The captain of the sunken South Korean ferry and three of his crew members were charged with homicide on Thursday. If convicted, all four could face could face the death penalty.

An oil pipe in Los Angeles county ruptured early Thursday morning, spilling at least 10,000 gallons of crude oil into streets. The spilled oil covers roughly half a mile in Glendale and is reportedly knee-deep in some areas, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

At least half a dozen raging wildfires spread through San Diego county today in what one observer is calling "a scene from Armageddon."

A spokesperson for the Standard Hotel said on Wednesday that they identified and fired the employee who sold the now-infamous Met Brawl video to TMZ.

The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius will be suspended for at least a month so that the former Olympian can be assessed by a team of psychiatrists.

Ravi Somaiya and David Carr of the New York Times report that executive editor Jill Abramson’s departure was prompted, in part, by her attempt to recruit top Guardian editor Janine Gibson to serve alongside then-managing editor Dean Baquet without consulting Baquet himself.

Was ousted New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson paid less than her predecessor, Bill Keller, and other male colleagues who held lesser titles at the paper? The Times has several different answers.

Incest is pretty integral to the plot of Game of Thrones, but the brother-sister relations have always been fictional—a fact that's apparently a big disappointment for the producers of the show.

The most surprising part of this terrifying clown video is that there weren't more heart attacks involved.

Rihanna may have no problem breaking a teenage fan's heart by encouraging millions of Twitter followers as they gang up on her, but she was quick to make amends for breaking someone's phone last week.

Ken Auletta of The New Yorker reports that, “several weeks ago,” fired New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson “discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, managing editor, were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs.”

A gust of wind blows Pope Francis's mantle as he arrives in St. Peter's Square for the weekly general audience on Wednesday. Image via Gregorio Borgia/AP.

The death toll from Tuesday's explosion at a Turkish coal mine now stands at 274, making it the worst mining disaster in the country's history. As many as 150 workers remain missing.

A 16-year-old Baltimore girl thought she had found the perfect outfit for her school's Hollywood-themed prom last week, inspired by her idol Rihanna. She had a blast at the dance, but then the photos hit the Internet.

Three days after Ross Douthat denounced the "corrupt" brand-driven corporatist ideology poisoning higher education, Thomas Friedman writes that the elite "Davos Man" must "[m]ove over" and bow to the masses who are mobilizing all over the world. Revolution now! On the center-right of the Times op-ed page!

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is stepping down, Politico reports. Dean Baquet, the paper’s managing editor, has been chosen to replace her. Abramson, a 17-year Times staffer, succeeded Bill Keller as executive editor in September 2011, becoming the first woman to do so. Her successor, Baquet, will be the first African American executive editor of the Times.

Miners are helped by rescue workers and friends from a coal mine on Wednesday in Soma, Turkey, more than 19 hours after an explosion and fire killed at least 238 miners and trapped hundreds more. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said 787 workers had been in the mine when the blast occurred. Image via Ozgu Ozdemir/Getty.

Senior pranks are a rite of passage, sure, but let's be real, South Forsyth High Class of 2014: hanging a sign from the side of a school wall that reads "Nigga we made it" was probably not the best idea.

BuzzFeed is both the 44th most popular website in America and a constantly revolving red carpet for celebrities, both animal and human, who regularly swing through the site's offices in Flatiron. Today brought the charmingly rude skate-rapper Tyler, the Creator, and...it's not going well.

A response to those who lost and are still losing their shit over the Michael Sam kiss: "There simply needs to be more queer smooching to desensitize the world. So with that, I hereby launch the Great Facebook Kiss-In, urging everyone...to change their profile pics to two women kissing or two men kissing."