Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala has asked a California jury to spare his life. Alcala gave his own closing arguments Tuesday in the penalty phase of his trial for raping and murdering a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl and four women in the 1970s. The 66-year-old ...

Legislation to give additional months of unemployment benefits to people who have been out of a job for more than half a year has won key GOP support that means it will soon pass the Senate. The sweeping bill also would prevent doctors from absorbing a crippling cut in ...

As a proposal to require health warnings on cellular phones got a fresh legislative review Tuesday, Gov. John Baldacci made clear his opposition but stopped short of threatening a veto. "As it stands the governor doesn't support the bill, and he's based that decision largely ...

Researchers said Tuesday that papaya leaf extract and its tea have dramatic cancer-fighting properties against a broad range of tumors, backing a belief held in a number of folk traditions. University of Florida researcher Nam Dang and colleagues in Japan, in a report published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, documented papaya's anticancer effect against tumors of the cervix, breast ...