Beach vacationers in the Carolinas packed up and headed inland Friday and authorities in the Florida Keys ordered the beginning of evacuations there as two storms threatened the U.S. East Coast.

Fragile barrier islands from Texas to New England take a beating, especially during hurricane season, that cause their beachfronts to wash away and gradually return with the tides. Yet authorities spend large sums to "fix" them by replenishing sand.

The Republican and Democrat battled for the mantle Friday as the newly-minted presidential nominees reached out to states teeming with the independent voters vital to winning the White House.

The Alaska Legislature will work to complete its ethics investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner earlier than expected, weeks before the national election.

The federal highway trust fund will run out of money this month, requiring delays in payments to states for transportation construction projects, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said Friday.

The windowless building that once housed the town's only strip club sits empty in the middle of a sprawling gravel parking lot, made all the uglier by the scars from its final party.

The target dates for the next two space shuttle liftoffs have been moved two days later, due to the impact of recent tropical storms on launch preparations, NASA said Friday.

A Pennsylvania dentist has been charged with dumping medical waste that sullied a New Jersey beach at the height of vacation season.

The nation’s unemployment rate zoomed to a five-year high of 6.1 percent in August as employers slashed 84,000 jobs, the government said Friday.

Rescuers on Friday searched for a missing crew member from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that crashed in ocean waters off Oahu, killing the three others on aboard.

Alaskans have struck a $3,269 bonanza in their Permanent Fund dividend payments this year.

A judge has dismissed criminal charges against the bicyclist who was body-checked by a New York City policeman in a widely viewed YouTube video.

Capitol Police said Friday they had detained a man after a rifle and an improvised explosive device were discovered in his vehicle near the Capitol building.

A Michigan man accused in a shooting rampage that killed three teenage swimmers at a river on the Wisconsin-Michigan border pleaded insanity to 10 felonies Friday.

Isaac Zamora's mother begged him to get help when he was released from jail a month ago. State and federal laws prevented her from doing much more for the man who has now been arrested after a shooting spree in rural northwest Washington that left six people dead and four wounded.

A man who as a teen helped shoot and kill five people in a schoolyard ambush was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison on an unrelated federal weapons charge.

Gustav was hardly the meanest storm that could have been unleashed on the city, but given that New Orleans nevertheless came close to suffering another big flood, the storm served as a reminder of the gaps in the city's defenses and the susceptibility of its citizens in the lowest-lying areas.

Cries for help inside a house in New Jersey turned out to be nothing but a talkative cockatoo.

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