ALL RECENT AP STORIES

A 5-year-old North Carolina girl was raped and killed the same day she was taken from her home, according to an arrest warrant released Friday. Shaniya Davis was sexually assaulted and asphyxiated Nov. 10, the day her mother reported her missing from the trailer park where she was staying, according to the warrant. Authorities embarked on a nearly weeklong search that ended when the girl's body was found dumped off a rural road.

Mario McNeill is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree

A teenager accused of killing a 9-year-old neighbor should be sent to a psychiatric hospital because she shows signs of severe depression and anxiety, her attorney said.

A judge had not approved the move Friday, though a draft order calling for a 96-hour stay at the Fulton State Hospital had been submitted by the public defender Thursday and was included in the case file.

Alyssa Bustamante, 15, has been held at the Morgan County jail after being indicted Wednesday as an adult on charges

California is investigating several companies suspected of bilking churches nationwide of hundreds of thousands of dollars through fraudulent computer leasing schemes, authorities said Friday.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown said as many as 30 Southern California churches may have been defrauded, with the same companies suspected of bilking other churches in as many as 10 other states.

The companies offered churches free computer kiosks that could serve as electronic message boards

Three Democratic moderates to decide fate of health bill _ for now _ in crucial Saturday vote

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Suitably opaque, Section 2006 takes up only a few dozen lines in a sweeping health care bill that runs to 2,074 pages and mentions neither Sen. Mary Landrieu nor her state of Louisiana.

But the section's purpose is indisputable: to deliver $100 million or more in federal funds to the state. And in the process clear the way for one of three moderate Democratic fence-sitters

A former Marine was charged Friday with six counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of four people whose bodies were found in a burning home, including a prostitute featured on the HBO reality series "Cathouse."

David Allen Tyner, 28, of Locust Grove, is accused of shooting, stabbing and then burning the bodies of Brooke Phillips, Milagrous Barrera, Jennifer Ermey, 25, and Mark Barrientos, 32, at a southwest Oklahoma City home. Because Phillips and Barrera, both 22, were pregnant,

An Alaska senator says the U.S. Postal Service is resuming a program allowing volunteers to respond to letters sent to Santa Claus in care of the North Pole, Alaska, post office.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that Deputy Postmaster General Pat Donahoe told her in a phone call the agency has reconsidered its decision to not allow volunteers to answer the letters.

The program was suspended over privacy concerns.

Calls to the Postal Service were not immediately

Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist.

The eight trailers were used for nearly two years, until a permanent clinic was completed in September in another location on the base, said a Camp Lejeune medical spokesman, Navy Lt. j.g. Mark Jean-Pierre.

The noise from training

Two former county judges accused of taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send juveniles to private detention facilities are partially immune from civil lawsuits, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Friday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo could make it harder for the people suing former Luzerne County judges Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. to collect damages.

Caputo said Ciavarella will avoid civil consequences for "the vast majority" of

A judge's decision to move Johannes Mehserle's murder trial to Los Angeles County is a setback for the former transit police officer charged with gunning down an unarmed man on New Year's Day.

Jurors throughout the state are typically sympathetic to police officers, and Mehserle could have expected a leg up before the start of trial in most any courtroom in California's 58 counties.

But legal analysts say Los Angeles is atypical and a bad draw for the former Bay Area Rapid Transit

The state of Wyoming has filed a new federal lawsuit seeking to block the National Park Service from restricting snowmobile numbers in Yellowstone National Park.

The Park Service on Friday issued a temporary rule that would allow up to 318 snowmobiles and 78 snowcoaches per day into the park starting next month and continuing through next winter.

The Park Service had allowed up to 720 snowmobiles a day into the park over the past five winters, but actual use has been far less.

Wyoming

A former Marine has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of four people whose bodies were found in a burning home, including a prostitute featured on the HBO reality series "Cathouse."

Prosecutors in Oklahoma charged David Allen Tyner on Friday with shooting, stabbing and then burning the bodies of Brooke Phillips and three others on Nov. 9. Phillips was featured on "Cathouse."

Because she and another victim were pregnant, two more murder counts

A 17-year-old pleaded guilty Friday to murdering a Border Patrol agent who was shot eight times in head, neck and torso in the mountains east of San Diego.

Christian Daniel Castro Alvarez admitted entering the United States illegally to rob a Border Patrol agent, the U.S. attorney's office said. Alvarez said he lured Agent Robert Rosas out of his car on the night of July 23 and struggled with him over a firearm.

Rosas, 30, was shot four times in the head, once in the neck and three

A jury is deliberating the fate of a black school teacher charged with assaulting white police officers in Missouri

Heather Ellis, a teacher in Louisiana, is also charged with resisting arrest and disturbing the peace at a Walmart store in the southeast Missouri town of Kennett. Ellis maintains that the white police officers attacked and abused her.

