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NEW YORK – The X Prize Foundation, best known for its competitions promoting space flights, is offering $10 million to the teams that can produce the most production-ready vehicles that get 100 miles per gallon or more. The foundation was to announce the size of the purse and its sponsor, …

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, an unwed mother, says teenagers should avoid having sex. However, Bristol Palin acknowledges that abstinence is “not realistic at all.” She commented during a two-part interview recorded for FOX News Channel. Just days after the governor was named John McCain’s running …

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Close to 3,000 American soldiers who recently arrived in Afghanistan to secure two violent provinces near Kabul have begun operations in the field and already are seeing combat, the unit’s spokesman said Monday. The new troops are the first wave of an expected surge of reinforcements …

NEW YORK – Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes to Jail” reigned at the weekend box office, opening with $41.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. It was the highest grossing film ever for both Perry and the film’s studio, Lionsgate. Since Perry’s 2005 “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” — his …

ISLAMABAD – A homicide bomber attacked the funeral of a slain Shiite Muslim leader in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing 28 people and triggering deadly rioting, officials said. Click here for photos. (Warning: Graphic Content) Rising sectarian attacks threaten to further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan just as it faces intense international …

NEW YORK – U.S. health regulators have again withheld approval for the use of Merck & Co Inc’s Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine by women aged 27 to 45, asking for longer-term clinical data, the drugmaker said on Friday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended Merck submit data when a …

CANTON, Ga. – Police say they suspect foul play in the death of a 39-year-old optician found dead in her Georgia home. Authorities said they hope an autopsy will tell them how the eye doctor, Kim Burton, died. Burton was found in her house in Canton, Ga., after she didn’t …

SAN FRANCISCO – The alleged ringleaders of a Chinese counterfeiting gang that sold at least $2 billion worth of bogus Microsoft Corp. software were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms of up to 6½ years, in what is believed to be the harshest penalties yet under China’s tightened piracy laws. The …

QUINCY, Fla. – An investment manager who apparently staged a plane crash to evade personal and financial ruin was barely conscious and muttered the word “die” when federal agents found him bleeding from a slashed wrist, an investigator said Wednesday. U.S. Marshals apprehended Marcus Schrenker, 38, late Tuesday at a …

The Astra 5A commercial telecommunications satellite is out of control after an unexplained failure Jan. 15 and is drifting eastward along the geostationary orbital arc, with ground controllers pessimistic about their ability to re-establish sufficient communications to guide it into a graveyard orbit, industry officials said Thursday. Officials said Astra …