Eyder Peralta

Ashton Carter will be the country's 25th secretary of defense, after the Senate confirmed his nomination Thursday with an overwhelming vote of 93 to 5.

As we've reported, Carter, 60, had served as the No. 2 defense official under Leon Panetta and he was tapped by President Obama after ...

After a 17-year back story that involved politics and agency peacemaking, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, has now begun a million-mile journey that will take it to a place where the gravitational forces between the sun and Earth are balanced.

Riding a SpaceX Falcon rocket, DSCOVR took off ...

Sudanese army forces raped some 221 women and girls during a 36 hour period in Darfur last October, a new report from Human Rights Watch found.

"The deliberate attack on Tabit and the mass rape of the town's women and girls is a new low in the catalog of ...

Flanked by his vice president and the secretaries of state and defense, President Obama said he was asking Congress for authorization to launch a war against the so-called Islamic State.

Obama made clear that the draft authorization sent to the legislators does not signal a new ground war for the ...

Most of the American military personnel who were sent to help with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa will be back home by April 30, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

"Over the past several months, the Department of Defense delivered critical life-saving resources, constructed Ebola Treatment Units, trained hundreds of ...

NBC News has suspended Brian Williams, the anchor and managing editor for the network's nightly newscast, for six months without pay.

Williams had stepped down voluntarily, after Stars and Stripes questioned an incident he described on air.

While in the anchor chair, Williams said a helicopter he was on ...

Jon Stewart, the comedian who has become a highly influential figure in American politics, is leaving The Daily Show sometime this year.

Stewart let the news slip during this evening's taping of the show.

Fittingly, The A.V. Club, a real-news spin-off of The Onion, first reported the news and ...

Lawmakers in Puerto Rico have introduced a controversial measure that could punish the parents of overweight children.

As Fox Latino reports, the bill was introduced in Puerto Rico's senate and would have education officials identify obese children and then tell their parents what they can do to help them. ...

David Axelrod, the political strategist who helped President Obama triumph in 2008 and 2012, dropped a bombshell in his upcoming book: According to Time, which got its hands on an advance copy, Axelrod writes that President Obama has always supported gay marriage and he only opposed it for political ...

At least one other American is being held hostage in Syria, White House Press Secretary Joshua Earnest said during his daily briefing.

Earnest was asked if 26-year-old Kayla Mueller, who died during Jordanian airstrikes against the self-styled Islamic State in Syria, was the last American believed to be in ...

We are fans of robots on this blog. (And we're not just saying that because sometimes we're afraid that they'll get too smart for our own good.)

We're saying it because we saw a video today that left us wowed.

Boston Dynamics, the Google-owned defense contractor that ...

A bit of fine print included in Samsung's privacy policy is drawing comparisons to George Orwell's 1984.

All of Samsung's smart TVs — which take voice commands — come with a warning to consumers that essentially says: Your TV is listening and might be sending what you say to ...

Taking advantage of new rules issued by the Obama administration, Netflix says it has expanded its service to Cuba.

In a press release, the company said any Cuban with an Internet connection and access to international payment methods would have access to a "curated" selection of movies and TV ...

The University of California system, with an enrollment of about 233,000, will require incoming students to be vaccinated for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, meningococcus, tetanus and whooping cough beginning in 2017.

Currently, the university requires only that students be vaccinated against hepatitis B.

In a statement, the university said ...

A tribunal in London has ruled that the United Kingdom's mass surveillance of cellphone and online communications violated human rights.

NPR's Ari Shapiro reports that the government had already tweaked the program in response to concerns.

Ari filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The Investigatory Powers Tribunal was ...

The Army has decided to award the victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting with a Purple Heart, Texas Rep. John Carter said in a statement.

The issue has always been contentious, because the Army has always maintained the incident, in which Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened ...

A United Nations committee that looks at the human rights of children around the world issued a startling report about how the Sunni extremist group that goes by Islamic State is treating children in Iraq.

In a report released on Wednesday, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child ...

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is asking a government watchdog agency to look into the purchase of homes by himself, his wife, and his finance minister from contractors who were then awarded lucrative construction projects by the government.

Critics have charged that the Peña Nieto government faced conflicts of interest ...

Ben Carson, a world-renowned neurosurgeon and conservative who is considering a run for president, was unequivocal when it came to the issue of vaccines: It's a public safety issue and Americans should be required to vaccinate their children.

"When you have diseases that have demonstrably been shown to be curtailed ...

Alberto Nisman, the dead Argentine prosecutor who was investigating what he said was the cover-up of a deadly bombing at a Jewish center 20 years ago, had drafted an arrest warrant for the country's president, Cristina Fernandez.

The Argentine paper El Clarín made the bombshell allegation on Sunday, saying investigators ...