Scott Neuman

Updated at 4:45 p.m. ET

A video has emerged that purports to show militants of the self-declared Islamic State beheading 21 Egyptian Christians kidnapped last week in Libya.

Reuters reports: "In the video, militants in black marched the captives, dressed in orange jump suits, to a beach. They were forced ...

Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET

The Federal Aviation Administration has released long-awaited draft rules on the operation of pilotless drones, opening the nation's airspace to the commercial possibilities of the burgeoning technology, but not without restrictions.

In short, the proposed rules that have been a decade in the making would ...

House Speaker John Boehner says he's prepared to let the Department of Homeland Security run out of money to push the Republican majority's efforts to reverse President Obama's immigration initiative.

"Senate Democrats are the ones standing in the way. They're the ones jeopardizing funding," Boehner told Fox News ...

The fourth winter storm in the Northeast this year was adding to the 6 feet of snow already on the ground in some areas, bringing with it hurricane-force winds and near-white-out conditions.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker said at a news conference early today that snowfalls had already "significantly exceeded" ...

The cease-fire in eastern Ukraine appears to be largely holding — at least for the moment, defying skepticism that the second truce in six-months between government forces and Russian-backed separatists might immediately collapse.

The cease-fire went into effect at midnight Sunday (Saturday at 5 p.m. ET).

The Washington ...

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which keeps a 24/7 vigil on the sun, just released this spectacular video composite to mark five years since the spacecraft was launched.

As Astronomer Phil Plait writes at Slate: "There's so much to take in there. Rolling sunspots, eruptive ...

Updated at 4 p.m. ET

As many as 40 shots were fired at the window of a cafe in Copenhagen where Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has been threatened over his 2007 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, was attending a free-speech meeting.

TV2 and the Danish Ritzau news ...

Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET

Police in Canada say they've foiled a Valentine's Day plot to carry out a mass shooting at a mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dan Karpenchuk, reporting from Toronto for NPR, reports that one person was found dead and three others taken into custody on Friday ...

A winter storm that has already dumped up to 8 inches of snow in parts of Michigan is set to bring blizzard conditions to much of the Northeast this weekend.

According to The Weather Channel, brutal winds, bitterly cold temperatures and lots of snow along the Eastern Seaboard from ...

Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists traded artillery fire today, each side hoping to secure territory ahead of a cease-fire set to go into effect hours from now.

As we reported earlier this week, the truce was forged during a meeting in Minsk, Belarus, the second such deal in six ...

President Obama today described as "brutal and outrageous" the murders of three young Muslims who were gunned down in North Carolina earlier this week, saying no one in the U.S. should be targeted for their religion.

The remarks came a day after the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division ...

Utah's GOP-controlled House of Representatives narrowly approved a proposal to bring back the state's use of firing squads for executions, but the measure faces an uncertain reception in the Senate.

The 39-34 vote on Friday came as missing lawmakers were rounded up to break a deadlock. The firing squad was ...

The latest crop of 300 new North Korean slogans to mark North Korea's 70th anniversary has just been released. Stand back as they "cascade down and their sweet aroma [fills] the air":

-- Thoroughly get rid of abuse of authority and bureaucratism!

-- Let us raise a strong wind of ...

What happens when today's high-tech data storage systems become tomorrow's floppy discs?

Google Vice President Vint Cerf is concerned about the answer and its implications for preserving history. Speaking at an annual conference of top American scientists, Cerf described such a loss of important information as a possible "digital Dark ...

Suspected Boko Haram militants have conducted their first-ever raid outside the extremist group's stronghold in northeast Nigeria, attacking a village just across the border in neighboring Chad.

Reuters says the assault took place about 12 miles east of the border at the village of Ngouboua inside Chad, which like ...

Something's definitely going on at NASA. We're thinking someone in the public relations department is trying to blow the dust off the space agency's ever-serious image.

First there was the photo below, deemed by almost anyone with a pulse as unquestionably the best astronaut portrait ever:

And now, the

In perhaps a further sign of the decline of the American shopping mall, the lights suddenly flickered out today in Rotterdam Mall in upstate New York after the electric utility cut power for non-payment.

In a statement issued by National Grid, the utility said it "has been working with the ...

Scientists are warning that construction of a $50-billion interoceanic shipping canal through Nicaragua could spell an environmental disaster, threatening nearly two-dozen endangered species and jeopardizing Central America's largest source of drinking water.

An article published in the latest issue of Scientific American reports that the Hong Kong-backed Nicaraguan Grand ...

Pope Francis says that couples who opt not to have children are being "selfish" as he spoke of a "greedy generation" that's choosing not to procreate. The pontiff's remarks come just weeks after he seemed to send a contradictory message, telling Catholics that they don't need to breed "like ...

Days after some 300 would-be migrants from North African drowned in the Mediterranean as they were trying to reach Italy, the United Nations is calling on the European Union to establish a broader search-and-rescue effort to avoid future tragedies.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres reiterated a call ...