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A child's never-ending "why's" aren't meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others.

GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher used its accelerator Tuesday to speed up proton beams for the first time as scientists moved ahead in efforts to learn more about the universe.

WASHINGTON - Home sales surged for the second month in a row in October, climbing to the highest level in 2 1/2 years as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of an expiring tax credit.

WASHINGTON - The head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Tuesday promised swift action to get dangerous products off the market, acknowledging that the agency didn't move quickly enough on a record recall of more than 2 million cribs linked to four deaths.

NEW ORLEANS - The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose in October at a faster-than-expected pace to the highest in more than 2-1/2 years as buyers rushed to take advantage of a popular tax credit, a survey showed on Monday.

DETROIT - A deal for General Motors Co. to sell Saab to a specialty carmaker has collapsed, leaving the storied Swedish brand born from jets in 1947 close to extinction.

WASHINGTON - The summer's trend of rising home prices faded at the end of the traditional home shopping season, two reports Tuesday showed.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The federal government said Monday that it has found a "strong association" between problematic imported Chinese drywall and corrosion of pipes and wires, a conclusion that supports complaints by thousands of homeowners over the last year.

WASHINGTON - The economy is not growing as fast as the government first thought and the recovery still faces significant obstacles, including households nervous about spending and rising unemployment.

WASHINGTON - A lot more Americans are feeling stressed out by debt this holiday season, raising the glum likelihood they'll behave like Scrooge rather than Santa.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are using everything short of forklifts to show Americans that Democratic health care legislation is an unwieldy mountain of paper. They pile it high on desks, hoist it on a shoulder trussed in sturdy rope and tell people it's longer than "War and Peace," which it isn't.

Economists expect the joblessness that has weighed down the nation's economic recovery will start to slowly abate in 2010, but they predict consumers will continue to keep a tight rein on spending, according to a new survey.

WASHINGTON - Failure is not an option on health care, a leading Democratic senator said Monday, even as Republicans turned up the heat on moderates who hold the fate of the legislation in their hands.

If you experience impotence, instead of a little blue pill maybe you want to apply shockwaves to your privates instead.

GENEVA (AFP) - Flooding in the world's major port cities caused by melting icecaps could cause up to 28 trillion dollars (18 trillion euros) in damage in 2050, environmental group WWF said in a report Monday.

LAREDO, Texas - A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - Workers at Butterball's turkey-tips hot line are used to oddball situations:

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Radioactive dust unexpectedly blew out of a pipe being cut by workers during weekend maintenance at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and officials on Monday were trying to determine exactly how and why it happened.

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Growing world oil use will likely outpace the rate of new supplies in 2010, eroding the huge stockpiles of crude which have mounted around the world since the start of the global economic crisis.

WASHINGTON - Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - French officers on Tuesday showed off a cutting-edge warship to a potential buyer — the Russian navy, whose pursuit of an amphibious assault capacity is frightening some neighboring countries.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve doesn't expect the recovery will be strong enough to quickly drive down the jobless rate, and acknowledged its efforts to keep the rebound going could feed a new speculative bubble.

BERLIN - McDonald's is going green — swapping its traditional red backdrop for a deep hunter green — to promote a more eco-friendly image in Europe.

Texting long messages can be a pain in the neck - literally.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Leading Indian outsourcers such as Tata Consultancy , Infosys and Wipro stand to gain contracts worth about $1 billion in the next one or two years as U.S. banks emerge from the troubled asset relief program, the Economic Times reported on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government-run fund that safeguards U.S. bank deposits tumbled to a negative balance of $8.2 billion in the third quarter, as the number of problem banks surged by a third to 552.

GENEVA - The number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS — about 33 million — has remained virtually unchanged for the last two years, United Nations experts said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew more slowly than first thought in the third quarter, but a fifth month of gains in house prices in September and an improvement in consumer morale signaled the anemic recovery was intact.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world