WORCESTER, Mass. It only takes a minute for a crispy Christmas tree to touch off a raging inferno. Researchers who set up a mock living room complete with curtains and an armchair — and then hit “record” as a tree-turned-torch engulfed the room in 63 seconds — hope their video will help people stay safe […]

WASHINGTON When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink. She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury — Steven Mnuchin — all too well. OneWest, a bank formerly owned […]

WASHINGTON The Republican-led House is pushing ahead with a $611 billion defense policy bill that prohibits closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forbids the Pentagon from trimming the number of military bases and awards U.S. troops their largest pay raise in six years. Lawmakers are scheduled to vote Friday on the legislation, which authorizes […]

WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate retired Gen. James Mattis to be his defense secretary. Mattis, 66, is a Marine Corps general who retired in 2013 after serving as the commander of the U.S. Central Command. Trump made the announcement Thursday night at a post-election victory rally in Cincinnati. Mattis’ selection raises questions […]

CANNON BALL, N.D. So far, the hundreds of protesters fighting the Dakota Access pipeline have shrugged off the heavy snow, icy winds and frigid temperatures that have swirled around their large encampment on the North Dakota grasslands. But if they defy next week’s government deadline to abandon the camp, demonstrators know the real deep freeze […]

JAKARTA, Indonesia At least 200,000 conservative Muslims rallied peacefully in the Indonesian capital on Friday in the second major protest against its minority Christian governor, who is being prosecuted for alleged blasphemy. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, a political ally of the governor who angered hard-liners by being out of the city during their first protest, […]

MEDELLIN, Colombia Families are preparing to receive the bodies of the victims of this week’s air tragedy in Colombia as experts develop a clearer picture of how things went so terribly wrong with a charter flight that slammed into a mountainside. Many of the 71 killed were players and coaches from a small-town Brazilian soccer […]