Authorities in northern Illinois say an explosion has destroyed a house and the bodies of the elderly couple who occupied the home have been found in the wreckage.

Authorities in Pennsylvania say a fourth teenager has been charged in the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant.

Schuylkill County prosecutors charged the teen in juvenile court Friday with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and other offenses. His name and age are not being released.

Three others are charged as adults in the July attack in the town of Shenandoah on 25-year-old factory worker Luis Ramirez.

FBI Director Robert Mueller last year announced with considerable fanfare a new partnership between his agency and civil rights organizations. The goal: To bring justice in long-ignored murders from the civil rights era. The outcome: Not one case has been prosecuted under the FBI's Cold Case Initiative, which actually began two years ago with no fanfare at all.

Edgar Allan Poe never lived in one city for long, and ever since he died and was buried here in 1849 this city has claimed him as its own.

But last year Edward Pettit, a Poe scholar in Philadelphia, began arguing that Poe's remains belong in Philadelphia. Poe wrote many....

The fact is that teen pregnancy is a direct result of today's government and school policies that limit access to birth control and withhold education about sexual health. These are George W. Bush's policies. Now John McCain and Sarah Palin want to extend them with new vigor.

The U.S. government plans to put troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers reported on Friday.

US stocks yesterday fell for a fourth successive day, re-entering bear market territory, as rising jobless claims and weak retail sales figures raised fears about the health of the economy.

Federal aviation officials said Friday they are investigating 17 cases in which 11 air carriers did not comply with government safety directives.

WASHINGTON - The federal highway trust fund will run out of money this month, requiring delays in payments to states for transportation construction projects, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said today.

The Alaska Legislature will work to complete its ethics investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner earlier than expected, weeks before the national election.

Tropical Storm Hanna picked up speed Friday as it cruised toward the Carolinas, promising to deliver gusty winds and heavy rain during a dash up the Eastern Seaboard that could wash out the weekend for millions of people.

A federal appeals court is temporarily blocking former White House counsel Harriet Miers from testifying about the firing of 9 U.S. attorneys.

Joblessness grew by an additional 84,000 in August 2008, bumping the national unemployment rate up to 6.1 percent. This is the highest level in five years and the eighth straight month of job losses. The economy has lost more than 600,000 over that time period.

WACO, Texas -- Jurors sent a triple-murderer back to death row on Thursday after his death sentence had been overturned on appeal.

After hearing eight days of witness testimony in the sentencing retrial of Billie Wayne Coble, 59, the jury deliberated about four hours before sentencing him to death. The jurors had the option of sentencing him to life in prison, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported in its online edition Thursday.

Victims of Hurricane Gustav who can't return to their homes over the next month because of storm damage or power outages can have their hotel costs covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, officials said Thursday.

Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability.

About 2,500 ballots remain missing from an Aug. 26 primary in Palm Beach County, Fla.

County workers will fan out to polling places Friday to check whether ballots may have been left there rather than being transferred to a central counting facility. Elections workers also will be counting voter signatures in logs from the primary as they try to account for discrepancies.

Much of the last century after World War II was defined by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Jack Abramoff, the onetime powerhouse Republican lobbyist whose influence peddling led to one of the biggest public corruption investigations in recent history, was sentenced by a federal judge today to four more years in prison..