Most Popular News

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months — about 20 percent of their value — Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday as lawmakers began investigating how turmoil in the financial industry is whittling away workers' nest eggs.

JUAREZ, Mexico - A 990-pound bedridden man who had appealed on Mexican television for help tackling his weight problem died Tuesday of heart failure, his family said.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - This volcanic island near the Arctic Circle is on the brink of becoming the first "national bankruptcy" of the global financial meltdown.

Narcissists like to be in charge, so it stands to reason that a new study shows individuals who are overconfident about their abilities are most likely to step in as leaders, be they politicians or power brokers.

WASHINGTON - Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc., the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has his William Ayers connection. Now John McCain may have an Iran-Contra connection. In the 1980s, McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.

Twenty-eight days to go and the most recent polls show Sen. Barack Obama continues to widen his lead against Sen. John McCain.

BOSTON - Five Massachusetts men became the first divers to reach the wreck of a 19th-century steamship that sank in one of the most destructive storms in New England history, and say they saw an array of artifacts like dishes and mugs but no human remains.

NEW YORK - The misery worsened on Wall Street Tuesday, with stocks piling on losses late in the session and bringing the two-day decline in the Dow Jones industrials to more than 875 points amid escalating worries about credit markets and the financial sector.

WASHINGTON - Don't give over-the-counter cold remedies to kids under 4, drug companies said Tuesday. What sniffling little ones need, doctors said, are plenty of fluids and lots of tender, loving care.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's practice of charging the state when she stays in her home must be reviewed to determine if she should pay taxes on the payments, state Finance Director Kim Garnero said Tuesday.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Federal agents say they have detained more than 300 suspected illegal immigrants in a raid on a South Carolina chicken processing plant.

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a gene mutation linked to the most common cause of blindness in the developed world, holding out the prospect of better treatments and perhaps eventually a cure.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells audiences the election is about the "truthfulness and judgment" needed to be president. But the Alaska governor often stretches the truth herself.

A NASA probe has begun beaming back stunning new images from its successful second flyby of Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON - A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Tuesday to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States, rebuking the government in a landmark decision that could set the stage for the release of dozens other prisoners in Cuba.

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Bodies are cut up and dumped in acid. Victims are stripped naked and hung from bridges. Others have their tongues cut out before being murdered -- Mexican gangs are using horrifying methods to outdo each other in an already harrowing drugs war.

TOKYO (AFP) - As the economic might of Japan faces up to the global banking crisis a single cat has boosted the finances of a small Japanese city by millions of dollars, according to a study.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand suffered its worst political violence in more than 16 years as police battled protesters who besieged the Parliament Tuesday in their struggle to change the country's system of democracy. One woman died and more than 400 people were injured.