A passenger plane carrying 25 people has crashed in Indonesia's eastern province of West Papua. A police official says 15 people were killed.

Defender Mamadou Danso scored in the 72nd minute and the expansion Portland Timbers beat the Philadelphia Union 1-0 on Friday night to remain perfect at soldout Jeld-Wen Field.

Just when they were about to make things interesting, Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers blew it.

Chicago's Derrick Rose was in MVP mode on Friday scoring a career-high 44 points to lead the Bulls to a 99-82 win over the Atlanta Hawks as Dallas beat the Los Angeles Lakers to leave the two-time defending champions on the ropes.

Andre Ethier wasted little time becoming the first major league player in two years with a 30-game hitting streak.

Texas Rangers left-hander Matt Harrison was finally mowing down an opposing lineup again, starting to resemble the pitcher who began this season by winning his first three starts.

Before he could really turn around, Brendan Ryan was being lifted off the ground to get a good view of the scrum that was about to take place.

Under any other circumstances, Torii Hunter would have had a two-run double. This time, the RBI single was just fine with him.

A birthday tribute and a little icing on the cake, too.

Chase Headley was left with a bittersweet feeling after the San Diego Padres beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-3 in 11 innings on Friday night.

Gordon Beckham knew it wasn't a run-on-contact situation. The ball needed to get all the way through the infield before he could head home.

By the 11th inning, the Cleveland Indians didn't have many options in a bullpen that was already spent after a 12-inning win at Oakland the day before. So it was left to long man Justin Germano to keep it going as long as he could.

Ubaldo Jimenez delivered the kind of performance the Colorado Rockies have been waiting for, a strong outing that wasn't perfect but offered a glimmer of hope that the ace might soon be dominant again.

The Arizona Diamondbacks found a new way to lose a game in spacious Petco Park.

Boston did not want to leave the door open for a repeat of last year's collapse against Philadelphia and on Friday they slammed it shut with a 5-1 victory to sweep their Eastern Conference semi-final series 4-0.

Letter in response to Laura Shapiro’s review of Sigrid Nunez’s “Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag.”

Letter in response to Garry Wills’s review of “A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Teach Us About Justice,” by Kenji Yoshino.

Letter in response to Michael Lind’s April 17 review of Francis Fukuyama’s book, “The Origins of Political Order.”

Letter in response to Michael Beschloss’s review of “The Age of Airpower,” by Martin van Creveld.

Letter in response to Gregg Easterbrook’s review of Carl Safina’s book “A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout.”

"Friday Night Lights,'' which has been so entrenched in ideas surrounding absent fathers, is spending its final season in the territory of paternal healing.

A small group gathered in Majorca for a memorial — a special 15th-century prayer of Kaddish for 37 Jews burned there 320 years ago.

The Federal Reserve said that borrowing in the category that included credit cards rose in March for only the second time since August 2008.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis seeking their president’s ouster released tens of thousands of balloons that drifted over the presidential palace with the message “Leave, Ali.”

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets after Friday Prayer in the southern port of Salalah calling for democratic reform.

Two Muslim religious leaders say they were removed from a plane in Memphis on Friday and were told that the pilot refused to fly with them aboard.

Though President Obama’s approval ratings have jumped, the lift likely won’t last through the 2012 election season.

Spring is in the air, and it’s time to see how well you have been paying attention to the news. No cheating allowed!

It’s been more than two years since the financial crisis, and still no criminal charges against the big fish.