Ryan Villarreal

After half a century since the Beach Boys debuted in 1961, the band's three surviving original members took the stage at the Grammys on Sunday to play Good Vibrations, a song that revolutionized pop music in its experimentation, and signaled that the boys behind Surfin' USA and I Get Around had grown up and were getting groovy.

Kim Jong-un, North Korea's supreme leader, has been assassinated in Beijing, according to unsubstantiated rumors that spread from Chinese social media website Weibo. The rumors are swarming through Twitter, and have become the basis for some dark humor.

Suge Knight, forty-six-year-old rap kingpin, has a criminal record goes back over twenty years, running the gamut of illegal possession of weapons and controlled substances, assault charges, breaking parole and, of course, traffic violations. Of note is his long affiliation with the Mob Piru gang (allied with the Bloods) that has its origins in Compton, Calif.

President Barack Obama announced Thursday that 10 states have been exempted from certain requirements of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind, allowing them the freedom to determine their own methods for raising education standards.

A 19-year-old Tibetan man set himself on fire Wednesday in western China to protest government control over Tibetan-populated regions, and was taken away by authorities in an unknown condition.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced Wednesday that he may pardon journalists, politicians, and dissidents detained under an 2009 anti-terrorism law, while refuting claims that the arrests were politically motivated.

Tuesday marked the 12th annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, which aims to address the disparity of infection rates in black communities.

Comedian Roseanne Barr wasn't joking when she announced her presidential bid on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last August, and recently filed paperwork to run in the Green Party primary in July.

The Super Bowl halftime commercial, produced by Chrysler, is a rally cry for the Motor City that dispenses with the political divide surrounding the government bailouts of insolvent American automakers.

After two decades, Russian scientists have finally drilled through 13,000 feet of an Antarctic ice sheet to reach Lake Vostok, deemed the most alien lake on Earth, which has been sealed off from the planet's atmosphere for 20 million years.

Google paid tribute Thursday to the world record for largest observed snowflake on the 125th anniversary of its supposed sighting with a pastoral wintry banner, depicting a massive snowflake 10 times the size of a perplexed cow off to the side. The actual snowflake, witnessed by a rancher in Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887, was said to be 15 inches in diameter-closer to a cow's head than a flying saucer, but that really wouldn't make for a very interesting banner.

That Komen receives millions of dollars in funding from various corporate sponsors is no secret, but the controversy lies within the influence these companies might be having on some of the organization's stances. In particular, Komen has consistently denied any possible link between breast cancer and the chemical compound bisphenol A (BPA), which can be found in any number of consumer products sold by its sponsors-Coca-Cola, General Mills, and 3M being among them.

Survival International has released a series of photographs of an uncontacted tribe known as the Mashco-Piro, located in southeast Peru.

Robotics researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed small flying machines called nano quadrotors capable of insect-like maneuverability in the air.

DC Entertainment announced Wednesday that it will publish a prequel series of comic-books that precede the Watchmen stories written by Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and now compiled as a graphic novel.

Russia continues to sell arms to Syria as the Assad regime cracks down on political upheaval.

The Senate Banking Committee is proposing news sanctions on Iran in an effort to stall its nuclear ambitions.