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Syrian President Bashar Assad essentially dismissed attempts by the United States and Russia to bring the civil war in the country to a political solution.

"Believing that a political conference will stop terrorism on the ground is unreal," Assad said in an exclusive interview with the Argentine newspaper El Clarin. Assad also took the usual stance on a wide range of issues.

After protests from some MPs and after only about 15 minutes, the Afghan parliament halted debate Saturday on a bill aimed at curbing violence against women.

As the BBC reports, the bill would have solidified a law passed by presidential decree in 2009, which banned "violence against women, child marriages and forced marriages."

Breaching protocol, a Russian official let a name slip during an interview with Interfax, the state news agency.

The interview was with a representative of the FSB, the Russian security agency, and the name he made public was of the person Russia believes is the CIA station chief in Moscow.

The Guardian explains:

On average, men aren't as healthy as women.

Men don't live as long, and they're more likely to engage in risky behaviors, like smoking and drinking.

But in the past decade, global health funding has focused heavily on women.

Programs and policies for men have been "notably absent," says Sarah Hawkes from the University of London's Institute of Global Health.

After a relatively calm few weeks, North Korea fired three short-range missiles Saturday, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said.

NPR's Louisa Lim reports that North Korea fired the missiles in defiance of international sanctions. She filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"North Korea launched two guided missiles this morning and a third in the afternoon, according to South Korea's defense ministry — all landed in waters off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula."

Six years ago, the FBI took on a challenge: To review what it called cold-case killings from the civil rights era. The investigation into 112 cases from the 1950s and 1960s is winding down, and civil rights activists are weighing the FBI's efforts.

The review comes with word this week of the death of a man who'd been named, by a newspaper investigation, as a possible suspect in one notorious case.

The Case

Host Scott Simon talks to NPR's David Folkenflik about the Justice Department's seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, and Bloomberg's secret monitoring of its sources' and customers' activities.

NPR's Ari Shapiro joins host Scott Simon to talk about the Obama administration's week. The president was buffeted by revelations that the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status and that the Justice Department had subpoenaed reporter phone records. On top of that, Republicans continue to allege that the White House engaged in a cover-up of talking points about the attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Host Scott Simon talks to ESPN's Howard Bryant about the NBA playoffs, Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper's collision with a wall, and David Beckham's retirement from soccer.

This week, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended lowering the legal limit of blood alcohol content for drivers to .05 or even lower. Currently, it's illegal to drive in all states with a BAC of .08 or higher. Host Scott Simon speaks with Dr. Anthony Liguori of Wake Forest School of Medicine about alcohol's impact on driving ability.

It's been a long slog already for the bipartisan immigration overhaul proposed by the Senate's Gang of Eight.

The legislation has been the target of more than 300 amendments during days of debate and votes by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But while the bill has largely held its own so far, its prospects for getting through Congress remain uncertain.

In Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's view, the immigration overhaul is "moving very well."

"It's moving a lot faster than people said it would," says Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

In the seven years since her last album, Audra McDonald has kept busy. She spent several years in Hollywood, filming the television series Private Practice. She's gotten divorced and remarried, absorbed the shock of losing her father in a plane crash and watched her daughter, Zoe, grow up from a kindergartener to a middle-schooler.

France is officially the 14th country to legalize gay marriage. Saturday, President Francois Hollande signed a bill that Parliament had passed in April, which gives same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt.

Two Metro-North Railroad trains have collided on a stretch of track near Fairfield, Conn., causing a "major derailment" and "preliminary reports of injuries," according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

[Update at 8:55 p.m. ET: The Associated Press quotes Connecticut officials as saying about 50 people have been hurt, four of them seriously.]

According to The Hartford Courant:

Of all the controversies swirling around the Obama White House, the Internal Revenue Service scandal seems likeliest to have the longest shelf life.

While the Benghazi affair has long been in the news, it's never really taken off as an issue beyond the Republican base.

The British Foreign Office is happy to assist its citizens, but officials want to make clear that there are some requests they won't fulfill.

Such as supplying Olympic tickets or doing a background check on that Swedish woman you met online.

Those are just a few of the "often good natured" but distracting requests that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) says it received over the past year, according to a press release issued Thursday.

When the American Psychiatric Association releases its new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- DSM-5 -- this weekend, lots of journalists and commentators will refer to it as "psychiatry's bible."

That's a term that makes the manual's authors and other mental experts cringe.

An unsolved triple murder in the Boston suburbs is getting a closer look in the wake of the marathon bombings. One of the victims may have been a friend of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. That's prompting authorities to revisit the 2011 case.

The murders took place in Waltham, Mass. On Sept. 12, 2011, police responded to a house in the leafy suburb a few miles west of Boston.

America's Cup, the oldest and most prestigious sailing competition, has hit some choppy water.

The death last week of British sailor and gold medal Olympian Andrew "Bart" Simpson when the boat he was crewing capsized and broke up during a practice run off San Francisco, has prompted tough questions about safety.

Audie Cornish speaks with political commentators E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss controversial IRS audits, the release of White House emails on Benghazi talking points and the Justice Department's seizure of AP phone logs.

President Obama's first term was free from the kind of scandal that consumes every ounce of political oxygen in Washington. Now, in light of a trio of controversies, his supporters find themselves in the uncomfortable and unaccustomed position of having to defend some hard-to-defend events.

Democrats have offered up a range of responses. They view the issues — Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department snooping on The Associated Press — as separate issues that shouldn't be lumped together.

The Illinois Senate has approved a measure to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, sending the bill to the governor for his signature.

The bill would be the strictest in the nation. According to The Chicago Tribune: