MSNBC: Top Stories

A current and a former firefighter are accused of forcing a 12-year-old boy into sex slavery in Vermont until he was 25, according to a police spokesman in West Haven, Conn.

When 18-year-old Aaron Deveau was convicted of vehicular homicide last year, the Massachusetts jury hoped to send a message to young drivers about the dangers of texting behind the wheel. It’s not clear that’s getting across, however.

West Virginia, which received the lowest well-being score in 2012, has routinely been in the bottom two, and Hawaii ranked highest for the fourth year in a row, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco and the Ravens have reached a long-term deal that will reportedly make Flacco the highest paid player in NFL history.

A group of survivors and relatives of those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing are outraged that there is $10 million sitting in a disaster relief fund designed to help them. Meanwhile they say they’ve been denied help for years.

With the sequestration cogs now turning, in the coming weeks Congress will turn its attention to its next budget deadline on March 27, when funding for the federal government is set to expire.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the cuts under sequestration “will cause pain” and potentially impact readiness ”across our force.”

A would-be drug customer butt-dialed 911, police say, and officers were able to track down her and the dealer -- just a block from the police station.

Construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline would create "substantial" impacts on the environment, but there's no better option, the State Department says.

Nothing says vacation like getting elbow deep in a bloody pig carcass. At least not for the growing number of travelers looking to add butchery to the repertoire of culinary skills they've picked up around the country (or globe).

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: SpaceX solved a problem with the thruster system on its freshly launched Dragon cargo capsule, but not before it forced at least a day's delay in the unmanned craft's arrival at the International Space Station.

On Friday, President Barack Obama successfully distracted a tense nation from the mandatory spending cuts that are due to begin in mere hours through a sci-fi malapropism so egregious it caused the Twitterverse to explode ... metaphorically, anyway.

Lindsay Lohan's attorney Mark Heller had filed a motionrequesting Lohan's ongoing probation violation case be put on the "slow track" in order for the troubled actress to pursue "certain activities which will benefit her." That was denied, and March 18 trial is set.

The U.S. State Department is criticizing North Korea for "wining and dining" visiting ex-National Basketball Association star Dennis Rodman while its own people go hungry.

A Florida man is missing after an apparent sinkhole opened in his bedroom in the middle of the night, sucking him and his bed deep into the earth. As frightening as it sounds, sinkholes happen all the time, according to geologists.