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The Obama administration is making some federal funds contingent on schools using student test scores and classroom observations to evaluate teachers. New York City recently sparked a controversy when it rated thousands of teachers with test scores alone — and then released those ratings to the public.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta travels to Brussels this week to meet with NATO ministers. The U.S. is desperate to get NATO countries to pony up more money for Afghanistan, to keep the security effort from collapsing once NATO pulls out and Afghan forces take over.

The Pentagon has launched an investigation. The "behavior and these images are entirely inconsistent" with the values of the U.S. military and its allies, Gen. John Allen says. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls it "inhuman conduct."

A survey by the Interactive Autism Network found that nearly two-thirds of children with autism spectrum disorders have been bullied at some point. And it found that these kids are three times as likely as typical kids to have been bullied in the past month.

The people of Japan have been remembering the dreadful events of March 11, 2012, when at 2:46 p.m., a massive earthquake struck. Soon afterward a tsunami crashed into the northeast coast. The village of Minamisanriku, once a beautiful fishing community and tourist destination, was one of the towns worst affected. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports.

A fierce playwright, a fiery socialist and a pioneering feminist, Lillian Hellman lived unapologetically. But today she's remembered as a fabulist and a rabble-rouser — if she's remembered at all. A new Hellman biography, A Difficult Woman, hopes to set the record straight.

Republican Mitt Romney is sticking with his long-standing attack on President Obama as someone not up to the job of turning around the economy. But the Obama campaign has stopped portraying Romney as a flip-flopping, say-anything politician. It is now characterizing him as an extreme conservative.

The man who was one of Hosni Mubarak's leading confidants for years has now entered Egypt's presidential race. This has shaken up an already unpredictable contest and raised concerns among many Egyptians.

Prosecutors accuse the former Democratic presidential candidate of accepting and failing to report nearly $1 million that two old friends and campaign donors funneled through intermediaries to support a lavish lifestyle for his mistress. But political and legal observers are shaking their heads at the case.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is expected to show her support for two big vaccination initiatives in Haiti, including one against cholera. Previously, U.S. health officials were cool to the cholera pilot project .