In American culture, the firefighter is almost a mythic being. Immortalized in movies such as “Hellfighters,” ‘’Backdraft” and “Ladder 49,” they do things that most people could never conceive of doing. They are, as we see time and again, the first ones into a disaster and the last ones out.
BOSTON — Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and heir to a ketchup company fortune, was hospitalized in critical condition Sunday while on Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island.
A conservation group is asking a federal judge to set aside federal land managers’ plans to remove sagebrush, pinion pines and junipers across a large swath of public lands in eastern Nevada.
An influential Russian parliament member who often speaks for the Kremlin encouraged NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday to accept Venezuela’s offer of asylum.
Pilots of Asiana Flight 214 were flying too slowly as they approached San Francisco airport, triggering a control board warning that the jetliner could stall, and then tried to abort the landing seconds before crashing, according to federal safety officials.
An Asiana Airlines flight crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, killing at least two people, injuring dozens of others and forcing passengers to jump down the emergency inflatable slides to safety as flames tore through the plane. One person was unaccounted for from among the 307 passengers and crew, said airport spokesman Doug Yakel. He said 181 people were taken to local hospitals. There were 291 passengers and 16 crew members.
WASHINGTON — A solar-powered aircraft has completed a history-making cross-country flight, landing at New York’s JFK airport.
Matt “BB Gun” Krause won his first-ever International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship on Saturday, returning the crown to a family that has dominated the annual competition in southwestern Michigan for four decades.
MEXICO CITY — The Popocatepetl volcano just east of Mexico City has spit out a cloud of ash and vapor 2 miles (3 kilometers) high over several days of eruptions, and Mexico City residents awoke Saturday to find a fine layer of volcanic dust on their cars.
Security forces boosted positions near a protest camp by supporters of ousted leader Mohammed Morsi as authorities Saturday plotted their next moves after violence claimed at least 36 lives across the country and deepened the battle lines in the divided nation.
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — Provincial police say one person has died after a train carrying crude oil derailed, triggering several explosions and a huge blaze in a town in eastern Quebec.
Islamic militants attacked a boarding school before dawn Saturday, dousing a dormitory in fuel and lighting it ablaze as students slept, survivors said. At least 30 people were killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria’s embattled northeast.
Egyptian military armored vehicles have raced onto a main bridge over the Nile River in Cairo in the first major move to break up clashes raging between Islamist backers of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and their opponents.
Support for gay marriage by companies as varied as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Starbucks gathering steam to change policies in states that bar same-sex couples from tying the knot.
Paula Deen announced Thursday that she has cut business ties with the agent who helped make her a Food Network star and launch a media and merchandising empire that has largely crumbled in the wake of her admission that she used racial slurs in the past.
