Winter Olympics | featured news

Hannah Kearney has won America’s first gold medal of the Vancouver Olympics, winning the women’s moguls by defeating Canadian Jenn Heil.

The Nielsen Co. said an estimated 32.6 million people watched Friday's opening ceremony, approaching the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Games in viewer interest.

Switzerland's Simon Ammann claimed the first gold medal of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver when he won the opening men's ski-jumping event on Saturday.

Organizers shortened the world's fastest luge track Saturday for safety after a crash killed a Georgian Olympian, as athletes prepared for the first day of competition at a Games plagued by warm weather and rain.

The Olympic cauldron has been lit to open the XXI Winter Games. One of the cauldron lights didn’t work, however, so only three of the final torchbearers actually lit the flame.

The U.S. Olympic team that parades into the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Games in Vancouver on Friday will bear, for the first time ever, the look and swagger of a winter sports powerhouse.

Academy Awards set for March 7, 2010 -- Oscar marches into March next year, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences picking a later date for the ceremony, due to ABC’s extensive coverage of the Winter Olympics.