Authorities overseeing the battle against hundreds of wildfires in California had a mixed assessment as the weather forecast for Sunday stirred both hope and concern across the state.
Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.
Gracia Burnham recalls a time when July Fourth fireworks sent her running for cover.
Brian "Young Gun" Krause has out-spit his father to claim his seventh championship at the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship.
A wildfire threatening thousands of homes in Southern California spread slowly through scenic canyonlands Saturday, straining resources as crews struggled to contain hundreds of other blazes around the state.
A 91-year-old woman who had crawled under her car to look for her keys ended up stuck beneath an axle for two days until her mail carrier noticed letters piling up, police said.
A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday.
Americans across the country mixed patriotism and plain old good fun to mark Independence Day on Friday, with solemn ceremony alternating with parades and hot-dog-eating hijinks.
About half a million people are expected Friday on the National Mall in Washington for the nation's birthday celebration, but they may be shocked at what they see.
What is patriotism? Is it serving your country during wartime, or making war on injustice in your hometown? Is it gathering with friends and setting off fireworks, or is patriotism a feeling that transcends words?
Authorities overseeing the battle against hundreds of wildfires in California had a mixed assessment as the weather forecast for Sunday stirred both hope and concern across the state.
Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.
Gracia Burnham recalls a time when July Fourth fireworks sent her running for cover.
Brian "Young Gun" Krause has out-spit his father to claim his seventh championship at the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship.
A wildfire threatening thousands of homes in Southern California spread slowly through scenic canyonlands Saturday, straining resources as crews struggled to contain hundreds of other blazes around the state.
A 91-year-old woman who had crawled under her car to look for her keys ended up stuck beneath an axle for two days until her mail carrier noticed letters piling up, police said.
A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday.
Americans across the country mixed patriotism and plain old good fun to mark Independence Day on Friday, with solemn ceremony alternating with parades and hot-dog-eating hijinks.
About half a million people are expected Friday on the National Mall in Washington for the nation's birthday celebration, but they may be shocked at what they see.
What is patriotism? Is it serving your country during wartime, or making war on injustice in your hometown? Is it gathering with friends and setting off fireworks, or is patriotism a feeling that transcends words?
A vast collection of 78 rpm records is being donated to Syracuse University by the estate of a prominent New York City record shop owner.
A 52-year-old Milwaukee-area man has been accused of faking heart attacks to avoid paying restaurant bills and cab fares.
World-record holder and defending champion Joey "Jaws" Chestnut held on to his hot dog-eating title Friday in an unprecedented tie-breaker at Nathan's Famous Fourth of July contest.
The call girl involved in a scandal that brought down New York's former governor has dropped a lawsuit claiming "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis exploited her image and name on the Internet.
Fast-moving flames early Friday burned the steep mountainsides a mile from homes on the northern edge of Goleta, California, near Santa Barbara.
Joey Chestnut has retained the top spot as winner of the annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island after first tying with archrival Takeru Kobayashi in a 10-minute chow-down and then beating him in a five-dog eat-off.
How would the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin feel about the way the United States has turned out 232 years after declaring its independence?
Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross celebrated the eve of the Fourth of July not with fireworks but with wedding vows.
To people around the world who have seen the video, Esmin Green is a symbol of a health-care system that seems to have failed horribly.
After nearly three years of excavation, archaeologists have confirmed the discovery of the site of George Washington's boyhood home near the banks of the Rappahannock River in northeast Virginia.
Arlan Ettinger will never forget the response he got when he took one of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks' hats to a meeting at the Apollo Theater in New York.
A former accountant for Rachael Ray's TV cooking show has filed a $1 million lawsuit saying he was forced out of his job because he has an eating disorder.
A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall's presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn't see the humor.
A rare and original manuscript of one of America's most patriotic songs has been discovered in a flea market bargain.
Piles of charred rubble smoldered near California's scenic coastal highway Thursday as a ferocious wildfire descended on the storied tourist town of Big Sur, destroying vacation homes and sending forest creatures running toward the sea for cover.
Those seeking the oohs and aahs of traditional Fourth of July fireworks could be sadly disappointed this year: Public displays and sales of boxed firecrackers are being canceled or scaled back across the nation, victims of a sluggish economy, wildfire fears and product shortages caused by a warehouse fire in China.
Trap them in giant cages. Use enormous nets to herd them out to sea. Play recordings of killer whales.
Animal welfare groups are set to try to fetch some of Leona Helmsley's vast fortune.
Officials unveiled the prototype of the first U.S. coin with readable Braille characters on Wednesday -- a silver dollar commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the creator of the alphabet for the blind.
In an effort to alleviate problems facing the company, Starbucks announced that it will close 600 company-run U.S. stores over the next year. Most of the stores are near another Starbucks and aren't profitable.
(CNN) -- "I can't find the right words to describe when you are homeless," says Iraq war veteran Joseph Jacobo. "You see the end of your life right there. What am I going to do, what am I going to eat?"
Six hospital employees have been fired or suspended after ignoring for more than an hour a woman who collapsed and died in a New York emergency room waiting area.
State and federal investigators said Tuesday that they spent the past two days gathering evidence in the last documented mass lynching in the United States: a grisly slaying of four people that has remained unsolved for more than six decades.
A 49-year-old woman collapsed and died on the floor of a waiting room at a Brooklyn psychiatric hospital and lay there for more than an hour as employees ignored her, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which on Tuesday released surveillance camera video of the incident.
"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis is being sued by a Las Vegas Strip casino for $2 million in gambling debts from February of last year.
A 42-year-old chimpanzee who is toilet-trained and can eat with a knife and fork is believed to be at large in a Southern California forest after escaping his cage.
"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis is being sued by a Las Vegas Strip casino for $2 million in gambling debts from February of last year.
California's raging wildfires have created a smoky haze so stifling that doctors in the state's landlocked farm country say their waiting rooms have been crowding with patients struggling to breathe amid the soot-laden air.
A military judge will hold separate hearings for five men accused in the September 11 terrorist attacks to determine if they were intimidated into asking to represent themselves.
City hospital officials said they were shocked by surveillance footage showing a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.
With oil prices hitting a record high on Monday, the chairman and CEO of Chevron, David O'Reilly, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the National Resource Defense Counsel, appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" to discuss America's energy future.
The search teams comb through the backyards of the half-million-dollar homes with metal detectors, placing red flags on the manicured lawns every time they get a hit. To the shock of residents, they sometimes find live bombs.
When Oliver Muigonade pulled his 28-foot open fisherman alongside the dock to fill up before heading for open water, the pump didn't stop until it hit nearly $800.
The Internal Revenue Service is taking the unprecedented step of seeking Swiss bank records in search of what it suspects could be up to $20 billion worth of assets hidden by U.S. taxpayers.
Officials said Monday the city is not liable for the death of a San Jose teenager who was attacked by an escaped tiger on Christmas Day at the San Francisco Zoo.
Reconstruction of the World Trade Center site is over budget and won't be finished by the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers, the owners reported Monday.
A hostage situation at Maine State Prison ended Monday night with an inmate freeing his two hostages, authorities said.
A Canadian seized by U.S. officials and sent to Syria, where he claims he was tortured, has been dealt a major legal setback in his effort to sue U.S. government officials.
The midair collision of two medical helicopters in Arizona that killed six people Sunday is part of a "disturbing" national tendency, a National Transportation Safety Board official said Monday.
The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.
Iraqi nationals who claimed U.S. military contractors inflicted physical and emotional abuse on them at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison filed the first of four planned lawsuits Monday in federal court.
Former detainees of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are suing U.S. contractors in four states, alleging the contractors' employees tortured them.
A 5-year-old was killed when strong winds blew over a row of tents at an Alabama air show during storms that stretched across the South on Sunday while severe weather caused airport delays in the East, officials said.
The good news in Northern California is that more than a thousand wildfires aren't growing. The bad news: There's no relief in sight.
Rising fuel prices are putting a pinch on the world's oldest profession.
