The U.S. team won the Women's World Cup soccer final 5-2 in a game that brought U.S. fans to their feet, reduced polished sportswriters to all-caps expressions of awe and rewrote FIFA records — and that was just in the first half.
The game began in spectacular fashion: In the first five minutes, captain Carli Lloyd scored two swift goals — the fastest two goals in FIFA history, according to the FIFA Women's World Cup Twitter account.
Just a few minutes later, Lauren Holiday brought the score up to 3-0.
Nearly 500 people were injured at a water park in Taiwan after an explosion at a music event caused a fire to break out Saturday night.
The fire started during an evening rap performance in New Taipei City, NPR's Frank Langfitt, reporting from Shanghai, tells our Newscast unit. The accident at Formosa Fun Coast was caught on cellphone video.
"At one point, green powder shot out from the stage over the audience," Frank says. "The powder quickly ignited, enveloping fans. Some people staggered around on fire, while others collapsed to the ground."
U.S. airstrikes in Libya have killed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who led the 2013 attack on an Algerian gas plant that killed at least 38 foreign hostages.
Two Pentagon officials confirm that U.S. airstrikes killed Belmokhtar. The Libyan government also released a statement confirming his death.
The Fun Home had a fun night at the 2015 Tonys: the musical, based on Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, won not only best musical but best book, best original score, best direction of a musical and best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical.
It took nearly four decades, but a horse has once again attained the honor that some call the most difficult achievement in sports: American Pharoah, after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, ran to victory in the Belmont Stakes as well.
He's the first Triple Crown winner since 1978. With his win, a total of 12 horses have now achieved the feat.
American Pharoah took the lead early in the mile-and-a-half long race, with Frosted close on his tail. From there, the colt never gave up the front position.
American Pharoah is the king of the nation's horse races this month: in a driving rain, the Kentucky Derby winner took home top prize at the Preakness Stakes Saturday.
Ridden by Victor Espinoza, he left the other horses at Pimlico Race Course eating his mud; with an unofficial time of 1:58.46, he led by an impressive seven lengths.
If he can win the Belmont Stakes on June 6, he'll be the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.
NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports: Organizers of the contests for cartoons and caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad had hired 40 off-duty police and security officers — including some members of local SWAT teams — in anticipation of the possibility of trouble. The evening, billed as a free-speech promotion, was nearing its end when two unidentified men drove up to the building and opened fire, wounding a security guard in the leg. The assailants were engaged immediately by law enforcement in a gunfight and shot dead in the parking lot.
American Pharoah, ridden by Victor Espinoza, has won the 141st Kentucky Derby with a time of 2:03:02.
He raced to victory before the largest Derby crowd ever — 170,513, reports The Associated Press.
American Pharoah, owned by Ahmed Zayat, was the favorite heading into the race at Churchill Downs in Louisville. He had to fight Firing Line and Dortmund for the victory; the three were neck-and-neck (and neck) for a stretch, but American Pharoah pulled ahead at the end. Firing Line came in second.
The University of Connecticut continues to dominate women's college basketball: The Huskies plowed past the University of Maryland and are headed to the NCAA women's basketball championship game, where they'll meet Notre Dame.
The Terrapins faced a daunting task heading into the game. Connecticut, the overall top seed for the tournament, stands far above the competition.
"The Huskies have won the last two titles and obliterated opponents in this tournament by an average margin of 41 points a game," NPR's Tom Goldman noted to our Newscast unit.
Wisconsin defeated Kentucky 71-64 in Saturday's nail-biter second Final Four game Saturday, breaking the Wildcats' winning streak; the Badgers meet Duke to play for the men's college basketball title.
The faceoff between Kentucky and Wisconsin, both top-seeded teams, was highly anticipated. On the line for the undefeated Wildcats: their shot at men's college basketball's first perfect season since 1976.
#NPRreads is a new feature we're testing out on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers throughout our newsroom will share pieces that have kept them reading. They'll share tidbits on Twitter using the #NPRreads hashtag, and on occasion we'll share a longer take here on the blog.
This week, we share with you four reads.
First, one from Camila Domonoske, a producer for NPR.org:
March Madness has begun: The NCAA has announced the seeds for the 2015 men's basketball tournament.
