FLORIDA

A U.S. judge approved a $7.2 billion settlement on Thursday to pay former customers of the Madoff firm, the largest yet in the worldwide search for money lost in Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

After repossessing more than a record 1 million homes in the U.S., banks are now poised to foreclosure on even more properties in 2011, according to Realty Trac Inc.

U.S. housing prices overall are expected to hit bottom by spring 2011 and begin a gradual rise in 2012, Frank Nothaft, chief economist and vice president of housing lender Freddie Mac said on Wednesday.

The market is often an anonymous place where you don't really know who is on the other side of your trade. Sometimes, however, it gets personal.

The attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ, and the murder of six innocent bystanders, at a “meet and greet” with constituents on Jan. 8, was a shocking and tragic event nationwide. Unfortunately, trying to kill American politicians is neither unique nor new.

Astronomers have discovered Kepler-10b, the smallest planet outside our solar system and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth but more hotter than molten iron.

The top after-market NYSE gainers on Monday are: Nautilus, KKR & Co, Stryker, Lennar and GATX. The top after-market NYSE losers on Monday are: The St. Joe Co, CBIZ, Headwaters, Advanced Micro Devices, MarkWest Energy and Alcoa.

A celebrity gossip website on Friday posted a photo that it claims shows Inland Rep. Mary Bono Mack in a playful, but compromising position.

Florida's Tampa International airport closed its primary runway on Thursday after a shift in earth's northern magnetic pole made it impossible for planes to take accurate bearings. The event has ominously set in motion another round of doomsday talk as people shared anxiety on Internet discussion forums about the impending apocalypse in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar.

A series of investigative articles in British Medical Journal conclusively prove that Dr Wakefield falsified data and there were irregularities and discrepancies in his study

U.S. metropolitan areas which have suffered the steepest drops in housing prices are poised to endure long-term deterioration similar to how certain cities in the Rust Belt were permanently damaged by the decline of manufacturing.

The University emerges at the top of a list by Kiplinger magazine that ranks public educational institutions by academic quality and affordability

Electric wheelchairs are a real boon to people with disabilities, but they lack a way to adjust the power to the wheels, making it hard to navigate when the terrain gets rough. A group of engineers is using technology designed for the military to solve that problem.

John Boehner, a Republican Congressman from Ohio, gets sworn in tomorrow as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, one of the most powerful positions in the world. He will have to show, almost at once, if he has the stuff for the job.

Nursing students in Kansas are expelled for posting insensitive photograph on Facebook

Visitors to Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida will get a chance to admire one of the last, major artworks of American artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, known for his leaded glass works, as the museum will put out the artist’s works on permanent display next month.

One statistic from Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, Florida last February is only an estimate and received little media coverage, but is of great importance to many individuals and families and to the nation itself.

The recent snowstorms in the northeastern U.S. and a similar blizzard last year might make some doubt the climate is changing. The short answer is: no, and in fact some of the people who study climate predicted wetter winters - and more snow, at least for a while.

Time Warner Cable said it is working hard to reach a long-term agreement with Sinclair Broadcasting over carriage of its signals.

Dey Pharma, a subsidiary of Mylan Inc., has agreed to pay $280 million to the federal government to settle allegations that it had violated the False Claims Act by engaging in a scheme to report false and inflated prices for its products, knowing that federal health care programs relied on those reported prices to set payment rates.

Two former senior executives of Latin Node Inc. (LatiNode), a Miami-based telecommunications company, have been charged with bribing more than $500,000 to Honduran government officials and laundering money.