New Year's Eve

The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.

Buoyed by a presidential pep talk and intense rounds of negotiations, Senate Democrats hope to move closer to embracing a major health care bill this week by tackling the nettlesome issue of abortion.

A spacecraft designed to rocket wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011 was unveiled Monday in what backers of the venture hope will signal a new era in aviation history.

Witnesses say security forces and pro-government militiamen with batons and tear gas are clashing with thousands of opposition protesters outside Tehran University on a day of planned student demonstrations.

A Kansas lawmaker says he's sorry if he offended anyone by criticizing President Barack Obama while wearing a cap that calls opossum "the other dark meat."

The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Sunday to avoid oysters from San Antonio Bay in Texas after investigators found the oysters caused a highly contagious virus.

It's hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public. The event Monday for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President Barack Obama's uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most transparent ever. As Obama's first year in office ends, the government's actions when the public and press seek information are not yet matching up with the president's words.

Japanese police have arrested four teenagers living on a U.S. military base for allegedly putting a rope across a road that caused a woman to crash her motorbike and suffer a head injury, officials and news reports said Saturday.

A site where dozens of prehistoric mammoths died in a landslide and flooding about 68,000 years ago has opened to the public in Waco, Texas.