Scott Neuman

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 ...

It's all over but Sunday's ride down the Champs-Elysees: Italian cyclist Vincenzo Nibali has locked up an unassailable lead in the 2014 Tour de France.

Nibali, 29, is poised to take his first title in cycling's premier event and will become the first Italian to wear the yellow jersey ...

Human rights groups are accusing the Iraqi government of indiscriminate bombing. Baghdad officials deny that and note they're fighting a Sunni insurgency that commits mass executions and suicide bombings.

Yet rights workers say civilians are being killed by government attacks with so-called barrel bombs — the crude weapons made famous ...

North Korea has fired a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, according to The Associated Press, which quotes an unnamed South Korean official.

The test is described as beginning with a launch in the country's southwest Hwanghae province on Saturday morning and ending when the missile landed off ...

What happened in technology this week, you ask? Here's a roundup of the tech stories reported by NPR and others since you last checked in.

ICYMI

Hack The Hood: Twitter this week followed Google, Facebook and Yahoo in releasing numbers on the makeup of its workforce. And like those ...

Update at 5:35 p.m. ET.

Israel's Security Cabinet says it is willing to extend an earlier cease-fire in Gaza, NPR's Emily Harris has confirmed, until Sunday at midnight local time.

Work on neutralizing the tunnels, however, will continue, according to an Israeli official. The Israeli Defense Forces also said they ...

President Obama met with the leaders of three Central American countries at the White House on Friday, telling them that they share responsibility with Washington for stemming an influx of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina and Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez ...

Pope Francis has accepted an invitation to visit Philadelphia in September 2015, a trip that would mark his first to the U.S. as pontiff.

Catholic News Service quotes Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi as saying that the pope has expressed "his willingness to participate in the World Meeting of Families" ...

Indonesia's president-elect is making good on a campaign promise to be a new kind of leader — starting with his Cabinet, which he's asking ordinary people to help him choose.

Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi, was named president on Tuesday following July 9 polls, the results of which were ...

Updated at 11:10 a.m. ET.

The Netherlands and Australia — countries that lost large numbers of citizens in last week's downing of Flight MH17 — are planning to send police to eastern Ukraine to help secure the debris field there.

NPR's Corey Flintoff, reporting from the site of the downed ...

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called reports that Israel's government had rejected a U.S. truce in Gaza "a mischievous leak" and said he's confident a deal can be reached.

Referring to earlier reports by Israeli TV that a seven-day cease-fire had been unanimously rejected, ...

The mayor of Albuquerque has signed off on a framework of principles to submit the city's troubled police department to oversight by an independent monitor.

The deal, announced by the Justice Department, is aimed at addressing eight problem areas identified in a report last year by officials.

"This agreement marks ...

The U.S. says it has "new evidence" that Russian forces have been firing artillery across the border to attack Ukrainian military positions, and that Moscow is planning to ship powerful rocket artillery to the rebels it backs in the country's east.

"We have new evidence that the Russians intend to ...

Despite a public outcry that resulted in more than a half-million petition signatures and a personal appeal by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Arturo, Argentina's "sad bear," has been deemed too old to migrate to Canada.

As we reported on Saturday, Arturo the polar bear, dubbed the "world's saddest ...

The U.S. State Department's global database for processing visas and passports is experiencing problems that could cause delays for millions of people around the world who are awaiting travel documents.

The Associated Press writes:

"Unspecified glitches in the department's Consular Consolidated Database have resulted in 'significant performance issues, including ...

Updated at 7:59 p.m. ET.

A United Nations-run school sheltering civilians in Gaza came under attack Thursday, the U.N. says. More than a dozen people have been killed, according to Palestinian officials.

Reuters quotes Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. agency in ...