Scott Neuman

Jessica Cleaves, the female lead for the '70s soul-pop group The Friends of Distinction, died on Friday, one of the last voices from the Golden Age of Pop and Soul. The four Friends performed tightly-harmonized songs that referenced the looser, hipper culture that flourished in the late '60s and early ...

A United Nations committee on Monday grilled a Vatican representative about priest sex abuse and compared the impact of the scandal to torture.

But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's top envoy in Geneva, said the Vatican leadership had improved its handling of abuse in the decade since the scandal ...

Paul Janeway's vocal range is some kind of miracle. For the young, Alabama-based soul stirrer and his band St. Paul & The Broken Bones, the sounds of Memphis and Muscle Shoals go marrow-deep. On Half the City, the group's unbelievably mature debut, Janeway channels '60s R&B greats like Otis Redding, ...

Eleven people, including nine acrobats, were injured on Sunday in Providence, R.I., when support equipment failed and the performers fell to the ground.

Gerry Adams, a leader of Sinn Fein, was questioned in Northern Ireland in connection with an infamous murder 42 years ago. The investigation threatens to impact the fragile peace agreement there.

The two boats, one a 6-foot dinghy, were carrying dozens of illegal migrants hoping to reach the Greek coast. Four of the dead are children.

A Human Rights Watch report documents brutal force used by Venezuelan security forces against peaceful demonstrators — including beatings, shootings and, in some cases, torture. The r...

What better way to recruit potential code breakers than to advertise in cipher? That's what the NSA did Monday morning with this mysterious tweet:

According to The Washington Post, if you're good at breaking substitution ciphers, this is what you'd come up with:

"want to know what it ...

The child's game rock-paper-scissors is designed for a random outcome in which no player has an advantage over any other.

While that might be true based solely on random probability, it ignores the way humans actually play the game, according to a new study published by Cornell University.

At ...

Days of heavy rains have triggered a landslide in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province, smashing through a mountain village and leaving hundreds of people missing.

"At least 400 to 500 people are still under a huge landslide, and they are all believed to be dead. This number may increase," Col. Abdul ...

It's OK to sell pot in Colorado, but there's still nowhere but the mattress to legally stash the proceeds.

That's the continuing problem for legal marijuana dealers in the state, who are caught between the state's legalization of cannabis and federal laws that still classify it as a controlled substance.

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This post has been updated.

The nation's economy added a robust 288,000 jobs in April, far more than forecast, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent, its lowest level in five years, according to the Labor Department.

The rate, which is the lowest since September 2008, was down ...

The death toll from a car bomb in Nigeria's capital — the second in a month — has risen to 19, officials said Friday. The attack occurred days before the city is set to host a major international conference.

The explosion Thursday on a busy street in Abuja occurred near ...

Ukrainian forces have launched what appears to be a major operation to rout pro-Russia forces from occupied government buildings in the country's east. Two helicopters were shot down by separatists, killing the pilots, both sides report.

The move is being described by Ukraine as an "anti-terror" operation in the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk ...

The Department of Education has released a list of 55 colleges and universities facing investigation under Title IX for their handling of sexual abuse claims.

Releasing the list is described as an unprecedented move. NPR's Brian Naylor says the list "starts at Arizona State University and ends at the ...

Al Feldstein, the man who turned Mad magazine into a must-read for teens of the baby boomer generation, has died at his home near Livingston, Mont. He was 88.

Feldstein, who died Tuesday, was editor of Mad for nearly 30 years until the mid-'80s, taking the magazine to a mass ...

A cellphone video sent by a 17-year-old passenger in the final moments before a South Korean ferry capsized and sank on April 16, killing hundreds of people, has been released by the teenager's father.

The 15-minute video, shot by high school student Park Su-hyeon, gives a chilling glimpse of the ...

Ukraine's government has ordered the expulsion of Russia's military attache, saying he had been caught red-handed receiving classified documents related to the country's cooperation with NATO.

The unnamed attache was taken into custody on Wednesday, has been declared persona non grata and will be thrown out of Ukraine, officials say.

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The leader of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, was in custody for a second day in Northern Ireland as police questioned him in connection with an IRA kidnapping and murder that occurred more than 40 years ago.

Adams, 65, has long denied any involvement in the abduction and killing of ...

Extreme rainfall in much of the East and parts of the South is causing major problems, with Florida's Panhandle and southern Alabama — which got more than 2 feet of rain in 24 hours — bearing the brunt of the onslaught.

The torrential rains followed close on the heels ...