BERLIN – A Swedish man’s novel explanation for taking a break from a troubled marriage has landed him in trouble with the German police. Nuremberg police say the man came to them on Saturday claiming to have been abducted from his home in southern Sweden by two men who demanded …

A computer is as good as a second pair of eyes for helping a radiologist spot breast cancer on a mammogram, one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer-aided detection found. Like spell-checkers looking for mistakes, the computers flag suspicious areas on X-rays for a closer look by …

KAYSVILLE, Utah – Is the credit crunch keeping you from getting a home loan? Well, here’s a little beauty you can have for free. You just have to pay to haul it away. Jacquie Jones of Kaysville, Utah, is offering a three-bedroom brick bungalow built in 1910. She says the …

WASHINGTON – There are few industries whose fortunes are so closely tied to government as defense contractors, companies that now provide the military with everything from fighter jets to janitors. And for the past eight years, business has been very good. But with that government customer now ailing, the boom …

ALBANY, N.Y. – Bankers and brokers looking to escape the financial meltdown are scrambling to relocate their families, possessions and rarified talent far from Wall Street to places such as Florida, Chicago, Milwaukee, Virginia and Asia. Travis Lacey left investment bank Jeffries & Co. and Wall Street behind in September …

WASHINGTON – Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children’s advocacy group. More than half the states have graduation targets that don’t make schools get better, the Education …

PHILADELPHIA – In the wake of the priest-abuse crisis, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia debuted a short film that urges teens to report sexual violence. The film reminds teens that victims are never to blame and that abusers are often trusted adults — including parents, teachers and priests. The …

LOS ANGELES – Snow snarled major mountain highways and even dusted Malibu on Wednesday as a cold storm hit parts of California. One person was killed by a wind-related helicopter crash, and an overflowing river on the U.S.-Mexico border led to the evacuation of nearly two dozen people, rescues of …

Researchers reported promising results for what may become the world’s first vaccine to prevent malaria, a killer of 1 million people each year. In early tests, the experimental vaccine was more than 50 percent effective in preventing the deadly disease in infants and young children in Africa, the scientists said …

In the nearly four weeks since Election Day, gay activists and thousands of their supporters have rallied outside Mormon temples around the country, protesting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ support for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to make same-sex marriage illegal in the Golden State. There …