Scott Neuman

It was a routine launch for the Atlas V booster, which was carrying a Mexican satellite into orbit as it lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Friday morning. But the rocket's expanding exhaust plume was anything but ordinary.

Florida Today reports: "The rocket bolted from Launch Complex ...

Updated at 4 p.m. ET

The U.S. economy added just 142,000 jobs in September, falling short of what most economists had forecast. The unemployment rate remained at 5.1 percent, according to a separate survey. The two reports were released by the Department of Labor.

Economists had predicted about 190,000 ...

Updated at 10:50 p.m. ET

After a shooting at a community college in western Oregon, 10 people are dead and seven others are wounded, according to the Douglas County sheriff. Officials would not say whether the shooter, who was killed by police in an exchange of gunfire on campus, was ...

Today is the day — the beginning of the end for the venerable (but woefully open to abuse) magnetic stripe, a technology pioneered in the 1960s. Enter the more secure age of the chip, or "EMV" cards.

At least in theory.

It's actually a bit more complicated. Here are three ...

At the stroke of midnight, it became legal for Oregon dispensaries to sell marijuana to anyone over 21 years old. The state has also been allowing residents to wipe old pot charges from their criminal records.

Oregon becomes the third U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana sales, joining Colorado and ...

Updated, 1:20 a.m. ET

The National Hurricane Center's projections for Hurricane Joaquin in the past two days have incrementally moved the storm east. Now the government agency is saying the storm is likely to miss the United States altogether.

Some coastal flooding is still likely from the storm's ...

The official reporting deadline isn't until Oct. 15, but Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are already out with big numbers for the third quarter.

And those numbers tell us something about the state of the presidential race on the Democratic side.

Sanders' insurgent campaign raised $26 million in the ...

Updated at 8:50 a.m. ET on Sept. 28

Pope Francis has bid the United States farewell. His plane departed for Rome on Sunday night, thus bringing to a close his first visit to U.S. soil.

"My days with you have been brief, but they have been days of great grace ...

President Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro will meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, a White House official says.

The leaders met face-to-face in April in Panama for the first time. This would be their second such meeting, an official told reporters aboard ...

Iraq says it has reached a deal to share intelligence with Russia and Iran as part of an effort to defeat the Islamic State group, which controls large parts of the region.

French warplanes also carried out their first airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, hitting targets identified during reconnaissance missions ...

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani tells NPR that much like in the United States, there are in his country "two differing viewpoints" on the six-party nuclear deal — one that is cautiously optimistic of success and another that is highly skeptical of Washington's desire to live up to its end of ...

Updated at 8:40 a.m. ET Sept. 28

Pope Francis, in a previously unannounced stop, met with victims of clergy sex abuse in Philadelphia, as the pontiff is wrapping up a six-day visit to the U.S. that will culminate with a huge Mass this afternoon.

Meeting with 300 bishops, Francis said ...

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET

The death toll in a stampede of hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia this week has risen to 769, many of whom are Iranians. Tehran has denounced the tragedy as a "crime."

"The latest statistics up to this hour reveal 769 dead. That is an increase ...

China's President Xi Jinping has pledged billions in aid to help the world's poorest countries implement sustainable development.

"China will continue to increase investment in the least developed countries, aiming to increase its total to $12 billion by 2030," Xi said in New York during a sustainable development summit of ...

Police in Thailand say they are ready to prosecute two suspects in connection with the August bombing of a prominent religious shrine in central Bangkok that killed 20 people and wounded 120 others.

Authorities say that one of the two suspects is "yellow-shirt man" seen in a closed circuit ...

Switzerland has announced that it will temporarily halt the sale of Volkswagen diesel-engine vehicles after it was revealed earlier this month that the automaker cheated on emissions tests.

Thomas Rohrbach, spokesman for the Swiss federal office of roadways, is quoted by The Associated Press as saying that "the ban is ...

Updated at 9:40 p.m. ET

Pope Francis, in a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, spoke of the need to preserve religious freedom throughout the world and warned against the use of religion "as a pretext for hatred and brutality."

"In this place which is symbolic of the American way, ...

Embattled carmaker Volkswagen has named Matthias Mueller to take the wheel after CEO Martin Winterkorn stepped down earlier this week in the wake of a growing scandal involving some 11 million diesel vehicles equipped with software that cheated emissions testing.

Mueller, the head of VW's Porsche sports-car division, ...

Maybe you've become inured to all the superlatives that get attached to sky-watching events. But the one on Sunday really is worth a look — it's the first total eclipse that's also a supermoon and a blood moon in more than three decades.

As Space.com explains: "Supermoons ...

Saudi Arabia is defending itself against criticism after a stampede in Mecca killed at least 717 hajj pilgrims and injured more than 850 others — the worst such incident in a quarter century.

The BBC reports that Iran's Supreme National Security Council accused Riyadh of "incompetence" for the ...