Eyder Peralta

Some terrific news today: Malala Yousafzai's story has come full circle. If you remember, the Pakistani teenager was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman because she was in favor of girls receiving an education.

After her shooting, a moribund Malala was flown to England to recover and ...

Aaron Jackson took inspiration from a 9-year-old kid who stood up to Westboro Baptist Church protesters.

As Mark wrote last year, Josef Miles stood in front of protesters carrying signs that read "God Hates [Gays]" with his own sign that read "God Hates No One."

Today, Jackson is following ...

It's déjà vu for the NCAA women's basketball tournament. Exactly like last year, Baylor, Connecticut, Notre Dame and Stanford were seeded No. 1, when the women's bracket was announced Monday night.

The AP reports:

"Unlike the men's side, where it was a topsy-turvy season with major upsets seemingly ...

In their first meeting since Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner asked the pontiff to "mediate" in the dispute over the Falkland Islands.

"This is an important moment for us," Kirchner said, during a press conference following the lunch meeting. "I asked him ...

We promise, we'll get back to real news in a little bit. But first: After weeks of rumors, the sports icons Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn have made it official: They are dating.

"I guess it wasn't a well-kept secret but yes, I am dating Tiger Woods," Vonn, the Olympic ...

The first person to challenge a file-sharing lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America has reached the end of the line.

Without comment, the Supreme Court refused to hear Jammie Thomas-Rasset's appeal, which means the $222,000 verdict against her stands.

Thomas-Rasset was convicted of sharing 24 songs ...

President Obama announced today he is nominating Thomas Perez, currently in charge of civil rights at the Justice Department, to be the country's next Labor secretary.

Introducing him in the East Room of the White House, Obama said Perez "knows what it's like to climb the ladder of opportunity," and ...

A week after the Arkansas legislature passed the strictest measure in the country on abortion, North Dakota's legislature passed a bill that goes further and would ban abortions as soon as a heartbeat is detected.

Arkansas' bill banned abortions after 12 weeks; North Dakota's could ban them as early ...

A federal judge in California ruled today that the FBI cannot secretly demand data from banks and phone companies in national security cases. The judge said orders that keep those requests secret violate the First Amendment.

NPR's Carrie Johnson filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The demands known ...

We've explained it many times: Physicists are irked when we in the media call the Higgs Boson, "The God Particle."

The Higgs is important because the elusive subatomic particle is believed to give everything its mass. But as Marcelo Gleiser — of NPR's 13.7 — explained, the ...

With a vote today in the House of Delegates, Maryland's General Assembly has approved a bill that abolishes the death penalty in the state.

If signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley, which is expected, Maryland will become the 18th state to end capital punishment.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Update at 3:09 p.m. ET. 14 Additional Interceptors:

The United States will deploy 14 additional ground-based missile interceptors (GBIs) to combat the nuclear attack threats from North Korea and Iran, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said today during a press briefing.

"The United States stands firm against aggression," Hagel said.

Nearly ten years since the United States invaded Iraq, researchers at Brown University are assessing the cost of the war.

The report, from Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies, is comprehensive, taking a look at the direct and indirect costs of war, but from the university's press release, ...

Casey Fury, the civilian employee who set fire to the USS Miami nuclear-powered attack submarine in Maine was sentenced to 17 years in prison, today.

Fury pleaded guilty to two counts of arson, one for the Miami fire, the other for a fire he set weeks later.

Sea Coast ...

Backpedaling, the Obama administration is now admitting that it released more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants from immigration jails because of budget contraints prompted by the sequester.

Earlier, the Associated Press ran a story citing the number, but officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcements said the number was actually in the ...

The Reuters journalist Matthew Keys — whom many know by his Twitter handle @TheMatthewKeys — was indicted today for allegedly "conspiring with members of the hacker group 'Anonymous' to hack into and alter a Tribune Company website."

Keys, 26, is a deputy social media editor at the wire service ...

Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

The legislation is written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and as expected, the bill was sent to the full senate with a strictly party-line vote.

But before the vote, Feinstein had ...

As the sun rose over Latin America this morning, we're getting a clearer picture of how Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — was viewed in his home of Argentina and what the first pope from the New World could mean for the continent.

We've read through dozens ...

Pope Francis goes into history as the first pontiff from the New World.

For Latin America in particular, this is a momentous occasion: It is home to 483 million Catholics, or a little more than 40 percent of the global population.

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of ...

A new pope has been selected. As is customary, the first sign that the 115 cardinals had to come to agreement, was that white smoke emerged from a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

Here's video of the moment the smoke came up:

Here's a bit of ...