELPHIA — Less than an hour before the 8 p.m. tipoff, Philadelphia 76ers employees are scurrying around the Wells Fargo Center, hoping this Saturday night unfolds as planned. It's late March, and the team is handing out Allen Iverson bobblehead dolls. Iverson himself is scheduled to attend, a rare public appearance for the 37-year-old former NBA superstar. He'll be introduced during a pregame ceremony and then watch the game from Sixers chief executive Adam Aron's suite.

We've gotten a lot of questions from readers lately about chip-and-PIN credit cards, also known as EMV cards (for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the originators of the technology). Although they're almost universal in Europe, credit card companies have yet to widely offer them to American customers. For travelers headed around the globe, here are the basics: What is a chip-and-PIN card? A chip-and-PIN card looks pretty much like the plastic you're used to. But it's embedded with a special chip that contains the same information that has traditionally been contained in the magnetic strip along the top of a standard card (some cards have both)

The Renoir alluded to in the title of French director Gilles Bourdos's latest film could be either the famous impressionist painter or his almost equally famous filmmaker son, Jean ("La Grande Illusion"). Both men appear in the story, a seemingly desultory yet methodical meditation on art, war, love, life and death that takes place on the painter's country estate in 1915, four years before his death. World War I rages, just off camera. But all is, for the most part, calm in the sleepy Cote d'Azur town where the movie's action takes place.