Georgia Tech researchers test drones at Fort Benning battle lab

Loaded with special sensors and other gadgets, a small Piper Cub aircraft flew on auto pilot shortly after it took off Wednesday from a dirt strip at the McKenna Urban Operations Complex. | 06/06/13 13:16:13 By - Ben Wright

Searching for a long-lost Pearl Buck manuscript? Try a storage locker

The shocking find by the buyer of the unit, a woman who asked the Buck estate to allow her to remain anonymous, led the late author’s family to take possession of the find after paying the woman a small finder’s fee. The completed novel, “The Eternal Wonder,” apparently finished just before her 1973 death from cancer, was unknown to her family or to her publishers. | 06/05/13 18:58:44 By - By Maria Recio

Science panel: Feds making wild horse situation worse

The federal government should do large-scale drug injections of wild horses to make them infertile, according to a highly anticipated recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences. | 06/05/13 17:26:05 By - By Sean Cockerham

Who needs all these books? 'Doctor Who' fans, that’s who

Obsessive “Doctor Who” fans, your wish has been fulfilled. In honor of the golden anniversary of the show’s first broadcast comes a new volume from BBC Books, “Who-ology: The Official Doctor Who Miscellany” by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright. | 06/05/13 08:16:16 By - Tish Wells

Scientists find rare butterfly on Biscayne Bay island

Researchers hunting for one of the world’s rarest butterflies on Monday announced that they captured a single female in the mosquito-filled forest of Elliott Key. | 06/04/13 15:00:56 By - Curtis Morgan

High school graduations bring out the best ... and worst

Before high school seniors walk across the stage and pick up their diplomas, campus administrators sternly warn them to behave during commencement. But parents and grandparents, you must mind your p’s and q’s, too. | 06/04/13 12:44:42 By - Jessamy Brown

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell casts for young converts in fishing expedition

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell distributed night crawlers Monday morning among a group of excited Washington middle school students; many had never been fishing before. Some baited their hooks skittishly, while others couldn’t get their lines in the water fast enough. | 06/03/13 17:34:55 By - By Trevor Graff

Hardly a TV show goes by without a dip into sexual violence

Evil men lurk in the shadows of most television worth watching. Pick up the remote, and you’ll soon find a woman being attacked. The choices are limited for those not seeking the very worst of human nature during their leisure time. Most successful dramas, from ABC to AMC to HBO, can’t resist the urge to throw in at least a threat of sexual violence. | 06/03/13 13:29:58 By - Sara Smith

Manning court martial trial starts Monday

Amid secrecy and spectacle, the long-awaited court-martial trial of WikiLeaks linchpin Bradley E. Manning starts Monday. | 06/03/13 04:51:27 By - By Michael Doyle

Public colleges are often no bargain for the poor

Many public colleges and universities expect their poorest students to pay a third, half or even more of their families’ annual incomes each year for college, a new study of college costs has found. | 05/29/13 14:20:24 By - By Renee Schoof

Minnesota a health haven for seniors, reports says; Mississippi not so much

Minnesota tops the nation as the healthiest state for seniors, while Mississippi is the unhealthiest and faces an uphill battle to improve its low ranking, according to a report Wednesday by the United Health Foundation, a non-profit arm of insurer UnitedHealth Group. | 05/29/13 05:44:15 By - By Tony Pugh

After decades of searching, could a handful of debris provide the answer?

Nearly half a century passed before the suspected remains of six airmen made the journey from a rice paddy in southeastern Laos to a forensics lab near Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

But once those remains arrived, the experts preparing to study and identify them knew that at best the men were only halfway home. | 05/27/13 07:23:22 By - By Matthew Schofield

Lack of answers tests the faith and mettle of families and searchers alike

In military lingo, the location of the lost crew of Spooky 21 was a classic SWAG: Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. That’s the term investigators use for figuring out something as unpredictable as where a plane should have crashed when it got shot out of the sky in Laos. | 05/27/13 07:22:56 By - By Matthew Schofield

A long-ago war, a missing plane and an enduring mystery

Maj. Derrell Jeffords bounced his roaring Spooky 21 down and off the runway at Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam. It was just before 7:30 a.m., on Christmas Eve 1965. The big camouflaged belly of his twin-prop AC-47 was easily visible against a blue sky as he banked west.

The cargo plane-turned-gunship was on its way to Laos; its mission was top secret. | 05/25/13 05:27:51 By - By Matthew Schofield

Remarks: Obama's counterterrorism speech at National Defense University

Remarks of President Barack Obama | 05/23/13 14:31:04 By -