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The U.S. came within seconds of launching a nuclear strike on Russia ,unleashing WW3 during the coldest period of the Cold War, according to secret documents revealed by a historian. Washington and Russia came extremely close to a massive nuclear war because of a faulty 46-cent component that caused a computer glitch, according to the documents. The secret documents were revealed and detailed in a book by American author Eric Schlosser titled Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. The documents include over 1,000 accidents with nuclear weapons that occurred due to the negligence...

Yet, of the Americans who died last week in the suicide bombing at the CIA’s most sensitive outpost in Afghanistan, it is the seventh whose presence has raised the most urgent questions as the US scrambles to repair — and avenge — the damage done to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. According to a security official in Kabul with close ties to the CIA, when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi carried out his deadly mission at Forward Operating Base Chapman, he managed to kill the agency’s deputy head of station for the whole of Afghanistan. The senior agent was waiting...

This Aug. 23, 2003 IKONOS satellite image shows the aftermath of the explosion that destroyed the Brazilian VLS-1 V-03 rocket designed to carry two satellites into orbit. The Aug. 22 explosion killed 21 people after an engine ignited by mistake while on its launch pad. The rocket exploded at its jungle base of Alcantara, in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil. The image shows the burned vegetation and the collapsed launch pad. A before image taken on Sept. 5, 2001 is also available for comparison. The image may be used to support reporting of this story in print, broadcast and...

Gaza-based terrorists fired three rockets towards southern Israel on Thursday evening, all three of which exploded in Gaza. There were no sirens in the Gaza Belt area, but some locals reported hearing explosions. A similar incident occurred on Saturday night, when two rockets that were fired from Gaza exploded on the Palestinian side of the border fence. Saturday’s rocket fire came a day after Hamas called for all able-bodied Arabs to attack IDF soldiers and "settlers" as "legitimate targets" after an Arab infant was killed in an arson attack in the village of Duma in Samaria.

The State Department's request that Hillary Clinton's former deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, return any work-related emails in her possession went unreceived for two months because of issues with delivery of State's mail and email messages asking for the records, according to Abedin's lawyers. After the controversy over former secretary of state Clinton's use of a private email account and server for official business erupted in March, Abedin was among 10 current or former State Department officials asked by their former agency to provide any similar messages on their private accounts. But Abedin's lawyers said she didn't receive that...

Working as a deputy sheriff in south Florida during the late 1990s, my agency had just been issued stop-sticks. These sticks were about 3 feet long and had large spikes protruding all the way around. They were meant to be used as a stop-gap measure when a suspect was fleeing in a vehicle. If an officer could get into position, the sticks were to be thrown in front of the tires as the car passed by. The weight of the car would bear down on the spikes, deflating the tires and ideally ending the chase safely. If I said everyone...

MAHWAH, N.J. (AP) -- Police say a man drove off with a bag containing $150,000 in cash after two employees who were replenishing ATMs mistakenly left it on a lawn in northern New Jersey. Mahwah police say in a news release that the ATM employees had stopped at a business on Industrial Avenue when one of them placed the satchel on the front lawn as he moved items around in their vehicle.

The IRS reported this week that 6.6 million people paid the ObamaCare mandate penalty for not having insurance last year, which the administration says is 10% higher than they'd expected. This isn't exactly good news, given that the entire point of the mandate penalty tax is to encourage everyone to buy coverage. Even if it were, the number comes with two big caveats.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is expected to make a big announcement Monday, but it seems he gave away the surprise last week in a tweet. On Friday, Walker tweeted a black-and-white photo of himself waving on a stage with the words "Scott Walker is running for president," according to Politico. The tweet has since been taken down, but Walker sent a few more presidential-sounding messages afterward, including one showing "the official campaign logo." Walker is set to make the announcement at 5 p.m. Monday in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha. Campaign aides revealed to the Associated Press in early July...

Miss Oklahoma, Olivia Jordan, was crowned the 64th Miss USA on Sunday night but that wasn’t the most entertaining part of the night. Rather it was a very interesting answer from Miss Nevada, Brittany McGowan, during the Q&A portion of the pageant. McGowan -- who had already tripped over her dress during the evening gown competition -- was asked by a judge what she would do to improve race relations in the United States. She appeared taken aback by the question but still tried to reply saying: “What I would do to improve race relations in the U.S. is get...

