Eyder Peralta

During separate commencement addresses, Attorney General Eric Holder and first lady Michelle Obama delivered a similar message: On this 60th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools, we should acknowledge that progress has been made, but in many ways systematic racism ...

In the first ruling of its kind, District Judge Gladys Kessler has halted the force-feeding of a Syrian man being detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In a brief order, Kessler said the U.S. should not force-feed Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Dhiab until after a hearing set for May 21. Kessler ...

By the time a bright-eyed secretary named Peggy Olson walked through the fictional doors of the Madison Avenue advertising agency Sterling Cooper in 1960, one very real female pioneer was already hard at work down the street.

Like her Mad Men counterpart, the 84-year-old broadcasting legend Barbara Walters, who retired ...

The board of directors for the NAACP announced it has selected Cornell William Brooks as its new president and CEO.

"Mr. Brooks is a pioneering lawyer and civil rights leader, who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Association," Roslyn M. Brock, Chairman of the NAACP Board of ...

If someone is outraged these days, they often blog about it, or post a tweet in righteous indignation. Parents urge children to use their words, and in the news business, we certainly believe in the power of words and information.

But you may wonder these days if some people confuse ...

Oregon Public Broadcasting brings us an epic tale: OR-7, a long-wandering wolf who ventured from northeast Oregon all the way to California in search of new territory and a chance for a mate, may have finally found one.

Biologists with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they imaged ...

An international aviation organization is taking a first step toward implementing a system that would track aircraft globally.

The Globe and Mail reports that after a two-day meeting in Montreal, the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization said that the tracking system would be "pursued as a matter of ...

Ukraine says six of its soldiers were killed during an ambush by militants on Tuesday.

CNN reports the Ukrainian Defense Ministry called it a "terrorist attack." The network adds:

"The incident took place in the village of Oktyabrski in the Slovyansk region, about 20 kilometers from Kramatorsk, during ...

Without making any progress toward ending Syria's civil war, Lakhdar Brahimi will step down as the international envoy to Syria.

Brahimi's nearly two years in the post ends in much the same way that it did for his predecessor Kofi Annan, who stepped down in the summer of 2012 ...

Update at 4:57 p.m. ET. Federal Court Halts Execution:

With just hours to go, a federal court has halted the execution of Texas inmate Robert Campbell.

The execution would have been the first since Oklahoma botched one in April.

The ruling has nothing to do with the drug shortage ...

In 1963, Alabama was culturally closer to Brooklyn than it is now. The Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South created enclaves in cities all over the country, and the Civil Rights movement trained the eyes of the North on cities like Birmingham. Alabama native Naomi Shelton came to ...

Human Rights Watch says evidence "strongly suggests" the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in mid-April.

The group, which investigates allegations of human rights abuses, says the rebels do not have the helicopters used to drop the barrel bombs used on three northern ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The organization WaterisLife is developing a "Drinkable Book" that not only teaches water safety but can actually be used to treat drinking water. Each page, coated in bacteria-killing silver nanoparticles, can be torn out and used as ...

Harvard University Extension School's Cultural Studies Club has ignited a maelstrom of criticism over its plans to reenact a black mass on Monday.

The university and the Catholic Church have condemned it, but the club says the Satanic mass is simply for educational purposes.

The AP reports:

"The ...

Where the Federal Communications Commission ends up on net neutrality seems to be up in the air: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The Washington Post are reporting that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is revising a proposal that would allow Internet providers to sell fast lanes ...

Over the weekend, scientists with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirmed that Nereus, one of only four submersibles to have reached the depths of the Mariana Trench, suffered a catastrophic implosion.

The unmanned vehicle was on day 30 of a 40-day mission to explore the Kermadec Trench northeast of ...

With all the talk in contemporary American politics about game changers ... what about name changers?

Through the years there have been elected officials who were born with different names from the ones that were on the ballots. The politicians changed their names for all kinds of reasons.

...

If you were just starting to forget the pretty gruesome winter season we just lived through, remember that our friends in the west are not out of the woods: More than a foot of heavy, wet snow blanketed parts of Colorado and Wyoming Sunday into Monday.

The AP reports ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Misha Defonseca, the author of a fabricated Holocaust memoir that describes her hunt for her missing parents, her adoption by wolves, and her killing of a Nazi soldier, has been ordered to pay back $22.5 million ...

The journalist, who received a cache of highly classified documents, says no one disputes that the security agency should be reading emails from al-Qaida, but the system has become too powerful.