ALL RECENT AP STORIES

A month of harsh words between Rep. Patrick Kennedy and a strident critic, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, escalated Sunday when the bishop acknowledged asking Kennedy not to receive Holy Communion because of the Democratic lawmaker's support for abortion rights.

The bishop's attempt to publicly shame Kennedy comes just a few months after the death of his father, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Tobin told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday that he's praying for the younger

A train passenger's video of an arrest shows heavy-duty glass shattering and showering down on a San Francisco area transit police officer and an unruly passenger in an incident that injured both men.

The video, taken Saturday evening and posted on YouTube, shows the Bay Area Rapid Transit officer pushing the passenger toward a glass wall along the West Oakland station platform. It's unclear what caused the glass to break.

BART's police force has faced scrutiny since an officer fatally

When Henry Spelman found out he'd won a Rhodes Scholarship, his first call was to his girlfriend. To share the good news, of course, but also to see whether she was a winner as well.

The couple, both seniors at the University of North Carolina, had done their final scholarship interviews apart _ he in Philadelphia, she in Houston. Spelman heard the results first.

When he called with his good news, "the stakes just went way up," said his girlfriend, Libby Longino, who had to wait 45

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly

Lawyer says 9/11 defendants will plead not guilty so they can express their political views

NEW YORK (AP) _ The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The

Officials at the University of California, Santa Cruz say dozens of protesters who were occupying the university's main administrative building have ended their protest.

Campus spokesman Jim Burns says the nearly 70 or so protesters who had occupied the university's Kerr Hall since Thursday in a demonstration over fee hikes walked out of the building around 8 a.m. Sunday.

No arrests were made, but Burns says the students who took part in the protest are facing criminal charges or

A subway passenger stabbed to death in front of horrified straphangers has been identified as 36-year-old Dwight Johnson of Brooklyn.

Authorities say some 30 passengers watched as Gerardo Sanchez of the Bronx stabbed Johnson at around 2 a.m. Saturday in an argument over a seat.

Police say the passengers were trapped with the knife-wielding attacker and his victim until the train arrived at the station at Seventh Avenue and 53rd Street.

Police say Sanchez was standing over the

The Kentucky Historical Society has been displaying and publicizing a pair of earrings as having belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, but others aren't as sure about their authenticity.

The pair of apparently gold-mounted black onyx pendant earrings were purchased by the Historical Society in 2008 for more than $19,000 through Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Sunday.

Historical Society Executive Director Kent Whitworth said that, in the society's

Authorities say a 12-year-old boy assaulted by a group of middle school classmates in Southern California may have been targeted after an Internet posting urged students to beat up redheads.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Richard Erickson says the boy, who is redheaded, was kicked and hit in two incidents Friday at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. As many as 14 students participated in the attacks.

Erickson says the attackers may have been motivated by a Facebook message

Authorities say a couple and a 14-year-old boy have been killed in a fiery freeway crash in Southern California that two younger children managed to survive.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey says a sport utility vehicle carrying two adults and three children rear-ended a big rig early Sunday on the 210 Freeway in Sunland, about 20 miles north of Los Angeles.

The SUV burst into flames and two children _ a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy _ were pulled out

In the days before Fred Alvarez was shot execution-style with two friends on his verandah, the strapping Cabazon tribal leader feared he was a marked man: His motorcycle had been tampered with, his mailbox shot up and his house ransacked.

He visited the local newspaper several times to say that he'd uncovered something big enough to get him killed. He arranged to talk with a lawyer to divulge what he knew, but never made the meeting.

On that day, tribal member Joe Benitez swung by

Investigators say a fire that destroyed businesses on the famous Atlantic City boardwalk apparently started in a pizza shop.

No serious injuries were reported after the blaze broke out on the Central Pier shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday. It took nearly four hours to bring under control.

Investigators say the flames quickly spread from the pizza shop to two clothing stores and a photography shop. The fire created billows of thick smoke.

The Central Pier has been hit by other

Virginia Military Institute is defending itself against a lengthy investigation into accusations that the school's policies are sexist and hostile toward female cadets, a dozen years after women won the right to enroll.

The federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has an ongoing investigation of a sex discrimination complaint at the small, state-supported school that so far has taken nearly a year and a half _ three times longer than usual.

