Winter's a great time to catch up on your reading. Here are nine recommendations for outstanding garden books.

Surveys released Thursday suggest American consumer confidence is up, fueled by improved home prices and jobs data. But some headwinds to recovery remain.

Grass-roots efforts helped save the journalists in North Korea. It can help save the three American hikers detained in Iran.

AP - President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered "red flags" and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.

AP - Officials in Yemen are investigating whether the Nigerian suspected in the attempted Christmas Day attack on a U.S. airliner spent time with al-Qaida militants in the country in the months leading up to the botched bombing.

AP - Iranian security forces intensified their crackdown on anti-government supporters Tuesday, arresting relatives of the country's Nobel laureate and the main opposition leader, and limiting the movement of another top opposition leader.