Thunder of the low, distant variety shook movie theaters, and lightning bolts pulsed out from 3-D screens, as Thor earned $66 million at North American theaters to win the year's first full May weekend, according to early studio estimates. The latest in Marvel Studios' master plan to make a blockbuster film out of every character who has appeared in the company's comic books over the past 50 years, Thor easily trounced the weekend's two romantic comedies, Jumping ...

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," FDR said in 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression. "We know now that it is bad economics." We learned this all over again after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the shame of subprime mortgages and the brazen Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff. But even amid the Great Recession of 2009, people have been trading in their SUVs for Priuses, buying record amounts of fair-trade coffee ...

A major investor in convicted swindler Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme drowned in his swimming pool in Florida after a heart attack, his attorney said Monday. The medical examiner's office confirmed the report.

A man using a metal detector in a rural English field has uncovered the largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found -- an "unprecedented" treasure that sheds new light on history, archaeologists said Thursday. The hoard includes 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of gold and 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) of silver. That is more than three times the amount of gold found at Sutton Hoo, one of Britain's most important Anglo-Saxon sites, Staffordshire County Council said. It's an "incredible collection of material ...

"The problem with the French," former U.S. President George W. Bush purportedly once said in a snarl of disgust, "is they have no word for entrepreneur." That quote is probably apocryphal — which is a rather good thing for W. on more than just the linguistic score. French government officials this week reported that the number of new private businesses launched in June set an all-time record. By the end of 2009, they estimate, France will be about ...

Every night at 11 p.m. the village of Dörentrup in central Germany is thrown into total darkness. For the past few years, the village's cash-strapped local council has been switching off all the streetlights in the village each evening until 6 a.m. the following morning. In most places, a nightly blackout would provoke outrage as residents find themselves fumbling and stumbling their way home through the dark. But in Dörentrup, they have seen the light, with a new scheme ...

The turbulent cricket career of Andrew Symonds took another twist on Thursday when the Australia all-rounder was sent home from the World Twenty20 tournament in Britain for an "alcohol-related incident". The 33-year-old's international future is now in grave doubt following the latest in a series of controversies, having only just returned to the national squad after being suspended for missing a team meeting last year. Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland told a press conference in Melbourne that Symonds had ...

Amid the gruesome headlines generated by the world's auto industry these days, it almost read like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year-on-year in February, the country's Association of the Automotive Industry announced March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed Matthias Wissmann, VDA's president, amounted to "the highest level of sales in the month of February for ten years." Why the splurge German drivers have latched ...