Scott Neuman

Black Friday is in full swing in U.S. stores and online, with shoppers across the country hoping to snatch up Christmas bargains.

The National Retail Federation forecasts a 4.1 percent increase in holiday sales over the same period last year, bringing the total to $616.9 billion. It would be the ...

A video of an Iranian woman defying the country's laws by dancing in a Tehran's subway train has gone viral on the Internet in recent days.

The unidentified woman, who also loses her hijab head covering during the dance, gyrates wildly to a song the British pop group Little Mix ...

It's a holiday weekend for many of us, but we've still got a fresh episode — and a sparkly new panelist in the fourth chair: Guy Raz, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. When we asked Guy about coming on the show, we learned that pop-culture-wise, he — like our ...

OPEC's decision not to cut production continues to reverberate through global oil markets, with the price of Europe's benchmark Brent crude falling to a four-year low today — bad news for petroleum exporters in the Middle East and Russia, but good news for nearly everyone else.

Brent crude oil ...

Thailand's military junta has apparently blocked domestic access to a scathing new report from U.S.-based Human Rights Watch which describes the country as having fallen into an "apparently bottomless pit" since Army Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power six months ago.

The Bangkok Post reports that clicking on the ...

The World Trade Organization has received the unanimous backing of its 160 member nations for a first-ever multilateral trade deal, an agreement that has been years in the making and that the organization claims could add $1 trillion annually to global commerce.

India had been a sticking point on the ...

Two teenagers who were found hanging from a tree outside a village in northern India in May in an apparent rape-and-murder may have taken their own lives, Indian officials now say.

The two girls, in their early teens, were first reported to be sisters and later cousins. They ...

Updated at 5:05 p.m. ET

At least five people are dead in the Afghan capital, Kabul, after after a suicide bombing attack on a British embassy vehicle. A guesthouse run by a foreign aid agency in the diplomatic area of the city also came under attack.

The BBC says ...

Update at 5:50 p.m. ET

OPEC oil ministers have agreed to keep production levels steady, virtually ensuring continued low prices at the gas pump and lower costs for jet fuel that could translate into cheaper air-ticket prices.

Reuters reports: "Benchmark Brent futures settled at $72.58 a barrel, down $5.17, after ...

The weather is still wreaking havoc for Americans still traveling today in planes, trains and automobiles, but for the most part, the situation has improved dramatically as people crisscross the country making their way to Thanksgiving gatherings with family and friends.

AAA estimates that 46 million Americans will travel ...

British mystery and crime novelist P.D. James, whose best-known works featured poet and Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh as a protagonist, has died at age 94, her publisher says.

Phyllis Dorothy James, a baroness and award-winning writer of such books as Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower and The ...

The following lists significant events leading up to Monday's announcement by a grand jury not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Aug. 9: Brown is shot by Wilson around noon local time on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Mo., just outside ...

The White House acknowledged today that it overreported the number of signups under the Affordable Care Act by nearly 400,000 people.

Some people with separate medical and dental plans were counted twice, leading the administration to state erroneously that more than 7 million had enrolled in coverage under ACA, instead ...

You can read here about President Obama's executive action on immigration. Or here, a story about his executive order.

Although commonly conflated in the media, the two terms aren't exactly interchangeable.

In short ...

A presidential executive order "is a directive issued to federal agencies, department heads, ...

An appeals court in Sweden has upheld a detention order in connection with sex assault accusations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since seeking refuge there more than two years ago.

The Svea Court of Appeals in Stockholm affirmed a lower ...

The good people of Buffalo are certainly no strangers to snow — but this week has put even the city's most seasoned winter veterans to the test.

The latest from the National Weather Service is that parts of western New York state could get another 3 feet of lake-effect ...

Glen A. Larson, who produced some of the most iconic television shows of the '70s and '80s – including the Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider, died Friday at age 77.

The Los Angeles Times quotes the producer's son, James, as saying he died at ...

Dutch investigators have begun clearing the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, four months after the Boeing 777 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 289 aboard in an incident that sparked international outrage against separatists blamed for the attack.

A recovery team working in the self-declared Donetsk People's ...

Nigeria's army says it has recaptured the northeastern town of Chibok from Boko Haram militants who claimed to have seized it the day before, six months after the rebels abducted hundreds of schoolgirls from the city.

Nigerian army spokesman Brig. Gen. Olajide Olaleye told the Associated Press that "Chibok is ...

Updated at 10 a.m. ET

An outspoken female Afghan lawmaker was wounded in a suicide bomb attack on her vehicle in the capital, Kabul, that killed three bystanders and hurt more than 10 others.

Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai, an ally of newly elected President Ashraf Ghani who has fought ...