Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan are building the biggest plane ever to haul cargo and astronauts into space, in the latest of several ventures fueled by technology tycoons clamoring to write America’s next chapter in spaceflight. Their plans, unveiled Tuesday, call for a twin-fuselage aircraft with wings longer than a football field to carry a rocket high into...

As Bank of America Corp.’s stock has tumbled and clawed back in recent days, city leaders, business owners and others with a stake in the company are waiting to see what happens next.The stock market swings have delivered a familiar feeling of anxiety to a city pummeled by the financial crisis. Local leaders and business owners say they aren’t as fearful this time. But they acknowled...

Setbacks mounted Wednesday in the crisis over Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear facility, with nearby seawater testing at its highest radiation levels yet and the president of the plant operator checking into a hospital with hypertension.Nearly three weeks after a March 11 tsunami engulfed the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, knocking out power to the cooling system that keeps nuclear fuel rods from overhe...

SCE&G officials say their company’s nuclear plant in Fairfield County was built to be safe during earthquakes and is in better position to withstand natural disasters than the aging atomic reactors that have begun to fail in Japan.The company’s plant near Jenkinsville, licensed in 1982, has a different design than the ones in Japan, making the South Carolina plant able to provide vital c...

Opposition figure Mohammed ElBaradei emerged from house arrest late Sunday to join protesters in central Cairo, echoing their demand that U.S.-allied President Hosni Mubarak resign and establishing himself as the face of Egypt's six-day pro-democracy uprising. The dramatic nighttime appearance by ElBaradei - the Nobel Peace Prize winner who returned to Egypt last week after the protests began ...

Iran began the process of loading 163 fuel rods into the reactor core of its first nuclear power plant on Tuesday, celebrating the achievement as proof that Tehran can outmaneuver international sanctions.The plant, built with Russian help in the southern port city of Bushehr, is not among the aspects of Iran's nuclear program that are of top concern to the international community and is not direct...

Officials say the pilot of a single-engine plane was uninjured after he missed a grassy rural runway and landed on U.S. Highway 76 in South Carolina.Florence County sheriff's Capt. Mike Nunn told the Morning News of Florence that pilot Phillip Brown of Sanford, N.C., attempted to land Sunday