States with jobless rates of 8.5 percent and above

It's an all-star lineup for Tuesday's first state dinner of the Obama White House: Oscar-winners Jennifer Hudson and A.R. Rahman headline the entertainment list.

A Swiss adventurer trying to soar from Morocco to Spain on jet-powered wings ditched safely into the Atlantic on Wednesday after hitting turbulence and clouds so thick he could not tell if he was flying up or down.

When an eastern Kentucky census worker was found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with "fed" scrawled on his chest, suspicion fell on the hardscrabble Appalachian area where bad news seems like a way of life.

The widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast Wednesday that even as her husband knew he was dying of brain cancer he had been "in training" to make sure he had enough strength to attend President Barack Obama's inauguration.

133 Recommendations

The widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast Wednesday that even as her husband knew he was dying of brain cancer he had been "in training" to make sure he had enough strength to attend President Barack Obama's inauguration.

92 Recommendations

In the days after 15-year-old Michael Brewer was set on fire by a group of teens, his mother, Valerie Brewer, sat at his hospital bedside and worried.

76 Recommendations

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs is seriously considering running for U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2012 as a stepping stone to a possible White House bid — a congressional matchup that would pit one of illegal immigration's biggest critics against a champion for immigrant rights.

67 Recommendations

A federal judge has ordered Connecticut officials to promote 14 firefighters who won a reverse discrimination case in a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.