UNITED NATIONS – The Manhattan district attorney has launched a criminal probe into Benon Sevan (search), the U.N. Oil-for-Food (search) chief who investigators said had “serious conflict of interest” while overseeing the program. Sources close to the case told FOX News that District Attorney Robert Morgenthau (search), who has been …

LOS ANGELES – A federal appeals court panel has ruled that an Australian couple can proceed with a lawsuit that alleges their idea for a shape-shifting creature was wrongly used in the film “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” (search) Filia and Constantinos Kourtis claim that they came up with the character …

MIAMI – The Bush administration is ready to leap into action with help and resources as soon as Tropical Storm Katrina hits land, the White House said Thursday. The storm gained strength Thursday and was expected to become a weak hurricane before making landfall overnight along Florida’s southeastern coast. Even …

WASHINGTON – Harvard scientists announced they’ve discovered a way to fuse adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells (search), a promising breakthrough that could lead to the creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and destroy human embryos. The scientists said they were able to show in …

WASHINGTON – Struggling to finish a politically thorny task, the base-closing commission tackled a shake-up of the Air National Guard (search) on Friday after — in a setback for the Pentagon — it voted to keep open Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. The nine-member panel endorsed the concept …

WASHINGTON – A Senate committee plans to review rules that govern who can — and cannot — be laid to rest in national cemeteries after the ashes of a convicted murderer were placed in Arlington National Cemetery (search). The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (search), chaired by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, …

NEW YORK – Martha Stewart (search) will soon be stepping into the future with a lighter foot. Stewart’s electronic ankle bracelet comes off at “12:05 tonight,” she told The Associated Press on Wednesday, adding with a smile that the prospect of being rid of it fills her with “nervous excitement.” …

For a relatively youthful medium, video gaming has a profound sense of its own history. The majority of popular franchises — Mario, Madden, “The Sims,” “Final Fantasy” — have their roots in the 1980s, practically ancient times in today’s accelerated pop culture. Such series remain successful because their creators are …

LOS ANGELES – Kelsey Grammer said Tuesday that Fox is dropping his sitcom “Back to You,” calling the decision a surprise and a shame. “They have let it go,” Grammer told The Associated Press. “We were told all this time we were in good shape and we were coming back.” …

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Hackers often harness the combined power of thousands of virus-infected personal computers to pump out spam e-mail or disable targeted servers by overwhelming them with Internet traffic. Now an Air Force colonel is suggesting the U.S. military build its own “botnet,” or network of remotely controlled …