Scott Neuman

Fresh from relinquishing his House majority leader position in the wake of a stinging primary defeat, Rep. Eric Cantor now says he will give up his Virginia congressional seat months before his term expires, to make room for his replacement.

"[It] is with tremendous gratitude and a heavy heart that ...

The nation's unemployment rate moved up a bit in the month of July, to 6.2 percent, as more Americans who'd been sitting on the sidelines started looking for work, according to the latest monthly report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 209,000 jobs, a ...

Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 317 points today, closing at 16,563, wiping out the index's gains for the month of July.

The Nasdaq fell 93 points, closing at 4,369. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 2 percent to 1,930.

It ...

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET.

The Pentagon has confirmed that Israel was given permission last week to dip into a little-known U.S. munitions stockpile to draw tank shells and illumination rounds for its ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

NPR's Tom Bowman reports that the billion-dollar U.S. "emergency" stockpile, based ...

Updated at 8:50 p.m. ET.

House GOP leaders pulled the plug on a $659 million bill to deal with the influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. from Central America.

The vote on the legislation had been scheduled for this afternoon on the final day before ...

Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET.

Kentucky has approved $18 million in new tax breaks for a controversial Christian theme park that is to feature a 510-foot-long replica of Noah's Ark.

Maryanne Zeleznik of member station WVXU in Cincinnati reports that the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Board voted unanimously on ...

What shape is the moon? When it's full, we'd all agree that it looks perfectly round. But careful measurements by a team of scientists have shown that's not the case.

Like many an Earth-bound observer, it turns out that our nearest neighbor in space is hiding a slight bulge around ...

Don't get too annoyed with this final round. Like "annoyed," every answer contains the consecutive letters "A-N-N" somewhere within it. This game separates the canniest from the wannabes.

Heard in Episode 323: Smitten With The Mitten State

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

After 30 hours, work crews have finally succeeded in shutting off the last of the water that gushed from a broken water main near the University of California, Los Angeles campus.

There was so much water that police and fire teams had to rescue people from underground parking garages that ...

I spent months working with the U.S. Air Force to get access to a remote underground nuclear bunker in Nebraska for our radio series on America's missile forces. There was only one question left to answer before I left.

What did I want for lunch?

The menu provided by ...

Vincenzo Nibali has officially won this year's Tour de France, becoming the first Italian cyclist to do so since 1998 with a ride past fans lining Paris' Champs-Elysees.

As we reported on Saturday, Nibali, riding for Astana Pro Team, had worn the yellow jersey through most of the three-week competition ...

Update at 4:05 p.m. ET.

The U.S. State Department has released satellite images it says back up the assertion by Washington and Kiev that Russian forces are firing artillery into eastern Ukraine in support of separatists.

In a four-page document titled Evidence of Russian Shelling into Ukraine, released Sunday, ...

A federal judge has overturned a District of Columbia ban on carrying handguns in public, concluding that the Second Amendment protects a person's right to firearms outside the home.

In a 19-page ruling that was written on Thursday, but only released late Saturday, Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. ordered the ...

Now that Weird Al week is long past, we can mull over the merits — and demerits — of Al Yankovic's new mishmash of novelty music: Mandatory Fun.

For word nerds, there is no question that Word Crimes, a paean to punctuation and grammar sung ...

The Philippines on Sunday welcomed its 100-millionth citizen — a baby girl named Chonalyn who was born at a hospital in the capital, Manila.

Juan Antonio Perez III, executive director of the Commission on Population, announced the official milestone after the birth at Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, which has one ...

A story that ran last Sunday on All Things Considered about a sixth-grader's science fair project has elicited not just criticism but controversy.

Since the student's project built on the work of scientists, she's been accused this week of being a "plagiarist" who "ripped off" earlier ...

Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET.

Clashes between renegade Libyan army troops and Islamist-led militias have killed at least 38 people, including civilians, in and around the eastern city of Benghazi. The fighting comes a day after the U.S. temporarily shuttered its embassy in Tripoli and evacuated diplomatic personnel to ...

Updated at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Dutch experts charged with investigating the downing of a jetliner over eastern Ukraine have cancelled plans to reach the wreckage site amid fighting in the area between government forces and rebels.

NPR's Corey Flintoff reports from Donetsk, that as the fighting continues, "Ukrainian government troops ...

Update at 10:05 p.m. ET:

The U.N. Security Council has agreed on a statement calling for "an immediate and unconditional humanitarian cease-fire" in Gaza, reports the Associated Press.

A meeting is scheduled at midnight to adopt it. The AP has more:

The presidential statement, obtained by The Associated Press, ...

Ukrainian forces were reportedly advancing on rebel positions near the key eastern town of Donetsk on Saturday, as they try to retake the separatist stronghold.

Donetsk is the region where Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down on July 17, killing nearly 300 people. Pro-Russian rebels have been blamed for downing ...