Eyder Peralta

On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing looking into an Inspector General's report that found lavish spending on conferences by the IRS.

As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked the question on a lot of people's minds when they watched a pair of ...

After a 30-year marriage, Vladimir Putin announced on state television that he was divorcing his wife, Lyudmila.

Russia Today reports Putin and Lyudmila attended the Esmeralda ballet at the Grand Kremlin Palace, where they broke the news.

According to Russia Today, the country's official English-language news outlet, Putin said ...

Back in October of 2011, then-Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote a letter to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) concerning section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

As NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reported earlier today, the senators had expressed concern about a "secret interpretation of ...

Working jointly with the FBI, Microsoft says it has disrupted a botnet responsible for stealing more than $500 million from bank accounts worldwide.

In a blog post published late last night, Microsoft said this was its "most agressive botnet operation to date" and the "first time that law enforcement ...

Andrea, the first named storm of the Atlantic Hurricane season, strengthened overnight and is forecast to make landfall along Florida's Big Bend area later today.

The National Hurricane Center has issued tropical storm warnings for a wide swath of the western coast of Florida. The system is forecast to move ...

For the next 12 weeks, a military judge in Fort Meade, Md. will consider the case of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. It's bound to be a complicated, long-running and often secretive process that kicked off on Monday.

Before we get too far into the court-martial, we wanted to ...

The United States soldier charged with the murder of 16 Afghan villagers entered a guilty plea on Wednesday during a court hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales pleaded guilty to 16 counts of premeditated murder, The Seattle Times reports, but he pleaded not ...

Tuesday was a funny day in the Israeli Knesset. According to Haaretz, Education Minister Shai Piron stood before the parliament set to deliver a speech about prison contraband.

Piron then explained the penalties for the "penetration of" dangerous objects into prison cells. He lost his composure and just could ...

The Syrian government claimed an important victory today, wresting control of Qusair, a key city near the Lebanese border, from rebel fighters.

CNN reports:

"State-run TV credited an offensive 'that led to the annihilation of a number of terrorists,' the government's term for rebels.

" 'Our heroic armed ...

Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief executive and former top editor at the tabloid News of the World, pleaded not guilty to five charges related to the phone hacking scandal that has rocked England.

The Guardian reports that Brooks made an appearance on Wednesday at the Southwark crown ...

Trying to placate protesters, Turkey's deputy prime minister issued an apology today.

"The use of excessive force shown against the people who initially started this protest with the motive of protecting the environment was wrong," Bulent Arinc said in a press conference. "And it was unfair. So I apologize to ...

The judge presiding over the case of James Holmes, who is accused of a mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater, has accepted a not guilty plea by reason of insanity.

This sets the table for a potentially lengthy mental examination of Holmes. The AP reports:

"The next ...

Jill Kelley, the Florida socialite whose complaints to the FBI sparked the discovery of an extramarital affair that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government.

In the lawsuit, Kelley and her husband, Scott, are seeking unspecified damages and an apology ...

After months of wrangling with government agencies over Freedom of Information Act requests, The Associated Press has an interesting bit of news today: Some of Obama's most important appointees use non-public email addresses to conduct official business.

The AP calls those email addresses "secret," and they are different from ...

After a brief 15-minute hearing today in a courthouse in Pretoria, South Africa, a magistrate agreed to postpone the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius until August.

Pistorius, if you remember, is the so-called blade runner who made history during the London Olympics. He became the first double-amputee to compete in ...

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, took a heavy shot at White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today on CNN.

Issa said Carney was a "paid liar." He said Carney was "making things up" when he said the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups was undertaken by "rogue" local ...

Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court ruled Sunday that the country's upper house of parliament — the so-called Shura council — was illegally elected.

As CBS News reports, that is a serious blow to President Mohammed Morsi's Freedom and Justice party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It will essentially cast ...

Tim Samaras had one passion in life: Tornadoes. He told The Weather Channel that when he was kid, his mother sat him down in front of The Wizard of Oz; he was immediately entranced by the violent, dark twister that tore through the landscape.

Samaras went on to become ...

This morning central Istanbul was quiet. It was still reeling from two days of anti-government rallies that led to violent confrontations with police. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Turkey that some 900 people were arrested across the country and several hundred were wounded.

Peter said officials "are beginning to ask ...

Wildfires in California and New Mexico forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes Saturday evening.

The Los Angeles Times has a riveting account of how the Powerhouse fire near a hydroelectric plant in Santa Clarita burned through a few homes.

Patty Robitaille, 61, was forced to leave her home. She ...