With memories of last year's Superstorm Sandy still fresh, NOAA is warning East Coasters and those farther inland to brace for another active Atlantic season, predicting that as many as six major storms will develop between the beginning of June and the end of November.

Scientists have completed the first assessments of how readily the H7N9 flu virus in China can pass among ferrets and pigs. The mammals provide the best inkling of how dangerous these bugs may become for humans.

The news is both bad and good. They've found the new bird virus is easily passed between ferrets sharing the same cage.

President Obama on Thursday unveiled a major pivot in White House counterterrorism policy, calling for a limiting of CIA drones strikes and for a renewed effort to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

  The Census Bureau reports that Lea County, in the heart of southeastern New Mexico's bustling oil patch, was the fastest growing in the state last year but two-thirds of the counties lost population.

Lea County's population grew by 1.8 percent from 2011 to 2012. State demographer Jack Baker attributes much of that to the booming oil field economy

Sandoval County, which includes Rio Rancho, grew by 1 percent last year.

Memorial Day weekend marks the kickoff and 84th anniversary of Carlsbad Caverns' summer bat watching program.

Park rangers have presented summertime bat flight programs since 1929, making Carlsbad Caverns National Park one of the best-known bat colonies in the world.

During the nightly programs, rangers dispel myths and extol the virtues of bats as the nocturnal creatures spiral out of the cavern on their nightly forage for insects.

Home can be a refuge. But when natural disaster strikes, hunkering down at home can be a deadly mistake.

All told, 32 of the 53 New Yorkers who died in last fall's Superstorm Sandy drowned, and most of them died at home, according to a report published today in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

This feels a bit like deja vu.

Scientists report a major breakthrough in human stem-cell research. And then just a week later, the findings come under fire.

Biologists at Oregon Health & Science University said May 15 that they had cloned human embryos from a person's skin cell.

A 3-D printer is being credited with helping to save an Ohio baby's life, after doctors "printed" a tube to support a weak airway that caused him to stop breathing. The innovative procedure has allowed Kaiba Gionfriddo, of Youngstown, Ohio, to stay off a ventilator for more than a year.