The jury of 10 white women, one black woman and one black man began considering the 24-year-old's case late Friday. She could face up

The Alabama Supreme Court says a woman who thought she had hit a jackpot worth almost $42 million at the Victoryland electronic bingo center will end up empty handed. The court ruled Friday that an electronic bingo machine that showed Sherry Knowles had won $41.8 million obviously malfunctioned and that she was actually due no more than $2 from the operation in Macon County.

The decision reversed a Macon County court ruling that said Victoryland owed Knowles $10 million.

Knowles had

A Pennsylvania university's requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts.

Officials at historically black Lincoln University said Friday that the school is simply concerned about high rates of obesity and diabetes, especially in the African-American community.

"We know we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic," said James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln's department

The rumble of Navy patrol aircraft flying overhead will soon be a thing of the past as the remaining P-3 Orions depart from Brunswick Naval Air Station.

While much of the nation prepares for Thanksgiving, air crews from VP-26 are prepping to ship out for a six-month deployment to El Salvador, Italy and the Horn of Africa. After that, they'll rejoin the rest of Brunswick aircraft that have relocated to Florida's Jacksonville Naval Air Station.

Cmdr. Mike Parker, commanding officer

South Carolina lawmakers plan to formally consider impeaching Gov. Mark Sanford for the first time next week, the chairman of the committee beginning that work said Friday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Harrison told The Associated Press he is appointing an ad-hoc committee of four Republicans and three Democrats who will begin meeting Tuesday. He said he expects to have a resolution to impeach ready before Christmas for the full Judiciary Committee to consider.

Sanford spokesman

An attorney for a condemned killer says Ohio's new lethal-injection plan is so untested it would amount to human experimentation if used for the first time next month.

Lawyer Tim Sweeney said Friday there's no reason for federal courts to allow the scheduled execution of Kenneth Biros (BY'-rohs) in about two and a half weeks given the lack of details in the proposed system.

Biros has argued Ohio's three-drug vein injection could cause severe pain, in violation of the Constitution.

The

Authorities in western Michigan arrested a person twice in three days for driving the wrong way down the highway Kalamazoo County deputies said they were alerted about 1:30 a.m. Friday after several people called 911 when they passed the unidentified driver traveling south on northbound U.S. 131.

WWMT-TV said the driver was arrested in the same area that they were arrested Wednesday morning.

No injuries were reported. No further details were released.

___

Information from:

Wichita police arrested a pregnant woman after she allegedly robbed homes after asking residents for help. Police said the woman, who is eight months pregnant, had been telling people in west Wichita that her car broke down and she needed to call someone for a ride.

Once the residents let her inside their homes, she allegedly took money from the homes. Police said she hit at least three houses in Wichita and is suspected in similar crimes in Goddard and Maize.

The woman was taken

A North Carolina doctor could lose his medical license after a patient complained he made cutting criticisms, including telling her she was fat. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported the North Carolina Medical Board will decide if Dr. Earl Sunderhaus of Asheville overstepped the bounds of professional decency.

The eye doctor's patient complained Sunderhaus poked her thigh and told her she is fat, and also scolded her as irresponsible for being unemployed and relying on taxpayers to

Whether he's planning another run for the White House or a bid for senator or governor, or he just misses the spotlight, Rudy Giuliani is suddenly back and talking about the topic that made him a national star _ Sept. 11.

Over five days this week, the former New York mayor gave several national TV interviews and a news conference _ the kind of blitz usually associated with a book tour or a campaign launch. And he definitely does not have a new book to sell.

He has demurred when asked

A western Pennsylvania woman has been ordered to stand trial on charges she passed a drug-filled balloon to a state prison inmate while kissing him. State police said guards at the State Correctional Institution-Mercer became suspicious when an inmate appeared to swallow something after a prolonged kiss with a visitor on Oct. 19.

When the inmate wouldn't tell guards what he swallowed, they put him in a cell where they could monitor his bathroom visits and found a balloon filled with marijuana

California tax officials say an interior designer's false disability claim was uncovered when he was spotted on a home improvement television show.

Fifty-six-year-old Ronald Hunt of Los Angeles was sentenced Tuesday to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay more than $180,000 in restitution, unpaid taxes and fines. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of fraud.

The state's Franchise Tax Board says Hunt falsely claimed he was disabled for three years and collected almost

A 39-year-old Southern California man has been arrested for misdemeanor child annoyance after allegedly paying a teenager $31 to spit in his face. The Ventura County Sheriff's Department says Charles Hersel was arrested Wednesday in a sting operation at a mall in Thousand Oaks. He's free from jail pending a court hearing.

