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A weakened Hurricane Earl brushed North Carolina's Outer Banks overnight as residents along the Eastern Seaboard braced for a stormy Friday. .

Bomb squad investigators were at Miami International Airport on Friday after a suspicious item was spotted in a baggage screening area, authorities said.

The gunman who held three people hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters was once convicted of smuggling an illegal immigrant into the country from Mexico.

Toshiba has announced the voluntary recall of about 41,000 notebook computers worldwide at risk of overheating and burning users.

The sham marriage trial of actress Fernanda Romero, which the judge has likened to a soap opera, appeared threatened with a mistrial Friday after a dramatic turn a day earlier.

Hurricane Earl has been downgraded to Category 2, but forecasters warn it is still "large and strong." Rain bands have moved onto the coast of North Carolina.

Cammie King Conlon, who played the ill-fated Bonnie Blue Butler in "Gone With the Wind," used to joke "that I peaked at age 5."

A fire on an oil and gas production platform in the Gulf of Mexico is out and there is no indication of an oil sheen, the Coast Guard said. There were no serious injuries.

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

A survivor of a massacre in Mexico that left 72 dead advised other would-be migrants to stay at home to avoid a fate like the one he and his companions met.

After a week mostly focused on Iraq and Mideast diplomacy, it's back to the economy for President Barack Obama, who will deliver remarks Friday on the August unemployment numbers.

The United Nations appears to have been aware of rape by rebels in eastern Congo earlier than it originally said it was, according to an internal e-mail and a humanitarian bulletin.

Direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians will start Thursday as President Barack Obama urged both sides to come up with a peaceful solution to the long running Mideast conflict.

"Resistance operations" will continue against Israelis despite the arrests of Hamas activists in the West Bank, a Hamas official said Thursday.

An Ohio death row inmate who has repeatedly claimed his innocence was spared execution, after the state's governor Thursday noted "legitimate questions" about evidence used to convict the man.

Chris Meek put his motorcycle in storage in Wilmington, North Carolina, to protect it from Hurricane Earl as the Category 4 hurricane headed toward the North Carolina coast.

State budgets are being squeezed by unprecedented amounts for the third year in a row as legislators are forced to close gaps of up to 50 percent of state spending.

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.

The latest round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians is starting off much like similar endeavors in the past, but the Obama administration hopes that this time, the outcome will be different.