Pope Francis kicked off the Catholic Church's special Jubilee Year, the focus of which will be mercy, on Tuesday by opening the bronze Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and walking through it.

"This extraordinary holy year is itself a gift of grace," Francis said during the ...

Less than a month after terrorists opened fire at a concert hall in Paris where the rock band, Eagles of Death Metal, were playing, the group returned to the city to perform briefly with U2.

Toward the end of the concert, U2's frontman Bono announced the group.

"There's nothing left ...

The World Cup-winning U.S. women's national soccer team abruptly canceled a friendly soccer game against Trinidad and Tobago, scheduled for Sunday, because of poor field conditions.

The players and coaches, along with the U.S. Soccer Federation, decided to call off Sunday's game in Hawaii after inspecting the artificial turf field, ...

The FBI says both San Bernardino shooters honed their skills with target practice at gun ranges around the Los Angeles area before last week's attack. The FBI also believes that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik had been radicalized for "quite some time," David Bowdich, of the FBI's Los Angeles ...

Sweden has distributed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's feminist manifesto, "We Should All Be Feminists," to every 16-year-old student in the country.

The Swedish Women's Lobby partnered with other groups to launch the initiative on Dec. 1, in the hopes of sparking dialogue about feminism in one of the ...

#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 four ...

The FBI said it is officially investigating Wednesday's mass shooting that killed at least 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., as a terrorist act.

"We are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism," David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, announced during a news ...

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's office released the names of the 14 people killed during a mass shooting at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday.

The victims ranged in age from 26 to 60.

"This shooting has caused each [victim's] family, friends and co-workers, along with ...

Swiss police, on behalf of U.S. authorities, arrested two FIFA vice presidents, Alfredo Hawit of Honduras and Juan Angel Napout of Paraguay, in a dawn raid at a hotel in Zurich on Thursday. Hours later, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., had ...

Two suspects died in a gunfight with police after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday. The attack at a county employee holiday party at the Inland Regional Center left 14 people dead and 17 others wounded.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said Syed Farook, 28, an ...

When the taxi that was supposed to drive Public Enemy to their show Saturday in Sheffield, England, left without them, 50-year-old photographer Kevin Wells offered the rap group a ride in his Ford Focus.

Wells was at a record shop getting a CD signed by the group when a member ...

For the first time in a decade, congressional leaders have agreed on a long-term bill to fix, maintain and expand the nation's roads, bridges, rails and mass transit.

If approved by both the House and Senate and signed by President Obama, the measure would spend more than $280 billion dollars ...

Amid the fallout from Volkswagen's emissions-testing cheating scandal, the company's November sales in the United States fell nearly 25 percent from November a year ago.

Volkswagen sold just under 24,000 vehicles last month. In November of 2014, it sold almost 32,000, the Associated Press reports.

NPR's Sonari Glinton reports ...

Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is charged with murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, has posted bond and been released from jail. Van Dyke was captured on dashcam video shooting the black teen 16 times. A Cook County judge set bail at $1.5 million ...

Authorities have arrested a man in connection with the online threat that prompted the University of Chicago to cancel Monday classes at its main campus. Federal officials say Jabari Dean of Chicago — motivated by the 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black — threatened to ...

Minnesota prosecutors have charged four men in connection with last week's shooting that injured five people at a protest over the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said during a news conference that the accused shooter, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, 23, was charged ...

Updated 2:30 a.m. ET

A suspect is in custody in shootings at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colo., the city's mayor announced at a press conference Friday, and officers are actively checking the building for any additional suspects or devices.

"The situation has been resolved; there is no continuing ...

#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 ...

A rocket piece, most likely from the unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 that blew up after takeoff in June, was recovered off the Southwest coast of England near the Isles of Scilly.

The chunk of metal, measuring 32 feet by 13 feet, was towed to shore with the help of local ...

France paid homage today to those who died in terrorist attacks in Paris two weeks ago. The names of the 130 people killed were read at a national memorial service at a historic military building in Paris called Les Invalides.

President Francois Hollande delivered a speech, saying France would ...