Barack Obama's presidency has been an inspiration to many Americans—especially nutjobs. Ever since the first-black-president-to-be appeared on the national political stage, a cottage industry of conservative conspiracy theorists has churned out bizarro, paranoid, and just plain racist effluvia—some of which has trickled into the political mainstream. Below, we've charted some of the Obama-baiters best (i.e. worst) work. (Scroll down for more detailed descriptions of the conspiracy theories in the diagram.)...

As the so-called "Mayan doomsday" approaches, the Mayans of Guatemala are speaking out against what some are calling a government- and tour business-led effort to profit off misinterpretations of their traditions.

"We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles," said Felipe Gomez, who leads a Maya alliance called Oxlaljuj Ajpop, in an interview this week with Agence France-Presse...

The winning images from Nikon's 2012 Small World Photo Micrography Competition...

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Wednesday, 36 hours after the storm, New York seems in full swing. Booksellers are back out on Columbus Avenue, the movie theaters are open, the nail salons are full. The New York City Marathon – which passes through the Upper East Side and Central Park – will go ahead on Sunday, because nobody has anything better to do than clean up millions of paper cups trampled underfoot by runners blocking the avenues.

But a few miles south, it's another city. There is no power anywhere in lower Manhattan, cellphone service is spotty, and many buildings have no water or heat. Residents who'd planned for a short blackout, as happened here for one day in 2003, are facing days without power – and, as a consequence, without food or supplies...

Other than Hurricane Sandy, few things can distract us right now from our single-minded focus on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6. But on Sunday, Sir Paul McCartney managed to do just that when he announced that Yoko Ono – John Lennon’s widow — was not responsible for the break up of the world’s most famous rock band...

Could the 2012 campaign end in a tie? Is it possible for Mitt Romney to end up as president — with Joe Biden as his vice president? Could the presidential election end up decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, again?

The short answer is: probably not. To call those outcomes improbable would be a huge understatement. The strong likelihood is that one candidate will win both the Electoral College and the popular vote on Nov. 6 and bring our long 2012 slog to an end.

But hey, it’s the end of October in a presidential election year — a hurricane is improbably threatening the Eastern seaboard — so it’s the time when a politico’s mind turns to the wild and crazy outcomes that could upend all expectations. And public polls still show a close enough race between Romney and Barack Obama that speculation is inevitable...

The Coast Guard is searching for two people off the coast of North Carolina who had been passengers aboard the tall ship HMS Bounty, which lost power in Hurricane Sandy and sank after 14 other passengers were rescued.

The Coast Guard said that a C-130 Hercules aircraft and a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter are still scouring the waters for the two missing people, who did not make it aboard lifeboats about 90 miles off Hatteras, N.C., on the Outer Banks. As of late Monday morning, the Coast Guard had not completed its interviews with the 14 survivors, and had not identified the missing people...

Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast. Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-Qaeda franchise that has targeted the United States.

Camp Lemonnier, a sun-baked Third World outpost established by the French Foreign Legion, began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago. Over the past two years, the U.S. military has clandestinely transformed it into the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone, a model for fighting a new generation of terrorist groups...

An explosive story about the massive wealth accumulated by the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao caused the Chinese government to block the Web site of the New York Times early Friday morning, just days before a sensitive once-in-a-decade transition of power from Wen and others to a new generation of leaders.

The article documents assets controlled by Wen’s family worth at least $2.7 billion, a shocking figure even in a country where government corruption is rampant and popular resentment against the elite has increased in recent years. The scandal also complicates the apparent intention of Chinese leaders to tackle corruption as a main issue at the Nov. 8 party congress, a move they have been signaling in the wake of other scandals that had dramatically shaken the party’s core leadership...

Newly discovered fossilized bones for the world's oldest and most primitive known primate, Purgatorius, reveal a tiny, agile animal that spent much of its time eating fruit and climbing trees, according to a study.

The fossils, described today in a presentation at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 72nd Annual Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, are the first known below-the-head bones for Purgatorius. Previously, only teeth revealed its existence...