Hurricane Earl prepared to take a swipe at the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday as residents scrambled to ready themselves ahead of its arrival.

A well connected to an oil and gas production platform caught on fire Thursday, engulfing the vessel in flames about 100 miles off the central coast of Louisiana and forcing 13 people overboard, Gov. Bobby Jindal said Thursday.

God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.

Justice Department civil rights lawyers filed suit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona on Thursday after talks collapsed on a deal to provide federal investigators with requested documents.

I come from a small-ish town in Oklahoma where we've never met a vegetable we couldn't fry and the only things more super-sized than our portions are the huge church complexes that alternate with fast-food restaurants along our roads.

Brent King says it still "takes my breath away" to talk about his daughter in the same sentence as the man who killed her.

With a dozen humanitarian missions behind her, Ashley Judd has ventured to Africa to challenge the relationship between valuable minerals and unspeakable violence.

In recent weeks, a series of CNN articles have appeared purporting to get to the bottom of male infidelity. "Men More Likely to Cheat on Women With Bigger Paychecks," one headline informs us; yet in the body of the article we are told that the opposite is true as well: "A man who makes significantly more money than his girlfriend or wife is also more likely to cheat."

Bill Ely walked into his chicken coop with an empty five-gallon water jug.

Dane Lockman saw a commercial advertising Westwood College while watching late-night television. The then-29-year-old single father, with a budding interest in web design, decided he would be the first in his immediate family to attend college.

Police arrested rapper T.I. and his wife in California after they were allegedly found in possession of a controlled substance.

Greece has imposed a nationwide ban on smoking in enclosed public and private workplaces under a new slogan "cut smoking, gain life."

Authorities gave an "all clear" early Thursday after sweeping the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland, where police shot and killed a man who was holding three hostages.

It was the fifth game of the 2009 Ohio State University football season, and offensive lineman Andy Miller cheered as the Buckeyes sprinted past the Indiana Hoosiers, 33-14, the fourth win of the year. The campus was brimming with excitement, yet for Miller the occasion was bittersweet.

In the first two days back from his Martha's Vineyard family vacation, President Obama gave two speeches on two important subjects.

An extra in "Transformers 3" was seriously injured in Indiana on Wednesday evening during the filming of a scene for the upcoming movie, authorities said

Crews are expected to try to remove the blowout preventer on BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, said Thad Allen, the government's point man on the oil disaster.

Dutch investigators were trying to determine Thursday whether the bodies of three babies found at a home in the Netherlands belong to the woman who lived there.

Months after the revelation that he helped cover up for one of Ireland's most notoriously abusive priests, the country's top Catholic churchman, Cardinal Sean Brady, says he has "moved on" and will not resign.

Grown-ups don't text as much as teens -- at least not yet. A new survey suggests they may be catching up.