The decision by the owner of a small insurance company to require his employees to carry firearms at the office has sparked a debate: Would having a gun on the job make you safer, or is it inviting violence into the workplace? Lance Toland said his three offices, based at… Read More

A rare letter written by the poet Walt Whitman for a wounded Civil War soldier has been found in the National Archives. The Washington Post reports it was discovered last month by an Archives volunteer on a team preparing Civil War widows’ pension files to be digitized and placed online. It’s… Read More

A 93-year-old Ohio woman has received the high school diploma she was denied in 1942 because of rules that expelled married students. Dorothy Liggett was a few weeks from graduation from Akron’s North High School when officials discovered she was married. Akron Public Schools Superintendent David James hand-delivered the diploma… Read More

As most Americans brace themselves for losing an hour of sleep this weekend, some corners of the country are considering bold alternatives to daylight saving time. California has a bill that would ask voters to abolish the practice of changing clocks twice a year. Lawmakers in Alaska and nearly a… Read More

A second round of rain early Thursday was hitting an already inundated north Louisiana, where flooding in some places was up to the rooftops and in others submerged cars, stranded families and forced evacuations. Three people drowned in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana. In Bienville Parish, authorities said a man died… Read More

A fugitive wanted by Idaho authorities for wounding a church pastor apparently wrote a manifesto contending that Martians controlled the Earth, police said. Kyle Odom, 30, was arrested at about 5:30 p.m., Tuesday by U.S. Secret Service agents after allegedly throwing items over the fence at the White House. “I… Read More

A sailor killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor is being buried with full military honors nearly 75 years after the bombing. Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Vernon Luke of Green Bay, Wisconsin is being buried at a veterans cemetery in Honolulu on Wednesday. The 43-year-old man died when Japanese planes… Read More

NASA’s next Mars mission is still alive. Instead of scrapping the grounded Mars InSight spacecraft, the space agency announced Wednesday it’s shooting for a 2018 launch. The robotic lander was supposed to lift off this month, but ended up sidelined in December by a leak in a key French instrument…. Read More

Yellowstone National Park started shipping many of its famous wild bison to slaughter Wednesday to drive down the size of the park’s herds and respond to concerns by the livestock industry over a disease carried by the animals. Thirty animals have been shipped to slaughterhouses, and officials plan to send… Read More

A keeper at a North Dakota zoo has become a first-time mom. But the baby she carries around the clock in a colorful flannel pouch is not a little human, it’s an orphaned kangaroo. Amanda Dukart is a zookeeper at the Chahinkapa (cha-HINK’-ah-pah) Zoo in Wahpeton. For the next six… Read More