A sheriff's statement says Westlake High School students claimed Hersel paid them to yell profanities, spit and slap him in the face. Several also claimed he offered them

Norm Olson's genial tone belies his reputation as a radical militiaman, yet here he is, at 63, an affable grandfather explaining why Americans should arm themselves against their government.

Walking stick in hand, clad in military fatigues, he strolls a trail in the woods near his home, located on 22 acres near Nikiski, a small, unincorporated community with isolated roads and no local government. The nearest state trooper post is two towns away.

A fellow militiaman, armed with

A 2-year-old boy dragged a 1-year-old Arizona girl Friday from a house fire that killed her mother and injured two other adults, authorities said.

Fire crews responding to the fire in the Pinal County community of Maricopa south of Phoenix found the girl's mother, 22-year-old Michelle Mariano, lying near a doorway of the mobile home, Maricopa Fire Department spokesman Brad Pitassi said. She was identified by Sheriff's spokeswoman Lt. Tamatha Villar.

Villar said officials believe the

A New York state man has been convicted of reckless endangerment after leaving his 85-year-old father in a car on a hot day and finding him dead three hours later.

Theodore Pressman of Beacon was found guilty Friday in Peekskill City Court.

The 49-year-old Pressman, a bus driver, was his parents' caretaker and often left them in restaurants while he worked. On July 7, 2008, he took them to work with him in Peekskill and left them in the car in a parking lot.

The windows were

An Indianapolis man convicted of killing three children and four adults during a home invasion robbery three years ago has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Marion Superior Court Judge Robert Altice (al-TISE') sentenced 31-year-old Desmond Turner on Friday after finding Turner guilty of seven counts of murder and other charges last month in a bench trial. Turner was sentenced to 88 additional years for the other charges.

Altice heard from the victim's family and asked

The FBI has dispatched investigators to Arkansas to look into a police officer's use of a stun gun on a 10-year-old girl who refused to take a shower.

Ozark Mayor Vernon McDaniel and Police Chief Jim Noggle announced the FBI's investigation Friday and said they're pleased federal agents have stepped in.

Police officer Dustin Bradshaw has been suspended with pay for a week for not having a video camera attached to his Taser. Town officials want the FBI to consider whether his use of

An air taxi with eight people aboard made an emergency landing on tundra when the engine failed near Alaska's Bering Sea coast.

Passengers told The Anchorage Daily News the Yute Air pilot remained calm on the flight from Bethel to Kipnuk, and the landing Wednesday was so smooth it could have been on a runway. No one was injured.

Rescuers on snowmachines from the village of Tuntutuliak arrived in less than four hours with blankets and hot tea and took everyone to safety.

A Yute

Birth control for bison?

That's what conservationists are giving a herd on Santa Catalina Island in an attempt to reduce the population. Females over the age of 2 will be injected with a contraceptive under a five-year experimental program that begins Friday.

Some of the feral animals were corralled Thursday.

The bison, commonly called American buffalo, are descendants of 14 animals that were shipped to the island in 1924 to make a Western. They weren't used in the movie and

An Arizona family is pleading with burglars to return a wooden music box containing the ashes of their 5-month old son.

The Peoria family came home Thursday afternoon and found the garage door open and the house ransacked. The burglars stole electronics and a wooden music box.

Inside the box were the ashes of 5-month-old Tyler. His mother, Lindsay Grannis, says he died in 1996; she laid him down for a nap with his twin brother and "he just never woke up."

The family says the

As the nation's military academies try to recruit more minorities, they aren't getting much help from members of Congress from big-city districts with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

From New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, lawmakers from heavily minority areas rank at or near the bottom in the number of students they have nominated for appointment to West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy or the U.S. Air Force Academy, according to an Associated Press review of records from

A woman who had been charged with child endangerment after almost 370 animals were seized from her Missouri farm has been placed on two years of unsupervised probation.

Sixty-two-year-old Virginia Gambriel was charged with two counts of first-degree child endangerment after a raid in August 2008. But she was found guilty of lesser misdemeanor charges in October. Gambriel was sentenced on Wednesday.

Polk County investigators and the Humane Society of Missouri rescued almost 370 malnourished

A list of congressional districts with the fewest military academy nominations for the classes of 2009 to 2013, the officeholders and the total nominations they have made. All 20 are Democrats from districts where whites make up less than half the population, and all but two of the districts include major urban areas.

1. New York's 12th District, Nydia Velazquez, 4 nominations.

2. New York's 15th District, Charles Rangel, 8 nominations.

(tie) Massachusetts' 8th District, Michael

New England was expected to see another dreary day, while the Pacific Northwest remains under wintry conditions on Friday.

