Alaskan Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will succeed Gov. Sarah Palin after she leaves office later this month, called Palin Alaska's greatest gift to the United States on Saturday. "I was very surprised at first," he said of Palin's decision to resign, which he said she told him Wednesday. "But then as she began to explain why she was doing it, I began to see it was Sarah Palin, once again, moving to put Alaska's interest first," Parnell told CNN. ...

A motel owner in New Zealand -- fed up with one too many incidents of rowdy behavior -- has banned an entire town from checking in as guests. Steve Donnelly, the owner of the Supreme Motor Lodge in the town of Palmerston North, said he decided to yank the welcome mat for the 16,000 residents of Wainuiomata because "each time they visited, our life became less exciting." "I'm not Santa Claus. I can't figure out who's naughty and who's nice," ...

Say what you will about the simple, uninteresting lives of microorganisms, they're tough little critters. You try surviving for a million and a half years without heat, food or sunlight and see how you do. A team of National Science Foundation researchers just discovered a species of Antarctic organisms that has accomplished exactly that — and the microbes' unlikely survival can tell us a lot not just about the adaptability of life on Earth, but the prospects for it on ...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday praised U.S. President Barack Obama's new plan for the war in Afghanistan. "He has our full support," Karzai told a news conference. "This was better than what we expected." Obama unveiled the plan Friday which called for more troops, new legislation, improved troop training and added civilian expertise in the war in Afghanistan. Obama said the plan would address what he called an "international security challenge of the highest order." Obama said the "situation ...