MOSCOW ? Russia blamed authorities in Kiev on Monday for the violence in eastern Ukraine, accusing them of trying to ignite a civil war in a region where pro-Russian militants have been defying the central government.

An obscure Internet startup is roiling the television industry with an old-school technology: The antenna.

The startup, Aereo, uses thousands of tiny antennas to capture broadcast television programs, then converts the shows into online video streams for subscribers in 11 cities.

MOKPO, South Korea ? South Korean President Park Geun-hye castigated the captain and some crew members of a sunken ferry on Monday, saying their actions in abandoning a vessel with hundreds of passengers still aboard were ?tantamount to murder.?

A new drug designed to slow the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating disease that overwhelmingly affects boys and typically leaves them needing wheelchairs by their teens and dead in their 20s, has received a long-awaited boost from the Food and Drug Administration.

A 16-year-old California boy flew halfway across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii ? unconscious ? while stowed away in a Hawaiian Airlines flight wheel well, the FBI says. He?s alive.

That?s how it appears. But the story is so incredible that some are wondering if it is credible.

CHICAGO ? Despite recommended limits on codeine use in children, the potent painkiller is prescribed in pediatric cases in at least half a million emergency-room visits each year, a study suggests.

Use of the drug in that setting is hardly rampant ? just 3 percent of children?s ER visits resulted in codeine prescriptions in 2010, the 10-year study found. But with more than 25 million ER visits by children each year, the authors say far too many are getting the drug when better options are available.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange penned an open letter to British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Assange in an upcoming film, praising the actor's talents but slamming his involvement with the film and turning down the actor's invitation to meet in person. Assange, who is currently holed up at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, wrote a letter to Cumberbatch dated January 15, 2013, that was published on Wednesday on the anti-secrecy website ahead of the October 18 theatrical release of Walt Disney Co's DreamWorks film "The Fifth Estate. ...

By Eric Kelsey BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) - Barkhad Abdi, a tall wisp of a man with a narrow face and a wide grin, sat on the sofa in his hotel suite with one eye on the television and another on a view of the Hollywood Hills. The 28-year-old Somali-American, who had worked the past year at his brother's mobile phone store in Minneapolis, could hardly have called himself an actor when he began production in British director Paul Greengrass' thriller "Captain Phillips. ...

By Tom Heneghan PARIS (Reuters) - The French theatre, opera and film director Patrice Chereau, who mounted one of the most famous productions of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle in Bayreuth in the 1970s, has died at the age of 68. Chereau, who was preparing a production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" when he succumbed to lung cancer, was a restless innovator who began directing at high school in Paris and never looked back. ...

(Reuters) - American actress Scarlett Johansson has been named the sexiest woman alive for the second time by Esquire, the men's lifestyle magazine said on Monday. "The Avengers" star was named sexiest woman in 2006 and is the only woman to have been given the title twice by the publication. The annual recipient of the title is chosen by Esquire editors. Husky-voiced Johansson, who rose to prominence as a teenager in the 2001 cult film "Ghost World," stars in three films this fall. ...

NBCNews.com's political cartoonists take a look back at the past week.

This blog is not dead.

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: If you can't make it to the South Pacific's eclipse zone to watch the sun turn into a "ring of fire" on Thursday, you can still see the spectacle online.

From ?The Daddle? to ?The Freedom Flask?, Willie Geist offers some really bad ideas for dad this year.