A low pressure system was forecast to continue moving over British Colombia from the Pacific Ocean. As this system pushes further inland throughout the day, it was expected to create a moist cold front that could sweep through the Pacific Northwest and northern California.

This front could obtain ample moisture from the Pacific Ocean, and spread heavy precipitation

This city did not wait for Washington's health care overhaul. Most uninsured adults here are already reaping the benefits of a government-run health care program _ seeing doctors, filling prescriptions, and getting surgeries they could not otherwise afford.

Healthy San Francisco is the nation's first city-run universal health care plan. While not insurance and not valid outside the city, it does illustrate how some hotly debated elements of plans being considered on Capitol Hill might play

A gigantic landslide that buried a highway, uprooted homes and rerouted a river in Washington state's Cascade Range left hundreds of smaller victims: fish.

The landslide that inundated the Naches River last month created a barrier of millions of cubic yards of silt, mud and rock that slowed _ and likely confused _ spawning salmon and hungry trout. Then workers opened a freshly dug river channel that stranded small fish in ponds and marshes.

Fisheries biologists from 10 government

Jeanne-Claude

NEW YORK (AP) _ Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation "The Gates" and other large scale "wrapping" projects around the globe with her husband Christo, has died. She was 74.

Jeanne-Claude died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, her family said in an e-mail statement.

"The Gates" festooned 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames.

Christo

Three people were arrested on suspicion of killing an off-duty Las Vegas police officer in a shootout in his garage, North Las Vegas police said Thursday.

Police said that Prentice Marshall, 18, and Saul Williams Jr., 20, of North Las Vegas were in custody, suspected of killing Trevor Nettleton just after midnight. A 17-year-old male was arrested later on the same charges.

Nettleton, 30, was married with two young children and had been with Las Vegas police three years, police said.

Authorities

A former B-2 stealth bomber engineer accused of spying for China suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, expert witnesses for the prosecution and the defense testified in federal court Thursday.

But the forensic psychologists who evaluated Noshir Gowadia of Maui disagreed during the hearing over whether he is competent to stand trial and assist in his defense.

Gowadia, who worked for years on highly classified military systems, has been held without bail since his 2005 arrest

The governing board of the University of California approved a $2,500 student fee increase Thursday after two days of tense campus protests across the state.

The vote by the Board of Regents in a windowless University of California, Los Angeles, meeting room took place as the drone of protesters could be heard from a plaza outside. Scores of police in riot gear guarded the building.

The 32 percent increase will push the cost of an undergraduate education at California's premier public

A New York City gallery has auctioned over 200 rare postage stamps to raise $3.2 million for the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

Wall Street money manager William Gross' collection of Civil War-era Confederate states and early Canadian stamps sold Thursday at the Spink Shreves Galleries of New York and Dallas.

Gross recently pledged $8 million to build a new gallery at the museum. A $3.2 million check was presented to the museum's director after the auction

A key U.N. committee expressed "very serious concern" Thursday at widespread reports of torture and other grave human rights violations in North Korea and strongly urged the government to put an end to the violations.

North Korea's deputy United Nations ambassador Pak Tok Hun rejected the resolution, calling it the result of a "political conspiracy" led by the United States against the country in an attempt to "obliterate the state and social system."

The resolution was approved by

California tax officials say an interior designer's false disability claim was uncovered when he was spotted on a home improvement television show.

Fifty-six-year-old Ronald Hunt of Los Angeles was sentenced Tuesday to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay more than $180,000 in restitution, unpaid taxes and fines. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of fraud.

The state's Franchise Tax Board says Hunt falsely claimed he was disabled for three years and collected almost

Jeanne-Claude

NEW YORK (AP) _ Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation "The Gates" and other large scale "wrapping" projects around the globe with her husband Christo, has died. She was 74.

Jeanne-Claude died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, her family said in an e-mail statement.

"The Gates" festooned 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames.

Christo

A tour bus driver suffered a ruptured aneurysm just before the bus veered off a southern Minnesota interstate and crashed, killing two people and injuring 20, the owner of the bus company said Thursday. State officials said they couldn't confirm the aneurysm and it was too early to know the cause of the crash.

Ed Erickson, 52, of Elgin, was driving a group of mostly older passengers home from a day trip to an Iowa casino on Wednesday when the bus swerved off Interstate 90 and rolled in

A man already accused of kidnapping a 5-year-old North Carolina girl faces new charges that he raped and asphyxiated her, police said Thursday.

Mario McNeill is being charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape of a child, Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine told reporters at a news conference.

The 29-year-old McNeill was charged earlier this week with kidnapping, with authorities saying he took Shaniya Davis from her Fayetteville home. Her body was found Monday in

On an Internet site, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." It may have sounded like a teenage exaggeration, but authorities say she fulfilled her words.

