CHATHAM, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Residents and business owners in the beach communities of Cape Cod and nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard hung plywood over their shop windows on Friday and rued the arrival of Hurricane Earl, which appeared set to spoil their holiday weekend. But ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will outline new measures next week to boost the U.S. economy after August data on Friday showed again that jobs -- the central issue in November elections -- were being created too slowly. Obama, speaking to reporters in the White House Rose Garden, ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Republican Meg Whitman has opened up a 7-point lead over Democrat Jerry Brown in their closely watched race for California governor, the latest poll of likely voters showed on Friday. Whitman, a billionaire former eBay chief executive who has already poured more than $100 ...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc removed a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Friday afternoon, a company spokesman said. "The Deepwater Horizon BOP stack was successfully detached" from the Macondo well shortly after 1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT), spokesman ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors in Gabriel Capital LP, a so-called feeder fund that funneled money to imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff, were awarded $12.74 million by a panel of three arbitrators, court records show. The award to two New Jersey investment funds was disclosed in a filing Thursday ...

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Boeing 747-400 cargo plane operated by United Parcel Service Inc crashed shortly after takeoff into a military compound near Dubai's airport on Friday, killing two crew members, authorities said. U.S. parcel delivery company UPS confirmed the crash of the plane, which was en ...

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A major earthquake of 7.4 magnitude hit New Zealand, 30 km (20 miles) west of Christchurch early on Saturday morning, causing no immediate reports of casualties but widespread damage, authorities said. The quake, which had a depth of 33 kms (20.5 miles), struck around 4.35 ...

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber struck a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week, piling pressure on a U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by a flood crisis. Pakistan's Taliban claimed responsibility for the ...

The settlement filing comes on the same day Google announced changes to its privacy policies to make them "more transparent and understandable," Associate General Counsel Mike Yang said on the company website. Launched in February, Buzz initially used an individual's email contacts from ...

MANTEO, North Carolina (Reuters) - Hurricane Earl slapped North Carolina's coast with heavy wind and surf on Friday and then weakened as it swirled up the U.S. eastern seaboard toward New England and Canada as a much tamer storm than feared. Forecasters downgraded Earl to a Category 1 hurricane ...