Bill Chappell

Federal workers with a pressing need can take an advance of up to six weeks of sick leave under a new policy unveiled by President Obama on Thursday. The White House is urging Congress to make paid sick leave mandatory in the U.S.

The president signed a memorandum today instructing ...

An "accountability board" assembled by the CIA has cleared five of the agency's employees of any wrongdoing related to improperly accessing the Senate Intelligence Committee emails and computer network. Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the breach violated the Constitution.

NPR's David Welna reports:

"The five-member Agency Accountability board, which included ...

The FBI arrested Christopher Lee Cornell of Cincinnati, charging him with buying weapons to carry out a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C. Cornell, 20, was monitored by federal agents who say he used Twitter to express support for the extremist group Islamic State as well as "violent jihad."

The arrest ...

While France's leaders had feared an attack, Ambassador Gerard Araud says, "what happened was in a sense maybe worse than what we were expecting, because it was done in a very professional way."

Testifying about a request for a protective order against him, race car driver Kurt Busch told a Dover, Del., court this week that his former girlfriend is an assassin. Patricia Driscoll, who dated Busch for four years, requested the order last November, shortly after their relationship ended.

Driscoll has also ...

Monday night's game between Oregon and Ohio State was a hit with viewers, as the first-ever college football playoff championship turned in the highest ratings in the history of both ESPN and cable TV. The broadcast averaged 33.4 million viewers.

"That was a 21 percent increase over the ratings for ...

"Did that just happen?"

That's the reaction one bus rider had in Seattle, after realizing a dog had just joined him for a ride through the city, traveling several stops to her destination: a dog park.

The story comes to us from Seattle's KOMO 4 TV, which reports that ...

The brewer of a batch of traditional homemade beer is listed among nearly 70 people who died after drinking it following a funeral in Mozambique, leaving authorities with many questions.

Mozambique has declared three days of mourning over the deaths that occurred this past weekend. More than 100 people were ...

A game between two of the most high-powered offenses in college football, came down, time and again, to which team could grind out one or two yards.

Ohio State converted all through fourth down attempts and eight of 14 third down tries, while the Buckeyes defense stopped one University of ...

Months after a deadly encounter that touched off contentious protests, two police officers who were captured on video shooting and killing a man in the foothills of Albuquerque, N.M., will face murder charges. James Boyd, 38, was killed after illegally camping in the city.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg ...

Some 123 cars were caught by a massive crash that shut down Interstate 94 in Michigan Friday. One fatality was reported, from a scene a witness calls "unreal." Several vehicles caught on fire, including a semi carrying fireworks; video footage shows flames and smoke billowing out amid a barrage of ...

Federal prosecutors recommend filing charges against retired Gen. David Petraeus over classified documents that he's accused of leaking when he headed the CIA. When Petraeus resigned his post in 2012, he cited an extramarital affair with a woman whom investigators suspected of receiving secret data.

Attorney General Eric Holder must ...

(This post was last updated at 6:50 p.m. ET.)

A nationwide manhunt for the suspects of France's deadliest terrorist attack in more than 50 years ended in a hail of gunfire on Friday.

After hours of tension in two separate standoffs that shut down parts of the Paris metro area, ...

Updated 5:45 a.m. ET Friday:

A pair of heavily armed brothers suspected in the deadly storming of a satirical newspaper were cornered inside a printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday and appear to have taken a hostage, officials told The Associated Press. At least three helicopters hovered ...

Boston won a tight contest to become the next American city to bid for hosting an Olympics, beating out Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., for the right to vie for the 2024 Olympics.

French police are still searching for the gunmen who killed 12 people in Wednesday's attack on the Charlie Ebdo publication in Paris.

French police have taken an 18-year-old suspect identified as Mourad Hamyd into custody after he surrendered to authorities, according to multiple French news outlets. Hamyd had been sought in relation to a murderous attack on a satirical magazine's Paris office Wednesday, but it's not certain whether he was involved.

...

Blankets, layers of heavy clothes and thermal socks are some of the ways Hawaii residents are trying to stay warm in a cold snap that has brought record lows. As temperatures hit the 50s, some stores sold out of space heaters.

The cold has been brought on by winds from ...

A week after she was arrested over a tantrum on a tarmac in New York, former Korean Air executive Cho Hyun-ah faces charges of breaking aviation safety laws and then interfering with the inquiry into the incident.

Cho was indicted on those charges today, placing her under the threat of ...

Updated at 10 p.m. ET.

At least 12 people were killed during a shooting at the headquarters of the satirical Charlie Hebdo weekly in Paris, police say. Two key suspects remain at large (see our latest post for updates).

The authorities had been hunting three suspects in the attack; ...