On June 10, USA Today quoted FBI director James Comey saying an FBI “mistake” allowed Dylann Roof to pass a background check for the .45 caliber handgun he allegedly used to attack innocents at Charleston’s Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The New York Times excused this “mistake,” positing instead that Roof passed the background check because of a system “flaw.”The best case scenario for gun control proponents would have been that Roof did not even bother with a background check; that he instead bought the firearm at a gun show or from a crazy friend or that–as many gun control advocates posited...

Google says it is "appalled" that its new Photos app mistakenly labelled a black couple as being "gorillas". Its product automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software. The error was brought to its attention by a New York-based software developer who was one of the people pictured in the photos involved. Google was later criticised on social media because of the label's racist connotations. "This is 100% not OK," acknowledged Google executive Yonatan Zunger after being contacted by Jacky Alcine via Twitter. "[It was] high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen."

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found evidence of helium leakage from the Earth’s mantle along a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. Using samples of casing gas from two dozen oil wells ranging from LA’s Westside to Newport Beach in Orange County, Boles discovered that more than one-third of the sites — some of the deepest ones — show evidence of high levels of helium-3 (3He).Considered primordial, 3He is a vestige of the Big Bang. Its only terrestrial source is the mantle. Leakage of 3He suggests that the Newport-Inglewood fault is deeper...

A confrontation described as heated but non-violent thwarted a planned burning of the Confederate flag by demonstrators Saturday in Brooksville. A few hundred counter-protesters — many carrying Confederate and American flags — showed up at the steps of the Hernando County courthouse to cut short a rally in which organizers denounced “rampant white racist violence.” Organizers of the protest included the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, a St. Petersburg group of white people under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, which seeks reparations for black Americans. As about a dozen people protested, they became greatly outnumbered by a pro-Confederate flag...

WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal had been lost, according to government investigators. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence. As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were erased, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The revelation is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. George...

Government investigators say IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency’s tea party scandal had been lost. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence.The report is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. …

A Palestinian terrorist died in clashes with the IDF near Ramallah Sunday morning, after his attack on an army jeep backfired quite spectacularly. Abdallah Ghanayem, 21, died after being struck by the vehicle during clashes that erupted in the village of Kfar Malik following a dawn Israeli army raid, the Palestinian Authority sources said. An IDF spokesman confirmed to AFP that a Palestinian had died - after he threw an incendiary device at a jeep and the vehicle overturned on him. It was the second Palestinian terrorist killed in the past week,....

A crane hauling an air conditioner into the top floor of a 30-story building dropped the heavy load Sunday morning, smashing parts of the building and injuring 10 people. Workers were loading the shipping container-sized machine into 261 Madison Ave. when a rigging strap holding the air conditioner broke, a city official familiar with the ongoing investigation told the Daily News. The chiller sheered the building as it fell. Debris rained down on Madison Ave. around E. 38th St. Part of the 30-story building's facade near the roof was bashed open.

In the past two days, malfunctions in the network of sensors that detect earthquakes in Northern California have issued three false alarms, forcing the U.S. Geological Survey to make a series of embarrassing retractions.. Just after midnight Friday morning, a magnitude 6.7 quake struck off the coast of Alaska. When its waves reached sensors operated by the Northern California Seismic Network, they were mistakenly interpreted as a 5.1 temblor near the Oregon border in Lewiston, officials say. ... The error occurred again Saturday morning after a magnitude 7.8 quake struck off the coast of Japan and the same Northern California...

Seventy years ago, Soviet tanks made it all the way to Berlin, but this week one of the newest Russian tanks struggled to make it all the way across Red Square. The next-generation tank appeared to stall during the final rehearsal for a major military parade in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of victory in the second world war. The Armata tank, which is on display for the first time, ground to a halt during the rehearsal, in an incident later claimed to have been a deliberate test. President Vladimir Putin will welcome the leaders of India, China and...