National & World news

The number of Americans traveling away from home for Thanksgiving will be up only slightly this year from 2008, according to a report from the AAA auto club. And there will be a 6.7 percent drop in the number of air travelers.

Democrats called a revamp of the nation's health care system long overdue as historic legislation advanced toward a Saturday night Senate showdown, an early test of party unity on President Barack Obama's top domestic initiative.

A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and concentrated instead on his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday.

There may be additional e-mails that could have tipped off law enforcement or military officials to the Fort Hood shooter before he went on his deadly rampage, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Friday.

A lesbian who deserted the U.S. military and fled to Canada must be given another chance to plead her case for refugee status, Canada's Federal Court ruled Friday.

On an Internet site, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." It may have sounded like a teenage exaggeration, but authorities say she fulfilled her words.

A police officer who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl after he said her mother gave him permission has been suspended - not for using the Taser but for not having a video camera attached when he used it.

Digging in for a long struggle, Republican senators and governors assailed the Democrats' newly minted health care legislation Thursday as a collection of tax increases, Medicare cuts and heavy new burdens for deficit-ridden states.

A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, police charged Thursday, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat might exist.