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The Great California Shakeout

At 10 a.m. on November 13, join millions of people throughout Southern California in the ShakeOut Drill, the largest earthquake preparedness activity in U.S. history!

Will AIG Be Able to Repay Tax Payers?

The government hiked the amount of help it’s giving troubled insurance company American International Group today. Now taxpayers could put out as much as $173.4 billion for the company across five different programs, some of which offer the government some collateral. It’s the latest increase in a series that began Sept.10 when the government extended AIG an $85 billion line of credit. The move wasn’t based on AIG’s improving performance. The company lost $24 billion in the third quarter, results also announced today. So is AIG, a company still hemorrhaging remarkable quantities of red ink, going to be able to repay all this?

Prepare for a quake? LA's too busy

This year, a group of state and federal scientists, including personnel from the U.S. Geological Survey, released an authoritative, if chilling, prediction: There's a 67% chance the Los Angeles area will experience a magnitude 6.7 or stronger quake sometime during the next 30 years. Information can be found at www.scec.org/ucerf. The destructive 1994 Northridge quake rated a 6.7.

Asia Rattled by 2 Strong Quakes

Two strong earthquakes rattled Asia on Thursday, triggering alerts for a tsunami that harmlessly lapped Japan's northern coast and another in Indonesia that didn't materialize but briefly sent residents fleeing to high ground.

Hurricane Ike Begins Lashing Cuba

Hurricane Ike bore down on Cuba after roaring across low-lying islands Sunday, tearing apart houses, wiping out crops and worsening floods in Haiti that have already killed more than 300 people. With Ike forecast to sweep across Cuba and possibly hit Havana head-on, hundreds of thousands of Cubans evacuated to shelters or higher ground. To the north, residents of the Florida Keys fled up a narrow highway, fearful that the "extremely dangerous" hurricane could hit them Tuesday.