The unprecedented turtle rescue effort at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is winding down.

A water main break at NASA's spaceport put launch preparations on temporary hold Wednesday for the next-to-last shuttle flight.

Gunmen on Wednesday killed an Iraqi TV journalist, the second to be slain in Iraq in as many days, highlighting the dangers media workers continue to face in the country seven years after the U.S.-led invasion.

A strong aftershock rocked terrified residents of New Zealand's earthquake-stricken city of Christchurch on Wednesday, as officials doubled their estimate for repairing the damage following nearly 300 temblors in five days.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called a Florida church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks a "disrespectful, disgraceful act."

Government scientists studying the BP disaster are reporting the best possible outcome: Microbes are consuming the oil in the Gulf without depleting the oxygen in the water and creating "dead zones" where fish cannot survive.

NASA says two small asteroids discovered just days ago will zip harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, a double flyby that should be visible through a telescope.

Researchers at an international water conference in Stockholm said that 21 percent of freshwater species in northern Africa are threatened with extinction.

Today, it's a sprawl of luxury vacation homes where Egypt's wealthy play on the white beaches of the Mediterranean coast. But 2,000 years ago, this was a thriving Greco-Roman port city, boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade.

Japan has confirmed the nation's first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday.

They say money can't buy happiness. They're wrong.

A Japanese researcher who found a way to give adults cells certain characteristics of embryonic stem cells, a process scientists say could eventually lead to cures for spinal cord injuries and other ailments, has been awarded the Balzan Prize for biology.

A Japanese court on Monday convicted two members of the environmental group Greenpeace of stealing whale meat they claim was intended for illegal consumption.

BP PLC said the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico was removed from the company's well on Friday afternoon.

A thumbnail-sized clam blamed for clouding the azure bays of Lake Tahoe high in the Sierra Nevada has now turned up in a mountain-ringed Adirondack lake renowned for its limpid, spring-fed waters.

An Indonesian volcano that was quiet for four centuries shot a new, powerful burst of hot ash more than 10,000 feet (three kilometers) in the air Friday, sending frightened residents fleeing to safety for the second time this week.

Pushed by an ill-timed trough of low pressure, Hurricane Earl is heading uncomfortably close to an area relatively few hurricanes tend to go: the Northeast coastline.

The recipient of a rare double hand transplant says he feels "fantastic" and can wiggle fingers on both his new hands.

India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications -- not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion -- to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.