As expected, Kentucky is seeded first in the Midwest Region, and is also the top seed overall. If the thus-far undefeated team wins the tournament, they'll be the first undefeated men's basketball team in nearly four decades.
In the East, Villanova won the top spot; in the South, that went to Duke, and in the West, Wisconsin was seeded No. 1.
For sale: lovingly handcrafted shares of Etsy stock, proudly produced in the USA by a team of entrepreneurs, designers and coders. Please note, there may be some variation in size, color and profits.
A decade ago, Etsy launched as a way for crafters and DIY-ers to sell their handmade goods online. Now the New York-based e-commerce site has filed for an initial public offering.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) took home the best picture award at the 87th annual Academy Awards; the film also earned director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárittu the Oscar for directing.
Julianne Moore won best actress for her work in Still Alice, and Eddie Redmayne won best actor for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
As a cold rain poured down, the New England Patriots crushed the Super Bowl dreams of the Indianapolis Colts with a 45-7 victory.
The Patriots established their lead early, scoring two touchdowns in the first quarter. The Colts scored one touchdown in the second quarter, but after a Patriots field goal, New England still entered halftime 10 points in the lead.
President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday will call for higher taxes on wealthy Americans and tax credits for the middle class, The Associated Press reports, citing anonymous senior administration officials.
The proposed tax changes will include raising the capital gains rate on couples making over half a million dollars a year from 23.8 to 28 percent, the wire service continues, and requiring estates to pay capital gains tax on inherited securities.
Ships and planes have resumed the search for AirAsia flight QZ8501, which lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday. The search efforts, which were suspended overnight, picked up again at dawn, The Associated Press reports.
Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, says the plane has likely crashed into the ocean, Reuters reports. Soelistyo calls that an "initial estimation."
Two New York police officers were ambushed and fatally shot while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood Saturday. The suspected gunman has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
When it comes to the perfect holiday sweater, for many people, cheesy is good — tacky is better — and astonishingly ugly is best of all.
The demand for ugly holiday sweaters has reached such a height that it's changed how businesses stock for the season, as Eleanor Klibanoff reported for us on Weekend Edition Saturday. Wal-Mart and Kohl's sell new "vintage" ugly sweaters, and actual vintage stores have had to start searching for new stock to sell.
An undisclosed number of hostages are being held at a chocolate shop and cafe in Sydney, Australia. Reuters is reporting that police say they've made contact with the gunman and that TV footage showed three then two more people running from the scene. The number of hostages is said to be "not as high as 30," according to New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn.
University of Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota is the winner of this year's Heisman Trophy by a landslide. It's the first win for the Ducks.
The Associated Press reports:
"A pinpoint passer with wide-receiver speed, Mariota came into his junior the season as the favorite to win the Heisman and delivered a performance that turned the presentation ceremony into a foregone conclusion.
Risen, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the scope of the NSA's warrentless wiretapping program in 2005, refused, and risked jail as a result.
In June, however, Holder insisted that Risen wouldn't face jail time, saying, "As long as I'm attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail."
Republican congressman Bill Cassidy has defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana's runoff Senate election, boosting the Republican majority in the incoming Senate.
NPR's Debbie Elliott reported Friday that Cassidy, who has pledged to repeal Obamacare, followed a campaign strategy of linking Landrieu to Obama, highlighting her support of the unpopular president.
Remains of one of the 43 missing college students in Mexico have been identified, NPR's Mexico correspondent Carrie Kahn reports for our Newscast division.
DNA tests showed that bone fragments matched a student identified as Alexander Mora Venancio, 19, one of the students who went missing in September, allegedly kidnapped and murdered by a drug gang that was working with local police. The identification was announced on the Facebook page of the teaching school attended by the students, Kahn says, as well as by multiple media outlets.
Philip Crane, a former Illinois congressman who spent 35 years in the House of Representatives, has died of lung cancer at the age of 84.
Crane, a conservative Republican and anti-tax crusader, was a history professor before he became a politician. He entered Congress in 1969, and he "was the longest-serving House Republican when he was defeated in 2004 by Democrat and then-political newcomer Melissa Bean," writes The Associated Press. The wire service continues:
