Eyder Peralta

The Los Angeles Police Department says two suspects opened fire on a patrol car with a rifle Sunday evening.

KTLA-TV reports:

"Several rounds were shot in the direction of the officers, LAPD Capt. Lillian Carranza said.

"'This was a completely unprovoked attack,' she added.

"One of the officers ...

Update at 5:49 p.m.

Indonesia has asked the U.S. for help in locating the missing AirAsia jetliner, the State Department said today.

State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said the U.S. was reviewing the request. The Defense Department said the U.S. assistance could include "some air, surface and sub-surface ...

Update at 7:50 pm. Death Toll Rises To 10:

The death toll has climbed to 10, but dozens of passengers are still missing from a Greek ferry that caught fire. Authorities have been unable to determine exactly how many people were on board.

The Associated Press reports that 427 were ...

Updated at 6:00 p.m. ET

President Obama called Sony's decision to pull its film The Interview, following threats to movie theaters, a "mistake."

"We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States," the president said in his year-end news ...

Soccer's governing body is sticking to its guns.

FIFA has voted not to revisit the bidding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. It also decided to release, at some later date, at least part of a 430-page confidential report produced by American lawyer Michael Garcia.

Garcia, who had been ...

President Obama will close out 2014 with his traditional end-of-year press conference.

The press conference is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. ET., and it's bound to be eventful because Obama has a lot to talk about.

Among the news events that will likely come up:

-- The normalization ...

Two days after the U.S. and Cuba decided to end a more than 50-year estrangement, the natural question is: What's next?

On Morning Edition, NPR's Michelle Kelemen reports that the process of normalizing diplomatic relations will be pretty straight forward and is likely to be done quickly.

"We can do ...

There was a significant drop in the number of executions and death penalty sentences in 2014, a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center finds.

The group's year-end accounting finds that:

-- States conducted 35 executions in 2014 — the lowest since 1994.

-- And the justice system sentenced ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at the West in a year-end news conference today, blaming international sanctions and a steep plunge in oil prices for the precipitous drop in the value of the ruble.

Putin, speaking during a more than three-hour news conference attended by some 1,200 journalists, "promised ...

Just hours after the United States and Cuba announced they were moving toward normalizing relations, crowds gathered in Havana and Miami trying to come to grips with a historic shift.

NPR covered the reaction in those two places with two pieces on Morning Edition.

NPR's Greg Allen reported from Miami:

...

On Tuesday, President Obama picked up the phone and talked to Cuban President Raul Castro.

The call came a day before Obama publicly announced the decision to normalize diplomatic relations between the two foes. Just how surprising would a call of that sort be? Remember, it was just a ...

Updated at 3:42 p.m.

The Obama administration announced today that it would begin the process of re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.

It's a contentious issue, and reaction has been swift. Here's a roundup:

-- Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida with Cuban roots, issued a blistering statement. ...

For years, Cuban-Americans in Miami supported punitive policies against Cuba. But since Obama's election, that view has moderated.

With the movies Interstellar and The Theory of Everything out, black holes are in the news, exciting people's imagination.

Black holes bring up possibilities as crazy-sounding as time travel, tunnels through space called wormholes, even parallel universes. It's amazing that when I started my career in the 1980s, ...

The Church of England has named its first female bishop.

The Rev. Libby Lane, who has been a parish priest for 20 years, will be consecrated on Jan. 26, becoming the first woman to hold that position since the church was founded five centuries ago.

"This is unexpected and very ...

Updated at 2:39 p.m. ET

President Obama announced today the most significant change in U.S. policy toward Cuba in more than 50 years, paving the way for the normalization of relations and the opening of a U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Obama said "we will end an outdated approach ...

Pakistan is picking up the pieces today after an attack on a school by Taliban militants left 145 people dead.

It's a heart-wrenching story. We've collected the news in a different post. Here, we'll tell the story visually, but fair warning — the photographs are representative of the horrific ...

An orange tabby became something of a celebrity after sneaking into a seafood shop at Vladivostok airport. The cat polished off the entire seafood counter, and then dashed off.

The country was starting to take stock of a Taliban attack on a school that killed 145 people. Most of them were children.

Jon McAchran proposed to his girlfriend Ashley while skating on an ice rink beneath the Eiffel Tower. An AP photographer was taking pictures of tourists and captured Jon giving her the ring.