Firefighters were working Friday to extinguish a raging wildfire that had scorched 20,000 acres near South Carolina's popular tourist areas. Cool night air had caused thick smoke from the blaze to dip, hampering visibility, said Todd Cartner, a Horry County Fire Rescue spokesman. The blaze had destroyed 69 houses and damaged 100 others, causing about 2,500 people to evacuate, the Horry County Emergency Operations Center said Thursday. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency Thursday ...

The South, long synonymous with hyper economic growth, is going through a harrowing recession. Currently, 8 of the 15 states with the highest unemployment rates are in the South: North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida are all reporting the highest rate in their state's history. South Carolina posted the nation's third-highest unemployment rate for March — 11.4%, after Michigan and Oregon. The downturn's effects are visible everywhere: Harrah's recently halted construction of a $700 million casino project on Mississippi's ...

Rivers are the arteries of our infrastructure. Flowing from highlands to the sea, they breathe life into ecosystems and communities. But many rivers in the United States are in trouble. Rivers in Alaska, California and the South are among the 10 most endangered, according to a report released Tuesday by American Rivers, a leading river conservation group. The annual report uses data from thousands of rivers groups, local governments, environmental organizations and citizen watchdogs to identify waterways ...

After e-mail pleas and nationwide canvassing, President Obama's political arm has made a TV ad that will air Thursday, urging voters to pressure Congress to approve his $3.6 trillion budget. "America is facing tough times," the narrator says in the 30-second ad. "President Obama has a plan to get our economy moving again, to cut the deficit in half and create jobs by investing in health care, energy independence and schools. "Thousands are going door-to-door as part of Organizing ...

Comedian Stephen Colbert, who unsuccessfully tried to get on the ballot of the South Carolina presidential primaries, aimed higher and won this time. Fans of "The Colbert Report" made "Colbert" the No. 1 submission in a NASA contest to name a new wing of the international space station. Still, NASA reserves the right to name the wing of the space station and says it will not make a final decision on the matter until next month. "Colbert" pulled ...

Imagine the Batmobile busting bad guys in Bismarck or "Knight Rider's" KITT corralling criminals on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Carbon Motors Corp.'s new high-tech cop car prototype might not be quite up to superhero specs, but some police say it could be a welcome addition to their arsenal. "I don't see any downside to this car," said Carl Latorre, a Pennsylvania State Police dispatcher who served 35 years as a Philadelphia police officer. "I am so excited about this car. This ...

Jewels Morris-Davis is a no-nonsense kind of girl. When the high school sophomore turned 16 recently, she didn't celebrate with any My Super Sweet 16 foolishness. Nor did she rush to get her driver's license and race around the back roads in this rural northwest corner of South Carolina. But Jewels did quietly revel in one achievement. "I am," she says a few weeks later, a proud smile spreading across her face, "the first person in my family to reach ...

There's no place left to hide from rising unemployment. Nationwide, of course, job losses have been mounting for quite some time. Four states — California, Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina — now have unemployment rates north of 10%. But until January, certain pockets of the country were bucking the national trend. In fact, in December, six metropolitan areas actually saw flat or falling unemployment rates from a year earlier. No more. Each of these cities — Casper and Cheyenne, ...

When Kellogg's dumped its endorsement of Michael Phelps after a photograph surfaced of the Olympic gold medalist using a bong, the company was stuck with thousands of boxes of cereal featuring the swimmer's image. No problem. The company, based in Battle Creek, Michigan, made short order of the already-printed and filled boxes, donating two tons of cereal to the San Francisco Food Bank late last month. With food banks across the country reporting shortages of food, the donation was a ...

A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, the Smithsonian's Museum of American History announced Tuesday. Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln's watch in April 1861 when he heard about the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and wrote a short message on the metal inside the watch, the Smithsonian said. There it remained, unseen for almost 150 years, it said. In a 1906 interview with The New York Times, Dillon reported that as soon as he ...