Republican presidential contenders turned the heat on the two frontrunners in a debate, attacking businessman Herman Cain’s economic plan as a tax increase and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney over his health care law.

Tourists on a holiday island in North Carolina were ordered to board ferries and head for the mainland today as Hurricane Earl threatened to sideswipe the US East Coast.

A powerful Hurricane Earl threatened to lash much of America’s East Coast, forcing Labour Day holidaymakers to rethink spending the traditional last week of summer at the beach.

An international panel of scientists has presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan to combat climate change – a challenge, it said, “to which civilisation must rise”.

Fighter jets escorted a London-to-Washington, D.C., flight to Boston’s Logan airport today after the pilot declared an emergency because an apparently claustrophobic passenger caused a disturbance, a federal official said.

The mother of murdered Belfast father of two, Robert McCartney today hoped more pressure from senior US politicians would force republicans to help convict her son’s killers.

A brain-damaged 11-year-old girl who was nearly removed from life support after allegedly being viciously beaten by her adoptive mother and stepfather has been moved to a rehabilitation centre.

WITH one chapter closed in Massachusetts’ gay marriage debate, several new ones open, as gay couples look ahead to what may be a short-lived chance to tie the knot and lawmakers prepare for crucial November elections.

IT is likely that priests and others in the Boston Archdiocese sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades, Massachusetts’ attorney general said yesterday, calling the scandal so massive it “borders on the unbelievable”.