FLORIDA

The shuttle Atlantis successfully blasted off into orbit Monday towards the International Space Station, carrying 15 tons of critical spare parts and equipment. Atlantis and its six-man crew launched as scheduled at 2:28 p.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission trip's purpose is to deliver equipment, including two gyroscopes, to the International Space Station.

Lowe's Cos Inc , the second-largest U.S. home improvement chain, posted a 30 percent drop in quarterly profit on Monday as consumers put off big renovations while the U.S. housing market remained sluggish.

The Atlantis space shuttle has been fueled and is ready for blast off later on Monday for its 11-day mission trip. The Atlantis is scheduled to lift off at 2:28 p.m. ET from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla to the International Space Station.

Lowe's Cos Inc, the second-largest U.S. home improvement chain, posted a 30 percent drop in quarterly profit as consumers put off big renovations as the U.S. housing market remains sluggish, sending shares down 2.1 percent in premarket trading.

NASA said Sunday that the weather is expected to be conducive for the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis to launch toward the International Space Station on Monday on a delivery mission.

U.S. home foreclosure filings slowed in October for a third straight month, but rising unemployment will spur another record year of failing mortgages in 2010, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

A new technology to prevent lithium-ion batteries from catching fire or exploding in laptops and mobile phones may be on the market as soon as the first quarter of 2010, its inventor said on Wednesday.

It's still not cheap, but Livin' La Vida Madoff may now cost a bit less. Asking prices for homes once occupied by now imprisoned Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff in Manhattan's Upper East Side and in Palm Beach, Florida, have been cut, after about two months on the market.

Get ready, America. Like her or not, Sarah Palin is coming to a city near you.

About 20 percent of struggling U.S. homeowners eligible for loan workouts have entered into a trial modification, but it is unclear how many of them will be able to keep the lower payments permanently, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday.

A weakened Tropical Storm Ida drenched the U.S. Gulf Coast and oil installations on Monday, shutting down nearly 30 percent of Gulf energy production.

Ida weakened to a tropical storm as it churned toward oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and was forecast to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast early on Tuesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Monday.

'Twilight' here! We got your red hot 'Twilight' angle heah!

Arab and Muslim Americans on Friday braced for the possibility of verbal or physical attacks after an Army psychiatrist of Arab descent allegedly killed 13 during a shooting rampage at a military base in Texas.

Worried about what to do with fat you've had liposuctioned from pudgy areas? Researchers have turned it into stem cells in the lab, but here's a more immediate use: Fat liposuctioned from other parts of the body can safely be used to increase a woman's breast size, according to study findings presented this week at the Plastic Surgery 2009 meeting in Seattle.

If things that go bump in the night interest you, a stay at one of these Grand Old Dames would be a haunting good time! Since around the turn of the century, these hotels have offered exceptional

A former client of UBS AG who cooperated in a U.S. probe of the Swiss bank's ties with wealthy Americans hiding money overseas was sentenced to one year house arrest and a fine on Wednesday for a multimillion-dollar tax evasion scheme.

These are heady days for the medical tourism industry. With U.S. healthcare prices spiraling upward, more and more insurers and individuals are looking abroad for treatment. By some estimates, 650,000 Americans will check into foreign hospitals from Mexico to Thailand this year.

U.S. mortgage defaults ebbed in some hard-hit cities in the third quarter, but unemployment created new trouble spots as foreclosures set a record in the quarter, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Wednesday.

Sun Valley, a sun-baked and struggling corner of Los Angeles, is fertile ground for mortgage rescue scams with its high proportion of subprime borrowers, Spanish speakers and a sharp drop in home values.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will announce $3.4 billion in government grants to help build a smart electric grid that will save consumers money on their utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power supplies generated by solar and wind energy, the White House said.