Even as new details emerge about the teenager charged with killing 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, many facts about the crime continued to be kept secret Thursday _ and may never be released by authorities unless Bustamante goes to trial for murder.

Bustamante, who had been in juvenile custody

An 18-year-old is in police custody after he warmed up a bottle for a crying baby inside the house he was allegedly robbing. Indianapolis police arrested the suspect at Arlington High School on Tuesday after receiving a tip from a television viewer saw surveillance video on a newscast.

Detectives said two suspects forced their way into a home on Friday morning and began ransacking the house. Police said that when a baby started crying, one of them warmed a bottle in a microwave oven and

A man accused of using a squeegee to hit another man during a fight over who was first in line at a gas pump was due in court on charges. The man, Hector Chavez, 21, was to be arraigned Friday in Faulkner County Circuit Court on a second-degree battery charge.

A Conway police report said the victim told officers that he was waiting in line at a gas pump when Chavez cut in front of him. The victim _ who was not identified _ said he confronted Chavez with the squeegee and swung at him before

Intrepid Ohio State University researchers have learned students don't just party in a campus lake during rituals before the annual Michigan game. They also potty there. Thousands of students will jump into Ohio State's Mirror Lake Thursday night, ahead of Saturday's football game between the Buckeyes and Wolverines.

Before, during and after last year's big swim, the College of Earth Sciences monitored the water quality.

Postdoctoral research associate Steve Goldsmith said the lake's

Two men were arrested Thursday on suspicion of killing an off-duty Las Vegas police officer in a shootout in his garage, North Las Vegas police said.

Police said that Prentice Marshall, 18, and Saul Williams Jr., 20, of North Las Vegas were in custody, suspected of killing Trevor Nettleton just after midnight.

Nettleton, 30, was married with two young children and had been with Las Vegas police three years, police said.

Authorities said they think the shootout resulted from

A 2-year-old in north Mississippi has done something few toddlers can: He helped his mother give birth to his brother. Bobbye Favazza told The Commercial Appeal she went into labor this past Friday and gave birth on the family's living room couch in Olive Branch. She said her toddler, Jeremiha Taylor, got her a towel and caught the baby before firefighters arrived to cut the umbilical cord.

Favazza gave birth to a 7-pound, 4-ounce baby boy, Kamron Taylor.

She had been scheduled for

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Nov. 15

San Antonio Express-News, on the swine flu vaccine:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a consoling message for everyone who has tried unsuccessfully to get the H1N1 vaccine: Don't worry _ more vaccine is on the way.

That message might be more reassuring if the American people hadn't already heard it.

Public and government awareness of the swine flu pandemic

A former assistant fire chief accused of setting two small fires in an arson-plagued steel town near Philadelphia has worked out a plea bargain freeing him from jail.

A Chester County judge says the deal for Robert Tracey Jr. is surprising. The 37-year-old Coatesville man got a sentence of the 242 days he has already served to 23 months in prison.

The judge says he would never have considered such a short sentence if Tracey had been convicted at trial. But he approved the deal Thursday

A Kansas City man who left his wallet on the counter of a bank he was robbing has pleaded guilty in federal court. Albert Perkins, 40, admitted Thursday that he stole more than $3,100 from First Federal Bank in Kansas City on May 7. Prosecutors said that after he ordered a teller to give him all the $100 bills, he placed his wallet on the counter and handed her a plastic bag.

The teller put money in the bag and handed it back to Perkins, who left without picking up his wallet.

Investigators

Authorities say an Arizona couple has been indicted in the theft of nearly 1,000 pieces of luggage from baggage claim carousels at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Maricopa County prosecutors say the 45-count indictment announced Thursday charges 61-year-old Keith King and his 38-year-old wife Stacy Legg King with theft, burglary and trafficking in stolen property.

Phoenix police arrested the couple from Waddell on Nov. 2. They say the couple had been taking luggage from

A judge in Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's theft trial told jurors they must stop deliberating and asking questions after he dismisses them for the day.

Visiting Judge Dennis Sweeney sent the panel home Thursday afternoon. Members will return Friday.

Jurors had sent him a question in the note that asked if they could end their day.

The judge and attorneys then began discussing that question when jurors interrupted them with another. A courtroom buzzer sounded again indicating

Prosecutors can retry an ex-sailor who received a conditional pardon from Virginia's governor after spending 11 years in prison for the rape and murder of a fellow sailor's wife, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Derek Tice was one of four ex-sailors known as "The Norfolk Four" who claimed their confessions to the 1997 rape and murder of 18-year-old Michelle Moore-Bosko were coerced. Gov. Tim Kaine freed three of the men from prison in August, saying he had "grave doubts" about their guilt

A New York City man imprisoned for nearly 20 years for a now-overturned murder conviction is set to be freed within days after a judge Thursday ordered him released while authorities determine whether he must serve an unrelated drug sentence.

