These days, when it's common to see adults engrossed in Harry Potter on the subway, and the edgiest shows on HBO are about vampires and dragons, it's hard to believe there was once a time when sci-fi and fantasy fiction were confined to a cultural ghetto...

The crackle of gunfire and the rumble of explosions spread across Tripoli in renewed fighting on Tuesday, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi remained at large hours after his son Seif al-Islam made a surprise appearance at a hotel with foreign journalists, taunting the rebels who have invaded the city, claiming his father is safe and urging loyalist forces to resist...

When John McCain was running for the Republican presidential nomination nearly 12 years ago, he declared that Alan Greenspan was so critical to the economy that, if the then-Federal Reserve chairman died, he’d put sunglasses on the body, prop him up and hope no one noticed.

It’s safe to say that GOP opinions of the Fed have slipped a bit since....

The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers...

White-gloved workers line the long tables, carefully sifting through photos of proms and weddings, baby's first day, proud soldiers in their uniforms. They gently clean off any dirt, dry rain-damaged pictures – and salvage a city's lost treasures. The history of Joplin, Mo., is slowly coming into focus here, one snapshot, one portrait at a time. A church room in this nearby town has been converted into collection central for more than 27,000 photos buried or blown away in the monster May tornado that left 160 dead and obliterated a third of Joplin...

Fierce fighting is reported around Col. Gaddafi's compound after rebels swept into Tripoli almost unopposed...

Sixty-six years ago, we dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Now, some historians say that's not what ended the war...

In a “new” India often obsessed with wealth and status, where cricket batsmen and Bollywood movie stars are wildly idolized, Anna Hazare is a figure from an earlier, seemingly discarded era. His pointed white cap and simple white cotton clothes evoke a Gandhian simplicity. His rural, homespun demeanor ordinarily might elicit snickers from India’s urban elite...

Put the arguments over how fast Antarctic ice is melting to one side for the moment. The latest study of the southern continent, by a group of scientists led by Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, shows how fast the ice rivers are moving and where they are going...

She won the Ames straw poll on Saturday and is the clear favorite to win the Iowa caucuses in January. There's a method to Michele Bachmann's madness...