With improvements to equipment, better safety standards and a decrease in overall fires, the number of firefighter deaths has fallen to historic lows the past two years.
Judges will no longer be permitted to autonomously determine a fact in a criminal case if that fact increases a mandatory minimum punishment for the defendant, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, saying any such fact must be decided by a jury.Warren Richey
Obama and Russia's Vladimir Putin, meeting at the G8 summit, both said they want a negotiated end to the Syria conflict. But that barely masked deep divisions over how best to pressure Syrian President Assad to talk rather than fight.Howard LaFranchi
Prosecutors can use a suspect’s silence during informal police questioning as evidence of guilt at a subsequent trial, the U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday.Warren Richey
The trial of crime-boss James “Whitey” Bulger took a dive Monday into sordid stories of mob-related murder, mistrust, and deadly mistakes.Mark Trumbull
Frustrated at their inability to stem a spike in violence against West Bank Palestinians by Jewish settlers with so-called "price tag" attacks, over the weekend Israeli law enforcement authorities came within a whisker of getting permission to treat the attackers like terrorists.Joshua Mitnick
If at seems at times that our globe is already thoroughly mapped and explored, all its corridors charted and its mysteries explained, then the latest news out of Southeast Asia is solacing -- there are, it seems, still lost worlds to be discovered, combed out from beneath a millennium of accumulated jungle in remote Cambodia.Elizabeth Barber
Doctors say 'mass psychogenic illness' – not contaminated water – is to blame for recent outbreaks of sickness. Garment workers are fearful of workplace safety after a year of deadly accidents.Saad Hammadi
Long Island scientists will on Saturday begin to move a 50-foot-wide, 15-ton electromagnet about 3,200 miles to Chicago, in what is expected to be a more than month-long trip, according to Brookhaven National Laboratory, the magnet's original home in Long Island, where it was built in the 1990s.Elizabeth Barber
Chinese activist and whistle-blower Chen Guangcheng is accusing New York University of submitting to Chinese pressure in pulling a fellowship position he had held since arriving in the United States last year.Jeremy Ravinsky
