The Libyan government freed four New York Times journalists on Monday, six days after they were captured while covering the conflict between government and rebel forces in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. They were released into the custody of Turkish diplomats and crossed safely into Tunisia in the late afternoon, from where they provided a harrowing account of their captivity...

An oily substance of unknown origin is washing ashore in parts of Louisiana that were among the hardest hit by BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon oil spill last year, the U.S. Coast Guard and local government officials said Monday...

As my coworkers flee quake-stricken Sendai, I've made a tough decision -- to trust the government over here...

In her first interview since becoming a viral sensation with her song "Friday," 13-year-old Rebecca Black talked to Chris lee about how the video came to be -- and "haters"...

Even as the allied intervention began, a group of foreign journalists were bused on a rare visit inside Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s compound — a labyrinth of concrete barracks, fortified walls and barbed wire designed to deter potential military coups...

Moammar Gadhafi took advantage of international indecision to attack the heart of the 5-week-old uprising on Saturday, sending troops, tanks and warplanes to swarm the first city seized by the rebels. Crashing shells shook buildings, and the sounds of battle drew closer to Benghazi's center. "Where is France, where is NATO?" cried a 50-year-old woman in Benghazi, where a doctor said 27 people were killed Saturday. "It's too late...

The universe, the 18th-century mathematician and philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert said, “would only be one fact and one great truth for whoever knew how to embrace it from a single point of view.” James Gleick has such a perspective, and signals it in the first word of the title of his new book, “The Information,” using the definite article we usually reserve for totalities like the universe, the ether — and the Internet. Information, he argues, is more than just the contents of our overflowing libraries and Web servers. It is “the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” of the world. Human consciousness, society, life on earth, the cosmos — it’s bits all the way down...

Hours after the United Nations Security Council voted to authorize military action and a no-fly zone, Libya executed a remarkable about-face on Friday, saying it would call an “immediate cease-fire and the stoppage of all military operations” against rebels seeking the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi...

The main details of UN Resolution 1973 authorising action to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gaddafi...

Congress dealt a setback to public broadcasting Thursday, approving in two separate votes funding cuts that conservatives, in particular, have long sought. The House voted Thursday to eliminate NPR's federal funding – and to prohibit public radio stations from using taxpayer money to pay NPR dues or to buy NPR programs. At the same time, the Senate approved a three-week budget resolution that includes a $50 million cut to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parent of NPR and PBS...