Scott Neuman

Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency, tells NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that the government's acquisition of phone records and surveillance of Internet activity is lawful and justified by the changing nature of the war on terrorism.

Hayden, who served as NSA chief from 1999-2005 and ...

Investigators were reportedly looking into family connections in their search for a motive in Friday's shooting rampage in Santa Monica, Calif., that left six people dead, including the gunman and a woman who died Sunday from injuries sustained in the assault.

The Associated Press, quoting unnamed officials close to the ...

For the first time in two years, delegations from North and South Korea sat down for talks aimed at ratcheting down escalating tensions on the peninsula.

The meeting took place at the symbolically significant border village of Panmunjom, where nearly 60 years ago the two sides signed an armistice ending ...

A two-day summit between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is being described as a "unique, positive and constructive" meeting that reportedly produced broad agreement on handling North Korea and put the thorny issue of cybersecurity at the forefront.

It was hoped the summit, which wrapped up ...

In the past several days, there's been a steady flow of leaks about the National Security Agency and its secret surveillance activities, including the gathering of metadata on domestic and foreign telephone calls and the existence of PRISM, described in media reports as a top-secret data-mining program.

New developments are ...

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Saturday said media reporting this week about government surveillance activities amounted to "reckless disclosures" that could hand terrorists a playbook to foil detection.

He said the surveillance measures are legal and said the reporting lacked full context:

"In particular, the surveillance activities published ...

A "walk-through" enclosure at the London Zoo apparently allows visitors to get a little too close to resident squirrel monkeys and several people have the bite marks to prove it, according to details of a report published in a U.K. newspaper.

The Camden New Journal says 15 people suffered ...

Serena Williams has won her 16^th Grand Slam title and her first French Open championship in more than a decade.

Williams beat Maria Sharapova at Roland Garros on Saturday, 6-4, 6-4.

The Daily Mail writes:

"Williams theatrically seized the title from Sharapova with her 10th ace. She threw ...

Police in China said Saturday that a suicidal man was responsible for a fire that swept through a commuter bus in the country's eastern coastal city of Xiamen, killing 47 people including the arsonist and injuring dozens more.

Authorities say 59-year-old Chen Shuizong left a suicide note at his home ...

Pakistan's new government wasted no time on Saturday in lodging a formal diplomatic complaint with Washington over a U.S. drone strike that reportedly killed seven militants near the Afghan border.

U.S. Charges D'Affaires Richard Hoagland was summoned to Pakistan's Foreign Office to receive the government's official protest. U.S. Ambassador Richard ...

Newark Mayor Cory Booker announced Saturday he would run to finish the late Frank Lautenberg's term in the U.S. Senate.

Booker, a 44-year-old Democrat, has served as mayor since 2006 and is Newark's third black mayor. He is hoping to claim Lautenberg's seat, which has been filled by Attorney General ...

In another "insider attack," two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian were killed in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province on Saturday by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform.

"Two U.S. International Security Assistance Force service members and one U.S. civilian were killed today when an individual wearing an ANA uniform ...

Tech companies that cooperated with government intelligence-gathering efforts by allowing access to their databases say they did so only reluctantly and that it never involved 'direct access' to servers, according to The New York Times.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Apple and Paltalk all negotiated with the government under ...

(This story last update at 4:00 p.m. ET)

Investigators in Santa Monica, Calif., were trying to piece together a motive in a shooting rampage in which four people were killed before police fatally shot the gunman.

The assailant, dressed in black and carrying a semi-automatic rifle, first shot and killed ...

(Story Last updated at 9:50 a.m. ET)

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was breathing on his own after being admitted to a hospital at the age of 94 for a recurring respiratory infection, officials said.

Mandela was admitted to a Pretoria hospital early on Saturday.

"What I am told ...

Cambodian lawmakers on Friday approved a bill making it a crime to deny that atrocities were committed by the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s, echoing laws against Holocaust denial in Germany and more than a dozen other European countries.

The bill passed the assembly in Phnom Penh by a ...

Many of the world's most accident-prone waters for shipping are also among the most delicate marine ecosystems, according to a new study released Friday by WWF International.

The fear of something like a major oil spill in environmentally sensitive waters comes as the number of vessels plying the world's ...

As President Obama and his Chinese counterpart prepare for a weekend summit in California to discuss thorny bilateral issues, a new poll shows that ordinary Americans and Chinese increasingly eye one another with suspicion.

Obama and the newly minted Chinese president, Xi Jinping, are hoping a relaxed two-day sit-down in ...

California's San Onofre nuclear power plant will be shut down for good amid concerns as to whether it could be safely restarted after being offline since early last year because of a radiation leak.

The plant's operator, Southern California Edison, said in a statement Friday that San Onofre's twin reactors ...

The two Koreas have agreed in principle to talks aimed at mending their almost nonexistent relations, but they are stalled on the question of where to meet.

South Korea has suggested that high-level talks take place in its capital, Seoul, but North Korea has countered that only lower-level negotiations should ...