North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to launch a powerful retaliatory strike against South Korea if provoked, state media said Sunday, a day before the start of annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that Pyongyang calls an invasion rehearsal.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said that the 12-day, largely computer-simulated war games set to start Monday are defensive in nature.

On the cusp of trial over the catastrophic 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, phalanxes of lawyers, executives and public officials have spent the waning days in settlement talks. Holed up in small groups inside law offices, war rooms and hotel suites in New Orleans and Washington, they are trying to put a number on what BP and its partners in the doomed Macondo well project should pay to make up for the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

It is a complex equation, and the answer is proving elusive.

President Barack Obama says there is no easy answer to the problem of rising energy prices, dismissing Republican plans to address the problem as little more than gimmicks.

"We know there's no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "But what we can do is get our priorities straight and make a sustained, serious effort to tackle this problem."

Officials are puzzled over a mysterious hot tub that was installed — and then removed — from the roof of a building on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.

But a group of "creative" students are believed to be the culprits, Computer Science and Engineering building spokesman Steven Crang told (http://bit.ly/x5jEya ) AnnArbor.com on Friday.

The battle of the bulge has been a big, fat failure for U.S. drug makers. But that hasn't stopped them from trying.

For nearly a century, scientists have struggled to make a diet pill that helps people lose weight without side effects that range from embarrassing digestive issues to dangerous heart problems.

A work by Roy Lichtenstein (LIHK'-tehn-styn) is going on the auction block in New York City. The presale estimate is up to $40 million.

"Sleeping Girl" has been exhibited only once before — at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1989-90. It's among a series of sexy comic book-inspired images Lichtenstein created in the 1960s. It shows a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair

An Italian court threw out bribery charges against former PM Silvio Berlusconi under the statute of limitations, bringing the five-year trial to an end

Prosecutors had called for a five-year prison term for Berlusconi, who was accused of having paid off his former British tax lawyer David Mills to provide false testimony in his favor in two trials in the 1990s.

Dmitri Nabokov, the only child of acclaimed novelist Vladimir Nabokov who helped protect and translate his father's work while also pursuing careers as an opera singer and race car driver, has died. He was 77.

The younger Nabokov died Wednesday at a hospital in Vevey after a long illness, literary agent Andrew Wylie said Friday. He had been hospitalized in January with a lung infection.

Orlando waited 20 years to host All-Star weekend again, and Dwight Howard wants nothing to spoil the party.

So forget that trade request, Magic fans. Ignore the rapidly approaching deadline for deals.

Kyrie Irving kicked off the aerial display with an alley-oop to Paul George. Cleveland's rookie point guard then showed off his long-range shooting skills.

It was so much fun that Irving wasn't too upset that all those 3-pointers came in a meaningless game.