CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The space shuttle was sold to America as cheap, safe and reliable. It was none of those.
It cost $196 billion over 40 years, ended the lives of 14 astronauts and managed to make less than half the flights promised.
Yet despite all that, there were some big achievements that weren't promised.

ATLANTA (AP) -- Bolstered by support from his loyal radio talk-show audience and tea party backers, businessman Herman Cain has revved up mainstream conservatives, rising recently to third place in a poll of voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state.

BOSTON (AP) -- On a chilly evening in February, a commuter train bound for Worcester, Mass., broke down outside Boston, transforming passengers' usual 80-minute commute into a four-hour nightmare.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Nine years of being treated by her male colleagues in the Army as if she didn't deserve her sergeant stripes did not leave Jennifer Malinski inclined to join the American Legion once she left service.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration's top trade official said Friday he is "dumbfounded" and "shell-shocked" by Senate Republicans who blocked action on three coveted free trade agreements the GOP largely supports.

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (AP) -- At Café Miss Cutie, the windows are tinted but not pitch black. The waitresses are wearing negligees but not naked. And patrons are being urged to smoke outside.

NEW BERN - Bernard George dons the blue wool uniform of a U.S. Colored Troops Civil War soldier to celebrate the role of African-Americans in claiming their freedom.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was mostly unchanged last week, evidence that the weak economy is struggling to generate jobs.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States will push ahead with more targeted drone strikes and special operations raids and fewer costly land battles like Iraq and Afghanistan in the continuing war against al-Qaida, according to a new national counterterrorism strategy unveiled Wednesday.

For decades, Rosa Morris Williams has prayed to live long enough to see justice for her grandfather, who died after being burned in his shoe shop in a 1964 attack believed to have been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.