EPA finds contamination at former rocket test site
Lingering radioactive contamination exists at a former rocket test lab outside of Los Angeles that was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown, federal ...

10 Things to Know for Thursday
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and stories that will be talked about Thursday: 1. US TRIES FOR A TRICKY BALANCE ON KOREA ...

Colorado River seen as depleting regional resource
The federal government isn't going to tap the Missouri River to slake the thirst of a drought-parched Southwest, the government's top water official ...

NOAA chief says she will leave in February
The woman who was a key figure in the federal government's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 said Wednesday she will leave her ...

Cheese first made at least 7,500 years ago
Little Miss Muffet could have been separating her curds and whey 7,500 years ago, according to a new study that finds the earliest solid evidence of ...

Distant galaxy regains title as oldest in universe
A galaxy once considered the oldest has reclaimed its title, scientists reported Wednesday. Poring through Hubble Space Telescope photos, the team ...

Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man
It was an archaeological hoax that fooled scientists for decades. A century on, researchers are determined to find out who was responsible for ...

NKorea rocket a gift to leaders, warning to world
Why would North Korea launch a rocket into space now? The act invites additional sanctions for a country where the U.N. says millions are going ...
DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency
Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation ...

Air Force sends mystery mini-shuttle back to space
The military's small, top-secret version of the space shuttle rocketed into orbit Tuesday for a repeat mystery mission, two years after making the ...

New tests could hamper food outbreak detection
New tests that promise to speed up diagnosis of food poisoning pose an unexpected problem: They could make it more difficult to identify dangerous ...

US students far from first in math, science
American fourth-graders are performing better than they were four years ago in math and reading, but students four years older show no such progress, ...
Hawking, CERN scientists win huge physics prize
A Russian billionaire's foundation is awarding two special prizes of $3 million each to British cosmologist Stephen Hawking for his work on black ...

Alan Alda asks scientists to explain: What's time?
Professor Alan Alda has a homework assignment for scientists. Yes, that Alan Alda. The actor known for portraying Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" ...
Amgen buying deCODE Genetics for $415 million
Biotech pioneer Amgen Inc., in a bid for a big edge in using people's genetic information to find better ways to attack diseases, is buying human ...
Energy experts say drilling can be made cleaner
In the Colorado mountains, a spike in air pollution has been linked to a boom in oil and gas drilling. A thousand miles away on the plains of north ...

UN climate talks in Qatar boost Gulf awareness
Holding a high-profile U.N. climate change conference in Qatar, smack in the middle of the region that produces so much of the fossil fuel blamed for ...
Kazakhstan mulls ending Russia's cosmodrome lease
The head of Kazakhstan's space agency said Monday that Russia's lease of a launch facility in the Central Asian nation, the only site worldwide ...

Peru's capital highly vulnerable to major quake
The earthquake all but flattened colonial Lima, the shaking so violent that people tossed to the ground couldn't get back up. Minutes later, a 50-foot ...

British astronomer Patrick Moore dies at 89
British astronomer and broadcaster Patrick Moore died Sunday, according to friends and colleagues. He was 89. He died at his home in the coastal town ...

UN conference adopts extension of Kyoto accord
Seeking to control global warming, nearly 200 countries agreed Saturday to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that limits the greenhouse gas output ...

Blighted icon: Volunteers aim to revive chestnut
Jim Hurst has doted on his trees, arranged in three "families" on a bluff high above the rushing French Broad River. He installed a drip irrigation ...

UN climate talks go into overtime in Qatar
The world's poorest countries, inundated by rising seas and worsening disasters, made a last ditch plea for financial help early Saturday as ...

Alaska reclaims missing moon rocks since 1973
A display of moon rocks that disappeared from an Alaska museum after an arson fire nearly four decades ago has been returned to the state following ...

AP Exclusive: Japan scientists took utility money
Influential scientists who help set Japan's radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country's nuclear plant operators to ...