L. Carol Ritchie

The Kansas City Royals fought off the Toronto Blue Jays and two Jose Bautista home runs to win Game 6 of the American League Championship Series Friday and advance to the World Series — their second trip to the series in two years.

The Royals will host the New York ...

The New York Mets are headed to the World Series for the first time since 2000. Fired by a record-breaking home-run drive by Daniel Murphy, the Mets completed a four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs for the National League Championship.

Wednesday's 8-3 loss for the Cubs crushed the sell-out crowd ...

NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

This week, we bring you three ...

Updated at 2:35 p.m. ET

German police say that about 450 migrants from Hungary have arrived at a train station in Munich after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would not limit the number of asylum seekers allowed in.

Thousands more arrived in Austria, many en route to Germany, ...

Updated at 5:30 a.m. ET

More than 1,000 weary Syrian refugees were greeted with food and applause at the Austrian border after arriving by busloads from a long, chaotic journey through Hungary.

Some of the refugees had walked westward for hours on Friday after officials refused to let them board ...

Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET

Chinese police are clearing everyone within two miles of a fire in the port city of Tianjin over fears of chemical poisoning, days after a massive explosion that authorities now say has killed at least 104 people.

Police confirmed that highly toxic sodium cyanide was ...

Updated at 9:40 a.m. ET

Cleveland police in riot gear made a number of arrests Saturday night, as protesters poured into the streets, angry over the acquittal of a patrolman charged in the shooting deaths of two unarmed suspects.

Reuters says a total of 71 arrests were made.

Demonstrators chanting ...

Updated at 2:25 p.m. ET

Ireland has become the first-ever country to approve same-sex marriage by referendum, voting overwhelmingly to approve it despite opposition from clergy in the heavily Catholic nation, according to official results announced today.

Reuters says in Friday's vote "more than 60 percent of eligible voters cast ...

The Senate worked late into the night Friday and early Saturday, but still failed to agree on extending government surveillance programs under the USA Patriot Act before the Memorial Day holiday.

Lawmakers blocked votes on both a House-passed bill and a short-term extension of the Patriot Act provisions that allow ...

The bodies of all eight soldiers who were on a U.S. Marine helicopter when it crashed on an earthquake relief mission in Nepal have been recovered, Nepalese government and military sources said.

The bodies of six U.S. Marines and two Nepalese soldiers were recovered near the crash site in remote ...

The wait wasn't long. Just hours after she checked into the hospital in early labor, the Duchess of Cambridge delivered a baby, Kensington Palace announced Saturday.

The baby weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and both mother and child are doing well, the palace added in by Twitter.

The baby is ...

Fans of the British royals are beside themselves with excitement.

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, has checked into St. Mary's Hospital in London and is in the early stage of labor, the BBC is reporting.

This baby will be fourth in line to the throne, behind grandfather Prince ...

Updated at 10:40 p.m. ET

A magnitude-6.7 aftershock rumbled Kathmandu and sent people running for open ground Sunday morning, a day after a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake ravaged Nepal and the region. The death toll from the disaster topped 3,000, a police official told Reuters.

NPR's Julie McCarthy, reporting from ...

Why would a couple of comedians build a museum in their Brooklyn apartment hallway dedicated to figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan?

Viviana Olen and Matt Harkins were only 6 and 7 in 1994, when Harding's ex-husband and his friend plotted to wallop Kerrigan on the knee with a ...

Wisconsin defeated Kentucky 71-64 in Saturday's nail-biter second Final Four game Saturday, breaking the Wildcats' winning streak; the Badgers meet Duke to play for the men's college basketball title.

The faceoff between Kentucky and Wisconsin, both top-seeded teams, was highly anticipated. On the line for the undefeated Wildcats: their shot ...

Half of the men's college basketball Final Four is set. Kentucky, still undefeated, will take on Wisconsin next Saturday night in Indianapolis.

Kentucky tacked on win number 38 in a game against Notre Dame, breaking a tie in the final 6 seconds with a 68-66 victory.

The game was tight ...

We bring you this story in case you want to get baking.

That's because Saturday is Pi Day — but it's not just any pi day.

It's March 14* of the year '15, or 3-14-15 — the first five digits of the number pi. It's a confluence that won't happen ...

Updated at 2:22 p.m. ET

Vanuatu's president appealed to the international community for help as his country was battered by Cyclone Pam, which slammed the tiny South Pacific archipelago early Saturday with 168 mph winds.

"I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy," President Baldwin ...

The family of the Arizona woman who Islamic militants claim was killed in a Jordanian airstrike is hoping she is still alive.

Kayla Jean Mueller's parents are not speaking to reporters, but issued a statement through a family representative late Friday asking for privacy and requesting that the so-called Islamic ...

Updated at 3:00 p.m. ET

Dressed in black, world leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, stood at the front of a unity rally in Paris to show solidarity for the victims of this week's deadly attacks by ...