Scott Neuman

Updated at 10:23 a.m. ET

FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg — who has been at the center of controversial decisions such as relaxing age restrictions on the Plan B contraceptive — has decided to step down after six years in the job.

In a letter to FDA staff, ...

Intense fighting in eastern Ukraine has resumed since the collapse of cease-fire talks on Saturday. Reuters says Russian-backed separatists used artillery to try to push Kiev's forces from the strategic rail hub of Debaltseve.

NPR's Corey Flintoff — reporting from the town of Svyatogorsk, which has become a de facto ...

In a move aimed at breathing life into Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, thousands gathered at the city's Victoria Park today in open defiance of Beijing's insistence that it have final say on candidates for the territory's next leader.

Organizers said 13,000 attended the rally, but police claimed the figure was ...

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English actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Fry have joined in a campaign to secure 49,000 pardons – most that would be posthumous — for men convicted under Britain's now-defunct "gross indecency" law that made it a crime to be gay or bisexual.

Cumberbatch has been nominated for a best ...

A new video reportedly released by Islamic State extremists appears to show journalist Kenji Goto, the second of two Japanese hostages held by the group, being beheaded by a black-clad, masked individual.

The SITE Intelligence group relayed the video, which comes exactly a week after ISIS militants released a ...

The self-declared Islamic State says airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition forced its fighters from Kobani, the first time the extremist group has acknowledged its defeat in the heavily contested Syrian border town, The Associated Press reports.

The AP reports: "In a video released by the pro-IS Aamaq News ...

The Eagles have landed.

Balloon pilots Troy Bradley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev, dubbed the "Two Eagles," who already set a distance record for a gas-filled balloon on Friday, have completed their nearly 7,000-mile journey across the Pacific from Japan to Mexico.

The Associated Press reports that Bradley of Albuquerque, ...

Updated at 11:00 a.m. ET

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected any renegotiation of Greek debt after last week's election that brought an anti-austerity party into power in Athens.

Merkel said banks and creditors that extended Greece bailout loans to keep the government from defaulting on its sovereign debt ...

Serena Williams has beaten Russia's Maria Sharapova for her sixth Australian Open, clinching her 19th Grand Slam title.

Williams, 33, won the final 6-3 7-6 (7-5).

It was the tennis superstar's first Australian Open in five years and she managed to win despite fighting a severe cold that The ...

Moscow has awarded a $3 billion contract to build a bridge linking Russia with the newly annexed Crimean peninsula to a close friend of President Vladimir Putin.

The bridge that would join Russia and Crimea across the Kerch Strait will be constructed by the SGM Group, majority owned by ...

Jeremy the koala — who became a social-media sensation after a photo went viral showing him recuperating from injuries sustained in an Australian wildfire — is being released back into the wild.

The three-year-old male koala, nicknamed after his rescuer, was removed from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia

Two balloonists have unofficially left a distance record in their wake as they head east over the Pacific Ocean. They lifted off from Japan, and now they're getting ready for a landing on Saturday somewhere on Mexico's Baja peninsula.

American Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev, dubbed the "Two ...

China's education minister has told universities to stop using textbooks that promote Western values in a move seen as part of a larger ideological crackdown, reports NPR's Frank Langfitt from Shanghai.

At an educational forum, Yuan Guiren said universities should also forbid criticism of China's leaders and the country's political ...

U.S. adults sees various science-related topics much differently than do America's top scientists themselves, with the two groups expressing widely divergent views on the safety of genetically modified foods, climate change, human evolution, the use of animals in research and vaccines, according to a new report published by Pew Research ...

The British government has summoned Russia's ambassador to the United Kingdom, asking him to explain why a pair of nuclear-capable Russian long-range "Bear" bombers had flown alarmingly close to U.K. airspace.

In a situation reminiscent of the Cold War, British Typhoon fighters were scrambled to intercept the TU-95s on ...

A treasure hunter, who located a sunken ship with perhaps the greatest loot in history but later disappeared in an alleged attempt to cheat investors and his crew of their cut, has been found. He is scheduled to appear in court next week in Florida, where authorities captured him earlier ...

In a further sign that Sri Lanka's newly elected president wants to deal with the country's troubled past, a government spokesman said today that a new probe is planned to investigate allegations of human rights abuses during the island's 26-year civil war.

The announcement, reported by Reuters, comes as ...

A scientist who worked for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and who pleaded guilty two years ago to promising to build nuclear weapons for Venezuela, has been sentenced to five years in jail.

Argentina-born Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a 79-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, told undercover FBI agents posing as Venezuelan ...

In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says he is concerned about the toll of repeatedly rotating the same soldiers back to the front lines.