A federal judge in suburban White Plains, N.Y., ordered Fernando Bermudez released without bail on the drug case at least until June 30. That gives his lawyers time to try to persuade federal officials to credit his 27-month sentence as served.

Bermudez'

A shootout left two bank robbery suspects dead and two police officers wounded Thursday in suburban Denver, police said.

Westminster police spokesman Trevor Materasso said both suspects, a man and a women, were dead, and that the injuries to the police officers weren't life-threatening.

The chase began after officers tried to pull over the suspects for allegedly robbing a bank. Police say the suspects fired at the officers during the chase before officers brought them to a halt after

Several family members who say they were sexually abused as children by adult relatives remember being taken to various locations and photographed with naked men, police investigators said in a search warrant released Thursday.

The family members, who are now adults, told Columbia police investigators they remembered being taken to "various locations and having to pose for pictures in a sexual and provocative manner," according to the Nov. 10 warrant.

"They also recall pictures being

California's public university system on Thursday agreed to fully reopen a troubled South Los Angeles hospital that was partially closed in 2007 after deadly lapses in care.

The Regents of the University of California unanimously approved the plan to provide doctors and residents for Martin Luther King Jr. hospital. Los Angeles County will foot the $353 million bill to expand and fully reopen the facility in 2012.

The reopening will restore emergency and inpatient services to the

A man charged with fatally stabbing and beating six people in Tennessee and Alabama asked a responding deputy to let him hug his 4-year-old daughter _ the only person spared in the attack, the deputy testified Thursday.

Testifying at a preliminary hearing, Bob Jones of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department said that when he reached the crime scene, suspect Jacob Shaffer was seated on the porch with his 4-year-old daughter. The 28-year-old Shaffer then stood up, turned around and put

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wants to report previously unrecorded flights he took on planes owned by friends and campaign donors, a state ethics official said Thursday, even as the governor's lawyer continued to defend his travel practices.

"He provided us with information about each of those flights and requested those be included as an amendment to previous filings," Herb Hayden, executive director of the State Ethics Commission, said a day after a panel charged the two-term Republican

Republicans assail health care bill, Democrats set Saturday night test vote on Senate measure

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Digging in for a long struggle, Republican senators and governors assailed the Democrats' newly minted health care legislation Thursday as a collection of tax increases, Medicare cuts and heavy new burdens for deficit-ridden states.

Despite the criticism, there were growing indications Democrats would prevail on an initial Senate showdown set for Saturday night, and Majority

About $10,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from one of four people found shot to death last week inside a burning home in Oklahoma City, police said Thursday.

Casey Barrientos, 32, of Oklahoma City, was wearing a large diamond-and-white-gold necklace, along with matching earrings and a bracelet, police Sgt. Gary Knight said. The jewelry has not been recovered, he said.

Barrientos was discovered shot to death at the home, along with three women, including 22-year-old Brooke Phillips,

Fargo police said a man ran over a light pole and punched a police officer in the mouth when the officer tried to arrest him. Police Sgt. Mark Lykken said police got a report about 2 a.m. Thursday that a pickup hit a light pole and pulled into a nearby parking lot.

Lykken said the driver allegedly hit an officer in the mouth with his fist when the officer went to arrest him in his apartment. Police said the light pole had to be disconnected because of the damage.

The driver faces

A Philadelphia jury has convicted a confessed cop killer of first-degree murder for fatally shooting a police officer on Halloween 2007.

Twenty-three-year-old John Lewis was found guilty Thursday of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 54-year-old Officer Chuck Cassidy. Lewis shot Cassidy in the head when the officer walked in on a robbery at a North Philadelphia doughnut shop.

Lewis pleaded guilty last week to a general charge of murder and a string of increasingly violent

A new federal report says a passing car that went out of control caused an Alabama school bus wreck that killed four students in 2006.

The wreck led to new rules for school bus safety.

The National Transportation Safety Board report released Thursday also says the bus driver was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the bus when it hit an overpass wall after the car hit it.

With no one at the wheel to hit the brakes, the bus plunged from the overpass and nose-dived 30

Nineteen alleged gang members have been indicted in Maryland on federal racketeering conspiracy charges.

U.S. Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein announced the indictment Thursday. He says it alleges the 19 were members of the Latin Kings, a violent street gang. He says they've operated in Maryland since at least 2007.

The indictment says the gang members conspired to commit attempted murders, robberies, arson and other crimes.

Authorities have arrested 16 people in Maryland

Economic reality and money problems may be cooling the enthusiasm of U.S. college students to study abroad, just two years after students' interest in foreign study was at an all-time high.

