Scott Neuman

At least four leaders of the self-declared Islamic State, including Abu Sayyaf, were among 32 members of the extremist group killed in airstrikes and a U.S. Special Forces raid inside Syria, according to U.K.-based monitors.

On Saturday, the U.S. acknowledged killing Abu Sayyaf, a senior commander, and about ...

China's foreign minister today reasserted Beijing's claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, dismissing a push by his counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, to pursue a diplomatic solution to tensions.

NPR's Anthony Kuhn, reporting from Beijing, says Kerry called for China to halt the building of military ...

NPR's Julie McCarthy, reporting from New Delhi, says the remains of all eight people aboard a U.S. Marine helicopter that went down in Nepal east of the capital, Kathmandu, have been recovered.

"Nepali special forces along with U.S. Marines and Air Force personnel were inserted into the crash site early ...

A Russian Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican telecommunications satellite experienced a malfunction minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and subsequently burned up over eastern Siberia, the Russian space agency says.

According to Russian news agencies, the rocket crashed about eight minutes after launch in the sparsely ...

Updated at 2:55 p.m. ET

The Federal Railroad Administration on Saturday issued a directive to Amtrak aimed at improving safety in the wake of the derailment of a passenger train in Philadelphia this week that killed eight people and injured more than 200.

"We are continuing to work with the ...

Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET

A senior leader of the self-declared Islamic State has been killed by U.S. special forces during a raid against the terrorist network in Syria, the National Security Council says.

"Last night, at the President's direction, U.S. personnel based out of Iraq conducted an operation in ...

Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death on charges of breaking out of prison during the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak.

The sentence, handed down by an Egyptian court today, was broadcast on state television and comes as Morsi is already serving a ...

In 2002, NASA released dramatic images that showed a portion of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf collapse and disappear. Now, the space agency says what's left of the massive feature will be gone before the end of the decade.

As NPR's Christopher Joyce reported in March, climate change has ...

The spectacle of thousands of desperate Rohingya Muslim "boat people" being denied landfall in Southeast Asia has laid bare the region's religious and ethnic prejudices as well as its fears of being swamped by an influx of migrants.

An estimated 6,000 or more such migrants are stranded at sea ...

Three leaders of a failed coup in Burundi have been arrested, but the public face of the putsch is reportedly still on the run as President Pierre Nkurunziza seeks to reassert his authority over his fractured central African country.

Nkurunziza, who was in neighboring Tanzania when Gen. Godefroid Niyombare ...

California's state Senate has passed a bill to eliminate "personal belief exemptions" that currently allow parents to opt out of having their school-age children vaccinated.

SB 277, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Richard Pan of Sacramento and Ben Allen of Santa Monica, passed 25 to 10 and now advances to ...

Greece has backed off a threat to sue the United Kingdom for the return of the Elgin Marbles, a set of sculptures dating to 400 B.C. that were removed from the Parthenon 200 years ago and have been in the British Museum ever since.

Greece's Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis said ...

Scientists think they may finally be resolving a decades-old cold case as to what is killing galaxies: They're being strangled.

Astronomers have long known that galaxies fall into two main categories — those that spawn new stars (like our own Milky Way) and those that don't.

One hypothesis is ...

A day after a general in Burundi announced a coup, the country's army chief says the putsch failed amid a split in the military, as sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard in the capital of the central African nation.

On Wednesday, The Two-Way's Eyder Peralta reported that Maj. ...

Boats carrying hundreds of refugees, mainly from Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, have been rescued off Indonesia's Aceh province. Many require medical help, The Associated Press reports.

"We received a report from fishermen this morning that there were boat people stranded," Aceh provincial rescue chief Budiawan told Agence France-Presse news ...

Cuban leader Raul Castro, on a visit to the Vatican, where he thanked the pope for helping broker a thaw in relations between Havana and Washington, said he was so impressed with the pontiff that he might return to Catholicism, the faith he grew up in.

"I will resume ...

Yemen's Houthi rebels have agreed to a five-day cease-fire proposed by Saudi Arabia to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

According to The Guardian, the Shia Houthi rebels issued a statement early on Sunday agreeing to "cooperate with the ceasefire to help people suffering from the severe fuel and ...

A series of tornadoes in North Texas over the weekend have left at least one person dead and others missing. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, a weakening Tropical Storm Ana made landfall early this morning near Myrtle Beach, S.C.

One of the tornadoes that hit Saturday destroyed homes in a ...

Updated at 9 a.m. EDT

Three suspects are in custody following the fatal shooting of two police officers in Hattiesburg, Miss., on Saturday, NPR's Russell Lewis reports.

According to The Associated Press: "Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said a Hattiesburg officer had stopped a ...

The Planetary Society is preparing to launch a tiny satellite into orbit later this month as the first phase in testing a solar sail as a means of spacecraft propulsion — an idea that has been kicking around in the science (and science-fiction) literature for at least a century.

The ...