Scott Neuman

Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill will spend three months in jail for failing to pay income tax on about $1.8 million in earnings.

Hill, 37, pleaded guilty last year to three counts of tax evasion. She was sentenced on Monday.

The Associated Press reports:

"During a forceful statement to the judge, Hill explained she had always meant to eventually pay the taxes but was unable to during a period of time when she dropped out of the music business.

The FBI says Monday it foiled a terrorist attack in a small Minnesota town, but officials offered few details.

The Pentagon has for the first time fingered Beijing directly for cyberattacks against both U.S. government networks and commercial computers, calling the practice a "serious concern."

The new report says numerous U.S. diplomatic, economic and defense industry networks were hacked in 2012 at the direction of China's government and its military.

As NPR's Tom Bowman reports: "In previous reports, the Pentagon has linked computer attacks to China, but not its government."

The grim toll from the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last month has risen to more than 650, as more bodies have been pulled from the rubble of the eight-story complex.

The number of people confirmed dead has now reached 657, CNN quoted Col. Sheikh Zaman, a military official overseeing the recovery operation in Savar, as saying.

The Earth's wettest regions are likely to get wetter while the most arid will get drier due to warming of the atmosphere caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, according to a new NASA analysis of more than a dozen climate models.

Iowa's Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the state's health department must include the names of both same-sex spouses as parents on a child's birth certificate.

The trial in Munich of an alleged neo-Nazi woman accused as an accomplice in a string of murders of mostly ethnic Turks is, as The Associated Press writes, "forcing Germans to confront painful truths about racism and the broader treatment of immigrants in society."

The Walt Disney Co.'s decision to end its apparel production in Bangladesh after more than 500 people died in the collapse of a garment factory complex has sparked fears of a mass exodus of Western retailers.

The government of Kazakhstan says it's cooperating with U.S. officials in the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings, a day after two men from the Central Asian country were charged in connection with the blasts that killed three people and wounded more than 250.

The U.S. Navy is inaugurating its first squadron that mixes advanced unmanned drones with conventional aircraft.

The maritime strike squadron, nicknamed the "Magicians," will be officially launched at the Naval Air Station North Island on Coronado, near San Diego.

Construction workers applauded Thursday as a crane raised the flag-draped spire of One World Trade Center to the top of the skyscraper.

When they install the spire at a later date, it will cap the structure at a symbolic 1,776 feet. The Port Authority says the spire, which acts as a fixture for various antennas, will bump the 104-story building to be the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, reports New Jersey's The Star-Ledger.

However, as the newspaper reports:

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI moved back to the Vatican and his new retirement residence Thursday, where he will live side by side with the reigning pontiff, Pope Francis.

The arrangement makes history because Benedict, 86, is the first pope to voluntarily step down as head of the Roman Catholic Church in more than 700 years.

Update at 4:05 p.m. ET:

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell raised concerns about the lack of transparency in Kenneth Bae's trial and urged North Korea to him "amnesty and immediate release."

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that Ventrell wouldn't say whether the U.S. was considering sending a high-level envoy to Pyongyang as it has done in the past to win the release of U.S. citizens in North Korea.

Here's our original post:

"Compassionate release" programs that free inmates with terminal illnesses and limited life expectancies are poorly run and lack clear standards, the Department of Justice's inspector general said on Wednesday.

The Associated Press reports:

A new video reveals just how close NASA came last year to losing its $500 million Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in a narrowly averted collision with a defunct, Cold War-era Soviet spy satellite.

On March 29, 2012, Julie McEnery, the project scientist for Fermi, received an automatically generated email warning that the two satellites were due in just a few days to pass within 700 feet of one another as their respective orbits crossed.

The army chief in Pakistan, a country with a long history of military coups, has hinted that he's unhappy with the detention of former President and ex-General Pervez Musharraf.

Most Muslims around the globe tend to be deeply committed to their faith and believe that it should shape not only their personal lives, but the societies they live in, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center (PDF).

Pew's face-to-face survey of more than 38,000 Muslims, including many in the United States, between 2008-12 produced a telling snapshot of attitudes and beliefs.

If only there was an Oscar for "Smallest Movie," a group of IBM nanophysicists would be a shoo-in with their new one-minute stop-motion video starring 130 atoms.

A Boy and His Atom, which debuts Wednesday, has already been certified by the Guinness folks as the "world's smallest movie."

While it isn't exactly the most complicated story line — the nearly monochrome video features a boy, appropriately named Adam, who dances and plays with a toy atom — what's really amazing is how they did it.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been banned for life from running for political office, a high court ruled on Tuesday.

The move by the Peshawar High Court appears to end the possibility that Musharraf, who returned to the country last month after four years in self-imposed exile, will stand in the May 11 parliamentary elections as he had hoped.

Lawmakers in Cyprus approved a controversial $13 billion bailout from international lenders that's aimed at keeping the country from a messy default and withdrawal from the eurozone.

The agreement, which totals $30 billion when Cyprus' own contributions are included, passed 29-27 in the 56-seat Parliament.

The ruling center-right Democratic Rally party and its ally, the Democratic party, voted for the measure.