Four times as many students went abroad in the 2007-2008 academic year as 20 years ago, according to a survey of 985 schools released this week by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit advocacy group.

But nearly 60 percent of the schools and study-abroad groups surveyed in early

Forget the apocalyptic earthquakes and alien abductions on the screen, the real movie horror is the fat-saturated popcorn sold by some theater chains, a nutrition advocacy group claims.

Just one popcorn-and-soda combo can match the calorie-and-saturated-fat count of three McDonald's Quarter Pounders and 12 pats of butter, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest's review of popcorn sold at three national movie chains.

"A lot of people think they're better off at

A plan to pull 5 million pounds of unwanted carp from a Utah lake each year _ one of the largest such attempts in the country _ got initial backing Thursday from a federal wildlife agency.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the program that began as a small-scale, state-funded experiment last year should be expanded in the coming years in the hopes of saving an endangered fish called the June sucker.

The June sucker is only found in the 151-square-mile Utah Lake west of Provo

A person in a chicken costume ruffled the feathers of Durango's city council as its members discussed rules for backyard fowl. At a council meeting Tuesday, someone in a chicken costume quietly entered the council chambers just as the mayor was discussing a recently-passed backyard hen ordinance. The costumed chicken took a few turns, flapped its arms, then took a seat in the nearly empty gallery.

Several minutes later, the big bird left _ without identifying itself _ after laying an egg

The wife of U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has been charged with drunken driving and hit-and-run after police said she hit a parked car in northern Virginia.

Fairfax County Police say an officer stopped 76-year-old Charlene Lugar Wednesday evening at a McLean intersection after seeing damage to her car and smoke coming from the hood. Police later determined that she also hit an unattended parked car about two miles away from the traffic stop.

Both charges are misdemeanors.

In

A new federal report says a passing car that went out of control caused an Alabama school bus wreck that killed four students in 2006.

The wreck led to new rules for school bus safety.

The National Transportation Safety Board report released Thursday also says the bus driver was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the bus when it hit an overpass wall after the car hit it.

With no one at the wheel to hit the brakes, the bus plunged from the overpass and nose-dived 300

A New York sheriff is using money seized from drug dealers to buy drug-testing kits that he will distribute free to parents.

Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco says he is providing the free drug test kits to help parents and guardians monitor their children.

The kits cost about $1 and test for six different drugs, from marijuana to opiates to cocaine. He says 16,000 will eventually be distributed.

DeMarco says the test kits give parents a tool to engage in conversations

Ohio's top public defender is taking on a rare challenge: accepting cases of convicted criminals who say they're innocent but don't have the DNA to prove it.

The Ohio Public Defender's Wrongful Conviction Project is one of just a handful of innocence groups nationally devoted full time to non-DNA cases.

The project will review claims of inmates who say they didn't do it and who were convicted on such evidence as bite marks, alleged arson and eyewitness testimony.

State Public

A judge says the government must keep Yellowstone-area grizzly bears on the list of threatened and endangered species, denying an attempt by federal officials to reverse an earlier court ruling.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service two years ago said grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park had recovered from near-extermination and no longer needed protections under the Endangered Species Act.

But in September, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy said climate change and lax regulations

In a Nov. 18 story about a hunter charged with shooting two college students he mistook for a deer, The Associated Press erroneously attributed information that the students were collecting frogs for a biology class. That came from Kimberly Boudinot, the stepmother of one of the students, not from a Ferrum College spokeswoman.

A Chicago-area cemetery that was shut down after four former workers were accused of digging up graves in a scheme to resell burial plots is open again.

Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip reopened Thursday morning. People boarded a bus across the street and were then driven into the cemetery to visit the graves of loved ones.

The historic black cemetery had been closed for nearly four months after authorities arrested the four workers and began searching the grounds. They found more than

An Ohio man has been charged with attempted murder after authorities said he put an infant and a toddler in a trash bin.

A grand jury in Dayton returned the indictment Wednesday against 39-year-old Tommie Johnson Jr.

Authorities say he put the 8-month-old boy and 2-year-old girl in the trash after a dispute with their mother.

Authorities say two electricians pulled the children out of the bin July 27. Police say they had been there for about 13 hours and were dirty, hungry and

A Connecticut woman who police say was set on fire by her boyfriend can be heard screaming in a 911 call tape released by authorities.

In a neighbor's call to police Sunday, Christina Lee of New Haven yells "He's setting my daughter on fire!" while the neighbor pleads with a dispatcher to send help. Police released the tape Wednesday.

The 35-year-old suffered burns on about 40 percent of her body and remains in critical condition at Bridgeport Hospital.

