Scott Neuman

Update at 2:25 p.m. ET.

President Obama says U.S. airstrikes have broken a siege by Islamic militants of minority Yazidis on a mountaintop in northwestern Iraq and it's unlikely that more airdrops of humanitarian aid will be necessary.

"Our military was able to successfully strike ISIL targets around the mountain," ...

Updated at 3:10 p.m. ET:

President Obama is calling the situation in Ferguson, Mo., where violence has broken out in the aftermath of a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, "heartbreaking and tragic."

Speaking in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard where he is vacationing, Obama said he received a ...

A Russian aid convoy has resumed movement toward a rebel-held border crossing in eastern Ukraine in defiance of Kiev, as government forces pound pro-Moscow separatists in the city of Donetsk.

Ukraine, which fears the trucks could be aimed at resupplying the rebels, has threatened to block the shipment. The Associated ...

So far, a five-day extension to a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appears to be holding, NPR's Jackie Northam reports from Jerusalem.

She says, "There were a few tense hours before the ... extension was announced — rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel, and the Israeli military responded ...

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won Turkey's first-ever direct presidential election, with an unofficial 53 percent of the vote.

Opposition candidate Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu conceded defeat in elections, offering congratulations to Erdogan in a brief statement to reporters in Istanbul.

AP reports:

"With 93.7 percent of ballot boxes opened, ...

We've already had one "supermoon" this summer and there's another one due next month, but the one you might see Sunday night has astronomy fans running out of lunar superlatives. National Geographic is calling it an "extra-supermoon."

As NatGeo explains:

"Thanks to coincidental timing of the moon ...

Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET.

The chief of the St. Louis County Police says a black teenager fatally shot by officers Saturday was killed during an altercation with authorities.

But as Chief Jon Belmar was speaking at a news conference Sunday morning, a few hundred angry protesters carrying signs converged ...

The government in the West African nation of Guinea is denying reports that it has sealed its borders with neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone in response to the Ebola outbreak.

Guinea's health minister said Saturday that it had closed its borders with the two countries to prevent infected people from ...

Updated at 1:40 p.m. ET.

Israeli officials have confirmed a new three-day cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a move that clears the way for a resumption on talks to end the weekslong conflict.

Confirmation on the temporary truce comes from a senior Israeli government official who spoke with ...

Update at 11:50 a.m. ET.

A Baghdad government minister says at least 500 members of Iraq's minority Yazidis have been killed by Islamic militants.

Iraq's human rights minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, tells Reuters that he has evidence that the Sunni militants had thrown the Yazidi dead into mass graves, ...

Updated at 10:25 a.m. ET.

In a tragic collision, NASCAR driver Tony Stewart hit and killed sprint car driver Kevin Ward Jr., who was walking on a racetrack in upstate New York on Saturday night, authorities said.

Ontario County Sheriff Philip Povero said Ward was dead on arrival at an ...

Over at NewsOne, Donovan X. Ramsey contrasted two approaches President Obama has taken with black audiences: 1) the finger-wagging, pull-up-your-pants approach that he often takes with African-Americans, like the graduates at all-male Morehouse College ("We've got no time for excuses ... nobody is going to give you anything you ...

Updated at 12:25 p.m. ET.

President Obama says that the U.S. will continue to provide Iraq with humanitarian and military assistance, but he ruled out ground troops and reiterated administration calls for Iraq to form a "legitimate" government in order to face the threat from Islamic militants.

Speaking to ...

Most people have been frustrated at least once in their driving lives by construction delays and detours.

But when a road closure in England took drivers on a especially long detour, a local businessman took matters into his own hands.

Mike Watts decided to build his own road, along a ...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a video of its test of a new inflatable braking system designed to land heavy payloads on Mars.

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator was carried aloft by a balloon and then rocketed to an altitude of 190,000 feet above Hawaii. As Discovery News explains: ...

Updated at 4:55 p.m. ET.

The end of the latest cease-fire in the Gaza Strip has been marked by intense Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets.

The U.S. and United Nations have condemned the resumption of hostilities that comes at the end of a three-day truce on Friday.

NPR's Alice Fordham, ...

Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET.

U.S. forces conducted additional humanitarian airdrops to northern Iraq today to aid members of the Yazidi religious minority trapped by Islamic militants battling Iraqi troops.

President Obama today said the U.S. commitment would not involve ground troops and said that it would likely take ...

A Pentagon plan to cut tens of thousands of soldiers from the U.S. Army's ranks in coming years goes too far given the growing global threats, including Russian aggression in Ukraine and unrest in Syria and Iraq, a bipartisan review panel says.

In an advance copy of a report,

Nearly two dozen diaries and notebooks of Siegfried Sassoon — among a handful of prominent soldier-poets whose artistic sensibilities were forged in the trenches of World War I — are being published online for the first time by the Cambridge University Library.

Sassoon, who served in the British Army, ...