State and National News

The international peace plan for Syria is nearly a month old, and signs are pointing to a conflict that is becoming even more entrenched.

In the latest blow, two massive explosions rocked the outskirts of Syria's capital, Damascus, on Thursday, killing at least 55 people and injuring hundreds more.

Compiled from weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide.

Thousands of people in Windsor, Ontario, say they are being invaded by an obnoxious noise emanating from outside Detroit. They call it the "Windsor Hum," and it's really two sounds — a deep, very low-frequency hum, like a diesel truck idling in your driveway, and a deep, vibrating pulse that you feel more than you hear.

The Devil In The White City — about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 — sits at No. 15.

While working to restore a hotel, Owen Montgomery rekindles a friendship in The Last Boyfriend.

Franklin and Lila had no clue they were making history earlier this week when they went to the hospital in upstate New York.

Franklin is a piglet and Lila is a goat. Each was rescued from a life-threatening situation and taken to Farm Sanctuary's new animal hospital, the country's first to be dedicated to what a Sanctuary press release calls "the victims of America's industrialized food system."

Data from a mission to the second largest body in the asteroid belt that's between Mars and Jupiter seems to confirm that Vesta is indeed a protoplanet that dates back to the early days of our solar system.

Space.com reports that scientists theorized that Vesta had started down the path toward becoming a planet and data from the Dawn Mission confirms those suspicions. Space.com reports:

A calico lobster that had been living in obscurity off the coast of Maine has now been catapulted into a sort of celebrity, thanks to its rare coloring: a calico mix of orange and yellow spots. Researchers say it could be a 1 in 30 million specimen.

The invertebrate was caught off Winter Harbor, Maine; it was saved from the cooking pot at Jasper White's Summer Shack restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., after the staff noticed its striking coloration.