Search results for

State and local health departments are better prepared to handle for public health emergencies since the Sept. 11 attacks. But budget cuts are chipping away at those gains.

Three days of intense pressure persuaded House GOP leaders to give in and go along with a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut and extend unemployment compensation benefits. Congress convenes on Friday in hopes of approving the stopgap measure.

As with everything happening in Congress these days, the deal reached Thursday to pass a 2-month extension of a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed wasn't a "done deal" until one more step was taken.

Also: Pakistan rejects U.S. conclusions about airstrikes that killed 24 of Pakistani soldiers; world leaders gather to pay respects to Vaclav Havel; U.S. hopes to buy missiles that have disappeared in Libya.

It's said to be made of a "metal alloy known to man." But it isn't known yet just what it is. The object weighs about 13 pounds and is about 43 inches in circumference. Local authorities say it doesn't appear to be dangerous.

Back in the 1970s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration grew increasingly concerned about the casual use of antibiotics in livestock production. Now, in the quiet days before Christmas, the agency quietly withdrew a proposal to regulate the industry's use of the drugs.

The Assad regime has been saying it is battling armed gangs and terrorists. It says today's attacks prove its point. Regime opponents are saying the government may have been behind the bombings.

By tracking the blinking light of distant stars, NASA's Kepler space telescope has identified the first Earth-sized exoplanets, and another which orbits its star in the "Goldilocks zone," where liquid water--and possibly life--could exist. Principal investigator William Borucki talks about the newly discovered worlds.

Some spend all year waiting for the holidays. But is excitement overrated? Author Ben Dolnick describes the emotional ups and downs of impatience.

It took 40 years for Bill Conlin to write his way into baseball's Hall of Fame — but just one newspaper story for his career to unravel. Conlin stepped down from his job at the Philadelphia Daily News this week, hours before its sister paper, the Inquirer, published a lengthy investigation into charges that Conlin had sexually abused children in the 1970s. The alleged victims say they were emboldened to come forward by the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State.