Google announced Thursday that they've taken their Street View cameras on a hiking trip around the Galapagos islands — above ground, and under water.
Jonathan Cohn on Republicans sending us over the fiscal cliff, David Brooks on Republicans saving us from it, Jeffrey Goldberg on Israel's disappearing allies, Bob Dole and Tony Coelho on disabled Americans, and Joshua Muggleton on Asperger's.
On Day Two of the news, we are reminded that Will and Kate will do things differently. They are not the old-school monarchy of stiff upper lips and cold rigidity we used to know. They are adamantly modern, and their parenting style will be like that, too.
Vladimir Putin (who is alive and well!) met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan yesterday and reportedly signaled that Russia may be willing to push for a new plan to peacefully remove Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria.
Iran's state news agency reported this morning that they have "hunted" and captured an unarmed surveillance vehicle, but the United States Navy says it hasn't lost any drones.
Call it some sort of lapsed historical sentiment; maybe we sort of wish, in America, that we had our own royals, even as we attempt to replace kings and queens with Kennedys and Kardashians.
Anne Victoria Clark is the fake social-media winner of today's royal-baby news: She owns a parody account that will now gather an inordinate amount of klout.
If Kate and Will's just announced offspring is a girl and a future queen, it looks like "Diana" could be part of her name — just not the first part.
Jihad Makdissi, who until yesterday was the spokesperson for Syria's foreign ministry and one of the main voices of Bashar al-Assad's regime, has reportedly left the country.
North Korea has reportedly begun to set up the first stage of a rocket they plan to launch later this month, even though their closest "allies" are advising them against the stunt.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a baby, the Royal Palace has confirmed, and apparently Kate already has some really terrible morning sickness.
As concern grows over Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, a new report suggests that one country is already figuring out how it intends to bomb them out of existence.
Everybody knew that Israel's move to build new settlements in the previously off-limits area outside Jerusalem known as E1 would anger friends and enemies alike. But few probably guessed that it would send European ambassadors fleeing the country.
More than almost anywhere else, Russians are having trouble dealing with the upcoming apocalypse on December 21.
Egypt's top court was expected to make a ruling on the legitimacy of the Islamist-dominaed panel that drafted the country's new constitution on Saturday, but because of protests they decided to suspend operations indefinitely.
Bashar al-Assad's efforts to disrupt the pesky rebellion in his country by cutting off access to the internet was probably because the rebels use Skype as a way to keep tabs on his army's movement. Thankfully, the rebels planned ahead.
If there's anything that Pope Benedict XVI loves more than cats, it must be the adorable, collared babies of big exotic cats, because we've never seen the man happier than he was petting a pair of lion cubs at the Vatican on Saturday.
After days of stalling, Congo's M23 rebels finally made their withdrawal from the eastern city of Goma, not far from the Rwandan border, on Saturday.
With his first year in power coming to a close, it's time for Kim Jong-Un to show off his strength as a leader, and what better way to do that than by blasting a giant rocket into the heavens?
Therese Poletti on Groupon, Anthony Lane on the Leveson report, Paul Krugman on class war, Ana Marie Cox on #Obama, and Ruth Marcus on Susan Rice.
"Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom." reports the — wait. Stop. UNICORNS?
It's been almost a full day now and the nation of Syria remains completely cut off from the rest of the Internet (and by extension, the outside world.) Internet analysts who watched the collapse in real-time think they've figured out how it was done.
The Kremlin is denying reports that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had to cancel a state visit to due to health problems, but until we some shirtless horseback riding pictures, we're going to continue to assume the worst.
A key component to ending Morsi's executive decree that gives him near universal power in Egypt is almost ready for him to approve. Except that everyone who doesn't agree with Morsi still hates it.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn just got one big step closer to not having any outstanding legal problems Thursday evening. He finally settled things with the maid from the Sofitel hotel.
Did you hear? Did you hear? I'll tell you everything, my dears. The pope didn't cancel Christmas after all!
Early Thursday evening, even after some last-minute diplomatic swings, Palestine easily won a vote in the U.N. General Assembly, changing its status from "entity" to "non-member state" — just like the Vatican. So what's the big deal?
