Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- No progress was made last year in reducing motorcyclist deaths, even though overall motor vehicle fatalities dropped to their lowest level since 1949, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.

One reason, the group said, may be that high gas prices are driving more people to ride motorcycles. But the group also sought to use the data to make the case for mandatory helmet laws, which are under attack in five states.

In a pivotal moment for private spaceflight, a towering white rocket lifted a cone-shaped capsule into space early Tuesday on a mission to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried the unmanned Dragon capsule into space after a 3:44 a.m. EDT launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station.

Barack Obama wanted to be a transformational president, and as we head into the general election, he may have gotten his wish -- just not the way he or his supporters might have thought.

Obama seems to have transformed the cohort of 18- to 29-year-olds, a whopping 66 percent of whom preferred him over John McCain, from passionate voters who thought Obama really did offer change they could believe in, into people feeling, in the words of veteran political analyst Charlie Cook, "disappointment and disillusionment."

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg recently found Obama leading Romney among these same voters just 55 percent to 43 percent. And focus groups of young undecided voters in Ohio and North Carolina, conducted by the Republican organization Resurgent Republic, found them unhappy with the direction of the country, skeptical about an improving economy and deeply disappointed with the president. He "promised the moon," one young voter told pollsters, "and couldn't even deliver the upper atmosphere."

SAN FRANCISCO -- Horatius A. Carney spent seven weeks in a military hospital after injuring his knee while in the segregated Army Air Forces. He first filed a disability claim in 1947. He is still waiting for a response.

Lisa Scott, an Army communications specialist who served in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, waited seven years for the Veterans Benefits Administration to approve her disability claim for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

LAS VEGAS -- It sits along a stretch of median on the less-glamorous south end of this city's glitzy gambling Strip, a stubborn holdover from another era. Yet, as the days turn to night and back into day, it beckons as many tourists, human tumbleweeds and adventure-seekers as any newfangled casino.

LOS ANGELES -- What's so funny about the TV networks' new fall schedules? Everything -- or at least that's the hope of programmers who unveiled their new lineups to advertisers this week in New York and have gone cuckoo for comedy in a way not seen in at least 15 years.