On Christmas Day, a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit tried to blow up the plane with plastic explosives in his underwear. He failed, yet the very attempt shook the U.S. government, set federal agencies against each other and triggered months of political second-guessing.
A New Jersey man with apocalyptic visions is accused of years of terrorizing his family, raping his five daughters and impregnating three, beating his children with wooden boards and even moving at one point to avoid child welfare investigators.
Toyota's massive recalls are bringing new scrutiny to the government's auto safety agency, prompting Congress to look at how federal safety officials have lived up to their mission of protecting motorists.
Georgia's public defender system is still trying to recover its financial footing five years after a courthouse gunman racked up a $3 million taxpayer-funded defense tab on the way to his conviction.
A conservative group's bashing of several Obama administration lawyers as the "al-Qaida Seven" has struck a nerve in the U.S. legal community, prompting even some fellow Republicans to denounce the group's attack.
The Pashtun tribal leaders picked at the chocolate cake and fruit laid out for them at the conference table. Politely, they listened to speeches touting a new program to release detainees from Afghanistan's largest U.S.-run military prison if community leaders vouch for them.
German carmaker BMW AG says its 2009 net income fell 36 percent to euro210 million ($286 million) because of lower demand for its cars during the economic downturn as well as a higher tax rate.
A U.N. food agency says it is ready to cooperate with any independent probe into its food operations in Somalia, after a report found that up to half the food aid intended for the nation's hungry people does not reach its destination.