Police say Lee's boyfriend,

A town on New York's Long Island is hoping for better attendance at its 16th annual holiday boat parade this year by restoring "Christmas" to the event's name.

The Patchogue (PACH'-awg) Riverfront Committee says it decided to rename the event "Christmas Holiday Boat Parade" after taking over sponsorship from the local chamber of commerce.

Last year's event was renamed "Holiday Boat Parade" after some residents complained the name wasn't inclusive enough. But the committee says the

The runners-up to Merriam-Webster's 2009 Word of the Year (admonish), with definitions from the publisher's collegiate dictionary and, when applicable, the news event or story that generated the interest in the word:

_ Emaciated (adj.): To cause to lose flesh so as to become very thin.

Michael Jackson was described in some news reports as emaciated at the time of his death.

_ Empathy (noun): The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing

The case of one of four teens who were cited after rapping their order at a McDonald's in Utah appears headed for trial.

Police in American Fork, about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City, cited the teens with disorderly conduct last month after the drive-through rap.

The teens have said they were imitating a rap from a popular YouTube video, which begins: "I need a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce."

Spenser Dauwalder, 18, has said employees at the fast-food restaurant

A police officer who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl after he said her mother gave him permission has been suspended _ not for using the Taser but for not having a video camera attached when he used it.

Mayor Vernon McDaniel said officer Dustin Bradshaw was suspended Wednesday for seven days with pay. McDaniel said the suspension is for not following department procedures because he didn't have the camera on.

McDaniel wants Arkansas State Police or the FBI to look into

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have to decide whether a death row inmate lives or dies.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a rare ruling, has recommended that Robert Lee Thompson's death sentence be commuted to life in prison.

The 34-year-old Thompson is set for lethal injection Thursday evening for his part in the fatal shooting of a Houston convenience store clerk.

He was not the triggerman when Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed was gunned down 13 years ago during a robbery.

Moldova's army is feeding its soldiers onions and garlic to help them ward off swine flu.

Defense Ministry chief doctor Col. Sergiu Vasislita says about 0.9 ounces (25 grams) of onions and 0.5 ounces (15 grams) of garlic will be added to each soldier's daily diet. That roughly corresponds to a small onion and a couple of garlic cloves.

Onion and garlic are traditional remedies in Moldova where they are widely believed to boost the immune system.

Vasislita said Thursday that

Wet weather was expected to persist and intensify over the Northwest, while lingering showers could continue over the Northeast on Thursday.

A strong low pressure system was forecast to move into British Colombia and continue pushing a cold front over the Pacific Northwest. This system was expected to have picked up ample moisture and could trigger widespread scattered showers over the region with periods of heavy rain. Another dreary day with rainfall amount of up to 2 inches was expected,

A wild turkey that has been playing chicken along the New Jersey Turnpike won't have to dodge Thanksgiving traffic.

State Fish and Wildlife officials netted the bird Wednesday after failed attempts during the weekend.

The turkey has been trotting around toll booths at the 14B interchange in Jersey City since August.

Toll collectors began putting road construction cones on their parked cars to prevent the turkey from jumping onto their vehicles. They named the bird "Tammy the

Two Chicago men accused of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper may have been involved in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, authorities in that country say.

The FBI for now is saying only that it has evidence David Coleman Headley was in contact with the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba _ which the Indian government blames for the Mumbai attacks that left 166 dead and 308 wounded _ while he allegedly planned and carried out reconnaissance this year

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard

Firefighters have fully surrounded a 145-acre wildfire in Southern California.

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Greg McKeown says the fire was 100 percent contained by 6 p.m. Wednesday.

McKeown says all units have been released from the scene.

The fire, which broke out Monday, burned in a bowl-shaped valley full of dense brush about a dozen miles northeast of San Juan Capistrano. No homes are nearby.

Three injuries were reported.

McKeown says crews took advantage

The company that publishes Reader's Digest is planning to vacate its longtime suburban headquarters, the CEO said Wednesday.

In a memo to the 650 employees at its federal-style building in Chappaqua, Reader's Digest Association CEO Mary Berner said their jobs will be moving to White Plains and New York City.

The plan is subject to approval in Bankruptcy Court, where the company filed for Chapter 11 protection for its American operations in August. In September, it said it was looking

A tour bus returning from an Iowa casino ran off a southern Minnesota interstate and rolled over in a ditch Wednesday, killing two people and injuring 21, authorities said.

The bus, operated by Strain Bus Line Motorcoach Tours in Rochester, was eastbound on Interstate 90 just west of Austin when it crossed into the westbound lanes and flipped over about 3:20 p.m., Department of Public Safety spokesman Andy Skoogman said.

Passenger Ardell Swenson, 71, of Austin, said she was just