NASA launched a satellite late Thursday on a mission to explore a little-studied region of the sun and to better forecast space weather that can disrupt communications systems on Earth.
Nation and World
SANFORD, Fla. — George Zimmerman’s defense attorney insisted during several testy exchanges with an important prosecution witness Thursday that Trayvon Martin injected race into a confrontation with the neighborhood watch volunteer and insinuated the young woman was not believable because of inconsistencies in her story.
DENVER — An appeals court said Thursday that Hobby Lobby and a sister company that sells Christian books and supplies can fight the nation’s new health care law on religious grounds, ruling the portion of the law that requires them to offer certain kinds of birth control to their employees is particularly onerous, and suggesting the companies shouldn’t have to pay millions of dollars in fines while their claims are considered.
BYRON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The FBI says a Michigan man who recognized his mom in surveillance photos of a bank robbery called police to turn her in.
ATTLEBORO, Mass. — A judge on Thursday denied bail for former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a friend.
BOSTON — A federal grand jury on Thursday returned a 30-count indictment against the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, and many of the charges carry the possibility of life in prison or the death penalty.
LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson’s oldest son described the frantic efforts to revive his father to a jury, a scene of tears and agony that ended a dozen idyllic years being raised by one of pop music’s superstars.
From a tiny fossil bone found in the frozen Yukon, scientists have deciphered the genetic code of an ancient horse about 700,000 years old — nearly 10 times older than any other animal that has had its genome mapped.
WASHINGTON — Far-reaching immigration legislation cruised toward passage in the Senate as House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday on a different approach that cracks down on millions living in the United States illegally rather than offering them a chance at citizenship.
Airborne laser technology has uncovered a network of roadways and canals, illustrating a bustling ancient city linking Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temples complex.
Texas marked a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday evening, executing its 500th inmate since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
After a one-woman filibuster and a raucous crowd helped derail a GOP-led effort to restrict Texas abortions, Gov. Rick Perry announced Wednesday that he’s calling lawmakers back next week to try again.
A two-headed turtle has hatched at the San Antonio Zoo and officials have named her Thelma and Louise.
The world’s first space conversation experiment between a robot and humans is ready to be launched.
Moscow’s main airport swarmed with media from around the globe Wednesday, but the man they were looking for — National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden — was nowhere to be seen. The mystery of the former spy’s whereabouts only deepened a day after President Vladimir Putin said that Snowden was in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport.