LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Exhausted California firefighters worked on Friday to contain two wildfires threatening homes along the coast before sundown, when shifting winds were expected to give the blazes more power.
ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archaeological site on Friday to try to rescue one of the world's most important cultural treasures from decades of neglect.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Michael Turner, a comic book artist who drew covers for major titles such as "Superman/Batman," "The Flash" and "Civil War,'" has died. He was 37.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Scientists with the US Phoenix lander will make their first analysis of Martian ice fragments in coming days but it could be the last done in one of the probe's small ovens, NASA said on its website Friday.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Larry Harmon, the alter ego behind Bozo the Clown for more than 50 years, died on Thursday of congestive heart failure at age 83, his spokesman said.
SEA BRIGHT, N.J. - Authorities protecting a dolphin family in a New Jersey river are stepping up enforcement over the July Fourth holiday.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Lost scenes from the sci-fi classic "Metropolis," recently discovered in the archives of a Buenos Aires museum, were shown to journalists for the first time in decades on Thursday.
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge's order to Google Inc to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy.
BAGHDAD - Syria has returned a marble artifact to Iraq that was stolen from one of the country's archaeological sites.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The investigation of a salmonella outbreak in the United States is shifting to the southern border to encompass produce imported from Mexico, CNN reported on Thursday.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated an official of Iraq's biggest Shiite party Friday in the southern city of Basra, police said.
TOKYO - Japan announced Friday it will provide $50 million in new emergency food aid to help developing countries cope with the impact of soaring food prices.
VIENNA, Austria - Nine people, including a prominent executive who fled to France in an attempt to elude justice, were convicted Friday of criminal charges in a major Austrian bank fraud case linked to the 2005 collapse of New York-based commodities brokerage Refco Inc.
LOS ANGELES - More than a dozen people, some wearing orange protective gear, pulled rakes and shovels from a dingy shopping cart and started working on a parched patch of land along a busy off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway.
SAN FRANCISCO - Minors who commit crimes while in the United States illegally will be turned over to federal immigration officials, a reversal of a nearly 20-year-old San Francisco policy, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - All four members of supergroup ABBA appeared together on Friday at the Swedish premiere of the film "Mamma Mia!," delighting fans with their first public showing for years.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's army under President Pervez Musharraf supervised a shipment of uranium centrifuges to North Korea in 2000, the disgraced architect of Pakistan's atomic weapons program said Friday.
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Hundreds of mainland Chinese tourists some in matching white or pink shirts arrived in Taiwan on Friday on the first regular commercial flights in nearly six decades between the old foes.
FRESNO, Calif. - Expect fewer slices of red, ripe tomatoes next to the grill this holiday weekend.