Choosing a vacation based on your current mood just got a lot easier, thanks to this new map from The Washington Post's Max Fisher.
A South Korean newspaper is claiming that a group of U.S. officials took an undercover trip to Pyongyang back in August, the second "secret" diplomatic meeting they've allegedly held in North Korea this year.
A 21-year-old woman thought Mumbai shouldn't have been shutdown for the funeral of an Islamophobic leader. Broadcasting such opinions on Facebook was apparently grounds for arrest.
Rumors began spreading early this morning that phone and internet services were failing in major Syrian cities, but several Internet traffic companies have now determined that every single Syrian IP address has effectively been blocked.
According to The New York Times, the White House is "considering several alternatives" to intervention in the Syrian civil war, but remains leery about the backlash of sparking a wider conflict—even as time runs down on how or whether to step in.
Amy Davidson on Hillary Clinton, Matthew Yglesias on the fiscal cliff, Daniel Byman on Al Qaeda, Bill George on H.P., and Shikha Dalmia on immigration.
A court in Moscow ruled today that the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot are "extremists" and that any website that continues to host video clips shot by and of them should be blocked.
As if the story of the deadly blaze that killed 112 people in a Bangladeshi garment factory couldn't get any worse, new details suggest that somebody locked the workers in the burning building.
It would be a generally bad idea for Terry Jones, the Florida pastor most famous for burning Korans and being a generally terrible human being, to vacation in Egypt right about now. Because he would die.
Earlier this month, Iran's news agency provided visual evidence that its government had figured out to make a fancy new drone that could take off and land vertically. What they didn't tell us is that they used Photoshop.
On the day three employees of BP are to be arraigned on criminal charges, the United States announced that the company is banned from winning any new government contracts until they get their act together.
It may or may not win tomorrow's vote to achieve "non-member observer state" status at the United Nations, but several European powers are changing their opinion on Palestine.
Jonathan Cohn on Medicare, Grover Norquist on the fiscal cliff, Lynette H. Ong on China's construction boom, Bess Lovejoy on digging up the dead, and Jane Kramer on female bishops.
Two of Egypt's highest courts have suspended their work in protest of Mohamed Morsi's controversial immunity decree, saying they won't be intimidated by the president's attempt to limit their power over him.
More than 50 people were killed this morning when two coordinated car bombs were set off in a mostly Christian neighborhood in the center of the Syrian capital, prompting fears of a new "Battle for Damascus."
Turns out, that employee from the Mars research team was just really excited about the mission — and not one specific, universe-altering discovery.
Tuesday brought yet another day of protest to Cairo's Tahrir Square, as Egyptians continue to fight back against President Mohamed Morsi's power grab — and with many more on the way, as the demonstrations are expected to grow throughout the night.
With the conflict in Gaza at a tenuous point, a Holocaust-denying Hungarian lawmaker thought the next logical thing to do would be to ask the government to draw up a list of Jews who pose a national security threat. Because, really, what could go wrong with that?
Joe Nocera on Obama's new cabinet, Jonah Goldberg on Mohamed Morsi, Dana Milbank on Rick Santorum, Peter Hakim on Mexico, and Sarah Ditum on gender-neutral toys.
Gosh, it's totally inappropriate to laugh at the conflict in the Middle East, right? Well, it's totally Jon Stewart's fault.
The remains of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were exhumed and quickly reburied today as scientists removed samples from his body in the hopes of learning whether or not he might have been poisoned.
After handing himself new powers over the weekend — and taking heat for it across the globe — Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi met with the country's top judges to assure them that he hasn't usurped their authority. So who believes him?
As the Syrian economy began to unravel and the military pressed hard against an armed rebellion, a Syrian government plane ferried what flight records describe as more than 200 tons of "bank notes" from Moscow.
The warden at his detention center denied the Times request to interview Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in person, so he delivered written responses through his lawyer instead. But the story does provide plenty of new background about how he duped actors and financial backers into helping to make his movie.
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