Pakistan told the United States it was reopening NATO’s supply routes into neighboring Afghanistan after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was sorry for the deaths of Pakistani soldiers in American airstrikes in November, the State Department said Tuesday. The agreement ends a bitter seven-month stalemate between the two countries that has threatened to jeopardize counterterrorism cooperation and complicated the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan...

"Basat al reeh." "Dulab." "Falaqa." They are Arabic names for torture techniques that send chills through the hearts of Syrians, particularly the untold thousands who are believed to have been detained during the uprising of the last 15 months.

"We suffered torture all the time," said Tariq, an opposition activist from the port city of Latakia who spent 40 days in solitary confinement in spring 2011.

He told CNN he endured "dulab," in which torturers force the prisoner's legs and head into a car tire before beating them, and "basat al reeh," in which the prisoner is tied to a board and beaten...

For all Mitt Romney's touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Nicholas Shaxson delves into the murky world of offshore finance, revealing loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws, and investigating just how much of Romney's fortunre (with $30 million in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands alone?) looks pretty strange for a presidential candidate...

Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have gathered enough evidence to show that the long-sought "God particle" answering fundamental questions about the universe almost certainly does exist

But after decades of work and billions of dollars spent, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, aren't quite ready to say they've "discovered" the particle...

The buzz began hours before the start of the race at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials: Would one of the most-elusive records in long distance running set by a legend long dead finally fall?

It's a question that has been asked at nearly every Olympic track trials since the brash Steve Prefontaine set the meet record for men's 5,000 meters in 1972.

Sure, there have been runners since who have been more than capable of breaking the record. They just always came up short when it counted...

...it was Capt. Allison Black's voice that special operators on the ground heard as they fought. Afghan soldiers overheard the chatter, too. On a mission over the northern Afghanistan city of Kunduz in 2001, one particularly fierce warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, "found it amazing" that a woman was directing fire on the Taliban forces, says Black. "He thought it was so hilarious. He asked, 'Is that a woman?' "

When SOF fighters confirmed it was, Dostum, she says, was incredulous – and impressed: "America is so determined to kill the Taliban that they send women," he said.

Then, as Black called in another round of fire, Dostum dialed enemy fighters by phone, so they, too, could hear her voice on his walkie-talkie: "He really berated them, saying 'You're so pathetic, American women are killing you. You need to surrender now,' " Black says...

Quit telling us we're not special. Believe us, we bloody well know.

Earlier this month, Wellesley high school teacher David McCullough, Jr., delivered what was perhaps the world’s first commencement dirge to a crowd of teenagers on the first day of distinction many of them have ever experienced. Graduation from high school, he informed them, is a shiny induction to the hordes of mediocrity. McCullough even took it upon himself to remind the youth of their eventual funerals. (You know it’s a problematic speech when Rush Limbaugh loves it.) What parting words did the teacher have for those who survived his twelve-minute lesson on nihilism? The paradoxical exhortation to go forth and live extraordinary lives! Because, apparently, we can?...

Why cartoonist Joe Sacco is one of the best war correspondents in the world...

Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was formally sworn in on Saturday as the first democratically elected president of Egypt, marking a new stage in an ever murkier struggle to define the future of the nation after six decades of military-backed autocracy.

Proclaiming “a new Egypt, the second republic,” Mr. Morsi declared, “Today the Egyptian people have established a new life, with real freedom and real democracy.”...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my Drinking Duck, a $5 novelty item purchased on eBay. He arrived from China on March 20, and I set him in motion on March 24 by pushing his head down into a glass of water and letting go. He took it from there.

He was a serious little fellow who had one job to do, which he did to the very best of his ability, which is all we can ask of anyone...