PENNSYLVANIA

Hurricane Irene is bearing down a path toward assault on the U.S. East Coast Friday. Irene is nearing North Carolina and forcing evacuations and planned closings of public transportation in New York as the I-95 corridor prepares and gets ready to hunker down for the massive storm.

scientists believe that the newly discovered remains of the so-called Jurassic mother indicate the ancient ancestor of modern mammals.

SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said this will mark the first time in the agency’s history that it will completely shutdown.

A federal survey showed that nearly three-quarters of jobless Americans say they can't afford needed health care or prescription drugs, as the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which provides medical coverage for the unemployed, is set to expire on Sept. 1.

Currently, about 9.1 percent of Americans are unemployed, according to the most recent statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hurricane Irene could seriously threaten areas as far north as Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket off the Massachusetts coast, according to federal officials, who extended more hurricane watches and warnings on Friday.

Hurricane Irene 2011 is preparing to make a path of destruction and havoc up the U.S. East Coast beginning late Friday in North Carolina before hitting New York and Boston and other major cities on Sunday. Coastal regions were being evacuated in Delaware Friday, and states of emergency have been declared at states all along the coast line, from North Carolina and Virginia to New York and New Jersey as the potential storm of a lifetime gets ready to make landfall or come close on the U.S.

Ready or not residents of the Northeast, including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, powerful Hurricane Irene is on a path your way, with extraordinary risk threat and potential of flooding rain, high winds, downed power lines and power outages. Irene is expected to reach the northeast by this weekend. Updated forecast models on Friday show that poses an extraordinary threat and is one that no one has yet experienced from North Carolina to the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast to New England...

Hurricane Irene continued a path Friday toward creating havoc in the upper U.S. East Coast, striking or heavily impacting cities including Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The storm poses an extraordinary threat and will begin impacting North Carolina coastal areas late Friday before ravaging the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and New England regions, likely assaulting major metropolitan areas including New York, Hartford, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia.

Officials have ordered thousands of Maryland residents and visitors to leave Ocean City.

NASA scientists have managed to capture a distant galaxy's dormant black hole shredding and consuming a star.

Hurricane Irene has left the Bahamas and is now churning toward the East Coast of the United States.

Hurricane Irene could end up closing refineries on the East Coast, which are concentrated in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in anticipation for the storm's arrival, analysts say. Irene has been putting a beating down on the Bahamas for about two days. Structural damages, blocked roads and power outages have been reported in the southeastern islands.

A COBRA subsidy that reduces the cost of health insurance for unemployed workers by 65 percent is set to end on Sept. 1.

Hurricane Irene's path could go three ways as it moves north toward the New York area, and none of them are good. The most likely scenario, based on current projections, is Irene making landfall on Long Island or in Connecticut and then moving north through western Massachusetts.

This is the first time for scientists using the Swift satellite to view the process in its entirety, at the onset. Normally they are only able to snap photos of the aftermath, flares of ultraviolet and gamma rays that radiate for years during a star's consumption.

NASA's Swift Satellite has captured an unusual cosmic phenomenon of the awakening of a distant, dormant massive black hole and the subsequent devouring of a sun-like star.

Could our ancient ancestor have been a tiny rodent?

Evolution's arc is a long one: the recently unearthed fossil of the Jurassic Mother, a tiny shrew-like creature that lived among dinosaurs, could be the ancient forerunner of humans.

NASA's Swift orbital telescope captured a surge of X-rays from deep space that scientists realized was the result of a massive black hole's consumption of a star.

Hurricane Irene's projected path is expected impact almost the entire East Coast.