Michael Jackson was portrayed on Thursday as a serial pedophile, an alcoholic and a man obsessed with pornography as prosecutors summed up their child sex abuse case with a blistering character assassination of one of the world's best-known entertainers....
Insurgents killed at least 24 people in motorcycle and car bomb attacks on Thursday, one targeting the bodyguards of Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister and another killing a deputy provincial governor.
The Georgia "runaway bride" whose highly publicized disappearance days before her wedding turned out to be a case of cold feet pleaded no contest on Thursday to a felony charge of making a false statement to police.
New Jersey is using an anti-terrorism law for the first time to try six animal rights activists charged with harassing and vandalizing a company that made use of animals to test its drugs.
The world will not meet its goal of halting and reversing the spread of AIDS in 10 years if the disease continues to race faster than efforts to stop it, a senior U.N. AIDS specialist said on Thursday.
Israel freed nearly 400 Palestinian prisoners on Thursday in a long-delayed gesture that fulfilled a ceasefire pledge to President Mahmoud Abbas, but Palestinians said the release did not go far enough.
President Bush has picked California Rep. Christopher Cox, a Republican who has championed lower taxes on investment income, as his choice to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a senior administration official said on Thursday.
Paul Wolfowitz has promised to make the World Bank more attractive to fast-growing but still poor countries like China and India, which feel the development institution has less and less to offer them.
European Union leaders, shocked by the French and Dutch rejection of their constitution, tried on Thursday to show that it would not paralyze the 25-member bloc.
The U.S. National Spelling Bee, that ultimate anxiety fest for brainy schoolkids, has morphed into a media darling, inspiring a novel, a documentary, a feature film and a Broadway musical.
