Scott Neuman

Beijing is fuming over a provision slipped into a State Department budget to change the name of the street fronting the Chinese Embassy in Washington to "Liu Xiaobo Plaza," in honor of the jailed dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The amendment, proposed by Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, ...

This post updated at 4:00 p.m. ET.

Utah and Indiana are the latest states to see their bans on same-sex marriage struck down by a federal court, following rulings in both states Wednesday that found the prohibition unconstitutional.

In Utah, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld ...

Republican Sen. Thad Cochran held on to a slim margin of votes to defeat his Tea Party-backed challenger and win his party's nomination.

Cochran, who at 76 has served six terms in the Senate, made a last-ditch effort to attract traditionally Democratic voters into the Republican primary runoff to bolster ...

A Methodist minister in Pennsylvania, who was defrocked last year for presiding over his son's same-sex wedding, has been reinstated by the church.

A nine-person appeals panel of the United Methodist Church ordered Frank Schaefer's pastoral credentials restored, saying "the jury that convicted him last year erred when fashioning his ...

Star Wars creator George Lucas has chosen Chicago as the location of a planned museum of his art and movie memorabilia.

A spokesman for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum will be built in the Windy City.

The Associated Press says: "It was unclear for ...

U.S. law enforcement at all levels has undergone a dangerous militarization in recent years, with heavily armed SWAT teams being deployed to serve warrants and for drug searches, but rarely for the hostage situations they were designed for, the American Civil Liberties Union says in a new report.

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This post was updated at 5:50 p.m. ET.

Lyrics scribbled on hotel stationery circa 1965 that later became one of the most iconic rock songs of all time, Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," has fetched more than $2 million in an auction at Sotheby's.

What the auction house describes ...

Pilot misjudgment and an over-reliance on automated systems were the main causes of last year's crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco that killed three people, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday.

The Boeing 777 with 307 people aboard came in too low and too slow in its ...

The Associated Press today offers "a more sober picture" than it and other news organizations (including NPR) did earlier this month regarding reports of nearly 800 bodies of infants and young children at a former Catholic home for unwed mothers in Ireland.

The case of the "mother and ...

Days after Kiev announced a unilateral weeklong halt in the fighting, forces belonging to the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic" say they will honor it.

Over the summer, All Things Considered will explore what it means to be a man in America these days. Today's men have to reconcile old ideas about masculinity with new economic realities.

An all-male panel of Mormon leaders has found a prominent member of the group Ordain Women guilty of apostasy and ordered that she be excommunicated from the church.

On its website, Ordain Women quoted from an email that Kate Kelly received informing her of the decision by The Church ...

Singer and guitarist Sean Sullivan's style is derived from a broad cross-section of the musical landscape, including jazz, standards and blues. When he was a student at the New School, Sullivan formed a bond with jazz legend John Hendricks, who showed him the ropes of the New York jazz ...

Suthep Thaugsuban, who led months of anti-government rallies prior to last month's putsch, tells supporters that he's had the ear of junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha since 2010.

In a solidly conservative state, GOP Sen. Tom Coburn's retirement has set off a heated GOP primary between two rising Republican stars. Immigration is a key issue.

China state media have denounced an unofficial democracy referendum being held in Hong Kong that has drawn more than 700,000 voters so far, saying it is "tinged with mincing ludicrousness."

In an editorial published in The Global Times, a newspaper closely affiliated with the Chinese leadership, the referendum ...

U.S. authorities increased to 86 people the number of CDC workers potentially exposed to live anthrax at three laboratories in Atlanta, with at least 52 of them taking antibiotics as a precaution.

The number who may have been infected is an increase from the 75 workers that the Centers ...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen got a frosty reception on Capitol Hill today, with Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee accusing him of lying about thousands of lost emails sought in connection with the targeting of conservative groups.

About how the emails came to disappear, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan ...

New York City has reportedly agreed to pay $40 million to settle with five men who were falsely convicted of the 1989 rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park, a case that drew national attention.

The five black and Hispanic defendants, who became known as "The Central Park ...

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered a unilateral weeklong cease-fire against pro-Russia separatists in the country's east, in hopes the move will lead to a broader de-escalation of a conflict that has threatened to bisect the former Soviet satellite.

Poroshenko's move is a first step aimed at ending the conflict. ...