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Surveyors have found what appears to be part of a plane that hit the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, New York police say. The piece of landing gear is about 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep, police tell The Associated Press.

In a statement, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said the debris was found wedged between two buildings during an inspection at the site of a long-planned Islamic community center.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to track the health of a population: the average blood pressure, the rate of mental illness and the average weight.

Epidemiologists have been collecting these data for years, but now, in Oregon, there is cold, hard cash riding on measurements like these.

President Obama has spoken at two memorial services in just over a week — one for victims of the Boston Marathon attack and one for those who died in the chemical plant explosions in West, Texas. In both speeches, he focused on victims and survivors.

But other Democrats are using these events to talk about another subject: the role of government.

Thirty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan's administration released "A Nation at Risk," a report warning of "a rising tide of mediocrity" in American public education.

According to the report, only one-third of 17-year-olds in 1983 could solve a math problem requiring two steps or more, and 4 out of 10 teenagers couldn't draw inferences from written material. In an address to the nation, Reagan warned that "about 13 percent of 17-year-olds are functional illiterates and, among minority youth, the rate is closer to 40 percent."

Call it the Whac-a-Mole approach to budgeting.

Congress restored budget flexibility so the FAA can keep air traffic controllers working, just days after their furloughs had started and flight delays began stacking up.

With spending cuts caused by sequestration rolling throughout the government, the question becomes which programs Congress might address next — and why.

"That's the parlor game in Washington," says Scott Lilly, a former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. "There are dozens and dozens of candidates."