Ruslana Korshunova, the 20-year-old supermodel whose face graced the cover of Vogue, committed suicide on Saturday when she fell from her ninth floor apartment in New York's financial district, according to the medical examiner's office.
At least six people were dead and one critically injured Sunday after a midair crash between two medical helicopters near a hospital in Arizona, authorities said.
Firefighters in Northern California battled more than a thousand wildfires to a stalemate by Sunday, but forecasters said dangerous conditions would not relent anytime soon.
A teenager Saturday was struck and killed by a roller coaster at the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park outside Atlanta, authorities said.
A European Vogue cover model fell to her death from her Manhattan apartment building Saturday in an apparent suicide, published reports said.
Conservatives from the world's largest Anglican provinces who are angered by liberal thinking in churches in North America and elsewhere plan to create a global fellowship that challenges worldwide Anglican unity but stops short of a formal split.
Hundreds of lightning-sparked wildfires have turned the air of Northern California into an unhealthy stew of smoke and ash, forcing the cancellation of athletic events and other outdoor activities.
Nebraska's largest city struggled Saturday to restore power to thousands of residents a day after a severe storm damaged homes, uprooted trees and killed two people in a neighboring community.
In December 2006, protesters angry about campus expansion plans clambered into the branches of a threatened oak grove at the University of California, Berkeley.
An archbishop who tussled with singer Sheryl Crow, college basketball coach Rick Majerus and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry over their support for abortion rights has been named as the first American to lead the Vatican supreme court.
A makeshift sandbag levee holding back the Mississippi River failed early Saturday, and authorities said part of Winfield, Missouri, was evacuated.
Severe storms with strong winds swept through the Plains on Friday, forcing swimmers practicing for U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha to flee pools and run for cover, killing two people in Iowa and knocking out power to thousands.
It looked like the makings of a perfect storm of animosity in the last week of the Supreme Court's current term, before it wrapped up for the summer recess Thursday.
A former Army scientist who was named a "person of interest" in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the Justice Department.
Federal health officials are checking into the possibility that an outbreak of salmonella-caused illness originally linked to tomatoes may instead be linked to something else, they said Friday.
Smoke climbed high into the sky Friday as firefighters struggled to contain two wildfires that combined near Big Sur in California, a fire official said.
Muskrat holes weakened a Mississippi River levee on Friday, allowing floodwaters to pour into Lincoln County, Missouri, just north of St. Louis, officials said.
With temperatures rising, firefighters dug in Friday for a long battle against flames creeping toward this storied tourist town.
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. will reformulate its alcoholic energy drinks to remove caffeine and other stimulants they contain as part of a nationwide legal settlement, it announced Thursday.
Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday.
The principal of a Massachusetts high school who said a group of students intentionally got pregnant stood by his comments Thursday, saying his information "was and is accurate."
Opponents of a bill that would overhaul the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act blocked consideration Thursday of the controversial bill until after the July 4 recess.
Hundreds of firefighters worked Thursday to protect the scenic community of Big Sur from a lightning-sparked wildfire that inched closer to historic structures after burning 16 homes and threatening another 500 houses.
The House approved financial help Thursday for mass transit systems facing a surge in riders because of high gas prices. But Republicans blocked Democrats from requiring oil and gas companies to drill on the millions of acres of government land and water on which they already own federal leases.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation's capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
An Air Force colonel was sentenced to nine years in prison Thursday and will be kicked out of the military for assaulting a woman, misusing his government travel card and other crimes at Sheppard Air Force Base.
Lt. Col. Charles "Chuck" Dryden, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday. He was 87.
In a landmark ruling on personal gun ownership, the U.S. Supreme Court declared a Washington, D.C., handgun ban unconstitutional.
Americans have varied feelings about guns. In Focus: Guns in America is a series of stories by CNN photojournalists that looks at the complex views and emotions that surround this controversial subject.
Luke Russert, son of journalist Tim Russert, was part of a panel Wednesday that discussed youth voting on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Kermit Love, the costume designer who helped puppeteer Jim Henson create Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters, has died. He was 91.


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