This spectacle had to have the white-hot spotlight, front page, bold type (whoa-oh!) ? to quote one of the evening?s celebrated songwriters ? because this Kennedy Center Honors gala was a talker. The night might have begun as the latest parade of cultural icons seated in an opera box with their president, but when a rapper and a Supreme Court justice take the same stage, it isn?t your standard lifetime achievement fete.

    

Eight of the nation?s largest technology companies called on President Obama and Congress on Monday to impose strict new curbs on surveillance that, if enacted, would dramatically reshape intelligence operations that U.S. officials have portrayed as integral to the war on terrorism.

    

The firm that threatened to foreclose on hundreds of struggling D.C. homeowners is a mystery: It lists no owners, no local office, no Web site.

Aeon Financial is incorporated in Delaware, operates from mail-drop boxes in Chicago and is represented by a law firm with an address at a 7,200-square-foot estate on a mountainside near Vail, Colo.

    

SEOUL ? North Korea on Monday confirmed its purge of Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, saying that he abused drugs, disobeyed orders and worked in secret to build up his base of power.

    

We are locked in a generational war, which will get worse before it gets better. Indeed, it may not get better for a long time. No one wants to admit this, because it?s ugly and unwelcome. Parents are supposed to care for their children, and children are supposed to care for their aging parents. For families, these collective obligations may work. But what makes sense for families doesn?t always succeed for society as a whole. The clash of generations is intensifying.

    

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.