Constance McMillen didn't believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's wife and daughter were being treated in a hospital Thursday for serious injuries they sustained when their vehicle was rear-ended by a truck, a spokesman said.

The bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Progam, delivered Thursday to Congress, was swiftly denounced by lawmakers who said runaway spending on major weapons systems has become all too common.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected arguments by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the phrase violates the separation between church and state.

A series of strong aftershocks from last month's devastating quake rocked Chile on Thursday as a new president was sworn into office and immediately urged coastal residents to move to higher ground in case of a tsunami.

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.

A northern Mississippi school district will not be hosting a high school prom this spring after a lesbian student sought to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

Following the success of "The Cove," a documentary about the dolphin-hunting village of Taiji that won an Oscar Sunday, Japanese fishermen are particularly sensitive to filming of whaling or dolphin-hunting.

For the first time, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics.

The self-dubbed "Jihad Jane" who thought her blond, all-American profile would help mask her plan to kill a Swedish cartoonist is a rare case of a U.S. woman inciting foreign terrorism and shows the latest evolution of the global threat, authorities say.

The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half the district's schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy.

Mexico's Carlos Slim, the son of an immigrant shopkeeper who amassed a $53.5 billion fortune and bought a major stake in the New York Times, became the first person from a developing nation to be named the world's richest person.

A terrified 7-year-old boy begged emergency dispatchers to send police to his Southern California home where three armed robbers threatened his parents, according to a recording of the call released Tuesday.