Mark Memmott

Matthew Cordle, whose "I killed a man" confession on YouTube went viral in September, has been sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for driving drunk and causing an accident that killed a 61-year-old man in Ohio on June 22.

Cordle, 22, faced a maximum sentence ...

Papers filed by prosecutors in Boston this week confirm that a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev told investigators that Tsarnaev took part in a 2011 triple murder in Massachusetts.

Tsarnaev had been linked to the murders before. We wrote on May 23 that:

Ibragim ...

It's got a long way to go before ever becoming the next Gangnam Style YouTube sensation, but the song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" is doing pretty well — 150 million views and counting as of Wednesday morning.

If you haven't yet heard and

The "bishop of bling" has been suspended by Pope Francis while the Roman Catholic Church investigates allegations of overspending on renovations at the German cleric's residence and offices.

Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst has been removed from his position "for the time being," writes Germany's Deutsche Welle. ...

"A high-risk gamble by firefighters" has paid off in Australia, says The Sydney Morning Herald.

"But authorities warn that the situation remains dangerous and dynamic," writes Australian Broadcasting, as crews race to protect people and homes from the dozens of wildfires burning across areas surrounding Sydney.

...

A top White House national security aide who was secretly going on Twitter to insult other Obama administration officials and politicians from both major parties, and to question the policies he had been helping develop, is apologizing.

Jofi Joseph is also out of a job.

The Daily Beast

Wildfires are burning to the north, south and west of Sydney, Australia, and smoke "has been rolling in for days," correspondent Stuart Cohen said Tuesday on Morning Edition.

While the fires are mostly in sparsely populated areas, Sydney is blanketed — "you can smell smoke inside buildings" and ...

The nation's jobless rate ticked down to 7.2 percent in September from 7.3 percent in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday.

But just 148,000 were added to public and private payrolls. That's below the 180,000 economists expected. It's yet another sign that job growth ...

Two reports released on the eve of a White House visit by Pakistan's prime minister allege that the U.S. has "violated international law with top-secret targeted-killing operations that claimed dozens of civilian lives in Yemen and Pakistan," as McClatchy Newspapers writes.

In one of the reports,

Two and a half weeks late because of the partial government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report on job growth and unemployment in September is due at 8:30 a.m. ET.

As NPR's Chris Arnold said on Morning Edition, economists expect to hear that ...

Commuters in the San Francisco area should see things start returning to normal Tuesday thanks to an overnight agreement that has ended a strike by workers at the area's rapid transit system known as BART.

The walkout began Friday. Around 10:30 p.m. local time Monday (1:30 a.m. ET Tuesday), BART ...

One of Major League Baseball's most-respected and most-successful managers announced Monday that he's stepping down.

Detroit Tigers skipper Jim Leyland told reporters: "I'm going to be 69 years old [on Dec. 15]. I'm not ashamed of that. I'm proud of it. The fuel's getting a little ...

"Bring-your-own-bottle has been part of the fabric of Chicago neighborhoods for decades, allowing folks to bring their own liquor to businesses that can't or won't go through the lengthy, expensive and uncertain process of applying for a license to sell it," as the Chicago Tribune says.

From "hundreds ...

There were 1.9 percent fewer existing homes sold in September than in August, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

But the slip came after two months when sales were touching four-year highs and as mortgage rates were edging up. So there's a case to be made that ...

In what would be the largest such settlement in U.S. history, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reportedly reached a tentative deal with the Justice Department that would see the bank pay $13 billion to settle civil charges related to wrongdoing by some of its units just before and during the ...

Mike Spencer Bown's latest Facebook post has him in Cork, Ireland, which means he isn't quite finished wandering the world.

But after what the Toronto Sun explains has been 23 years, the Canadian-born Bown has now visited more than 190 nations and has a claim to ...

(Updated 8:10 p.m. ET)

The Associated Press reports that two convicted murderers from Florida who used phony documents to escape prison were arrested Saturday night without incident at a motel in Panama City, Fla.

According to the AP:

"Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker, both 34, were taken ...

With lawmakers in Washington at loggerheads over the same issues they've been arguing about for more than five years, about 800,000 federal workers are being told to stay home. Essential services will continue.

Experimental physicist Carl Haber is among 24 people receiving $625,000 awards for their work. He heard on NPR that historic recordings were in danger of being lost. Using techniques ...

The coffee giant has been wrongly portrayed, it says, as being a champion of "open carry" laws. Now it's asking customers not to bring weapons to its shops.