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CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - In the worst case, nearly half the turbines in proposed offshore wind farms along the most vulnerable parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are likely to be destroyed by hurricanes in a 20-year period, a new study suggests.

SALT LAKE CITY - For Claudia Gomez, of Logan, Utah, the phone call rekindled hope after seven frustrating years of searching for her daughter, Brenda, who she believes was kidnapped by her father, and taken to Mexico.

SAN FRANCISCO - President Barack Obama, who signed the Shark Conservation Act into law last month, apparently didn't check out the menu before he made a surprise visit this week to a Chinatown restaurant that is among a handful still serving shark fin soup, a delicacy that has been outlawed in California.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Operations involving the use of respirators at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant here were suspended last week after it was discovered that some of the plant's respiratory equipment -- including masks and breathing tubes -- was radioactively contaminated.

The findings were stunning because the equipment had supposedly been certified as clean.

San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, who for decades has ranked as one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, kept her checkbook closed during President Barack Obama's high-priced California fundraisers this week.

WASHINGTON - Nearly five months after their first encounter, Tennessee Republican Rep. Phil Roe -- a doctor -- met impromptu patient Terry Wade again Wednesday morning.

Their first encounter was in the Charlotte, N.C., airport in September.

She remembers the guns -- military rifles with bayonets -- held by a line of grim-faced soldiers watching her every move.

What could she, a girl of 17, have done to deserve this?

Why were her parents being treated as dangerous criminals? They ran a 10-acre strawberry farm on Washington state's Vashon Island and hadn't caused any trouble.

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has remained consistent for 130 years, with no evidence that anything has changed as a result of climate change, according to a study released this week.

The analysis of snowfall data in the Sierra going back to 1878 found no more or less snow overall -- a result that, on the surface, appears to contradict aspects of recent climate-change models.

"Jeopardy!" was elementary for Watson, IBM's multimillion-dollar artificial intelligence supercomputer that trounced several of the quiz game's champions last year.

But can a computer beat the world's quickest minds in crosswords, a game defined as much by humor and wordplay as logic and knowledge?

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - In the grassy belly of a wetland known as Eagle Marsh, Mother Nature decides what water goes down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and what will end up in Lake Erie via the Maumee River.