Defenders say VMI has

(Stations: Please substitute the following for V3958, slugged RI Bishop-Kennedy, which moved at 5:05 a.m. Eastern time. The new version CORRECTS Kennedy not disclosing how bishop told him of ban sted in discussions.)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) _ Rep. Patrick Kennedy says Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has barred him from receiving communion because of his support of abortion rights.

The Providence Journal reports on its Web site Sunday that Kennedy said in an interview that

A low-pressure system that has lingered in the Gulf of Mexico the past few days, bringing rain to the Gulf Coast, was expected to finally move inland into the Southeast on Sunday. This was likely to translate to widespread rain and even a few thunderstorms in the area even as the system weakens while moving toward the Southeast coast.

To the north, a large high-pressure system was anticipated to move northward into northern New England, providing dry conditions through the Northeast and

The Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood will be confined until his military trial, initially staying in a hospital where he is recovering from gunshot wounds, his attorney said Saturday.

During a hearing at Maj. Nidal Hasan's hospital room in San Antonio on Saturday, a magistrate ruled that there was probable cause that Hasan committed the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, said his civilian attorney, John Galligan. Hasan has been at Brooke Army Medical Center

A court-martial acquitted a former military nurse of murder Saturday after he was accused of giving lethal doses of painkillers to hasten the deaths of three terminally ill patients at the Air Force's largest hospital.

Capt. Michael Fontana, wearing his Air Force uniform, showed no emotion as a military judge cleared him of three counts of murder, then collapsed into the arms of weeping family members inside a Lackland Air Force Base courtroom.

Military prosecutors had painted Fontana

Authorities say five male students have been arrested on suspicion of sexual battery after two ninth-grade girls were attacked at a Long Beach high school.

Long Beach Police Lt. Ty Hatfield says one of the victims told Poly High School officials they were groped on their breasts and buttocks during a lunch break Tuesday.

The five freshman boys were arrested separately throughout the week as the investigation into the assault progressed. They have been released to their parents.

Hatfield

A gunman fatally wounded a passenger in another vehicle at an Oregon intersection Saturday, setting off a police chase that ended when the suspect crashed and was killed by officers, authorities said.

The passenger, 56-year-old Danny K. Le Gore of Hillsboro, was rushed to a local hospital where he died. Police did not immediately identify the gunman.

Police initially called the violence a road rage shooting that followed a traffic altercation, but later they backed away from that

Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance.

For others beyond this manufacturing graveyard, however, Ukraine's economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza. In an era of climate change regulation and carbon trading, Ukraine, ironically, is profiting from the smokeless smokestacks of its industrial shutdown.

How well and how long it will profit

Authorities say five male students have been arrested on suspicion of sexual battery after two ninth-grade girls were attacked at a Long Beach high school.

Long Beach Police Lt. Ty Hatfield says one of the victims told Poly High School officials they were groped on their breasts and buttocks during a lunch break Tuesday.

The five freshman boys were arrested separately throughout the week as the investigation into the assault progressed. They have been released to their parents.

Hatfield

A gunman fatally wounded a passenger in another vehicle at an Oregon intersection Saturday, setting off a police chase that ended when the suspect crashed and was killed by officers, authorities said.

The passenger, 56-year-old Danny K. Le Gore of Hillsboro, was rushed to a local hospital where he died. Police did not immediately identify the gunman.

Police initially called the violence a road rage shooting that followed a traffic altercation, but later they backed away from that

Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance.

For others beyond this manufacturing graveyard, however, Ukraine's economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza. In an era of climate change regulation and carbon trading, Ukraine, ironically, is profiting from the smokeless smokestacks of its industrial shutdown.

How well and how long it will profit

Newly arrived in Moscow on his first foreign assignment, Associated Press correspondent George Krimsky sensed he had a sensational Cold War scoop on his hands and he pounced.

The story was the possible defection to the United States of the grandson of Josef Stalin, the notorious Communist dictator and World War II hero of the Soviet Union.

The story's potential was all the more dramatic because the grandson's mother, Stalin's only daughter, had herself defected in 1967 and settled

Officials say a three-alarm fire on the boardwalk in Atlantic City has been declared under control.

Atlantic City Police Sgt. Monica McMenamin says the fire that broke out around 6:45 p.m. Saturday at the Central Pier was brought under control at 10:40 p.m.

McMenamin says a pizza shop, T-shirt shop and clothing store were affected by the blaze.

Thick black smoke was billowing out of the pier on the beach side of the boardwalk, between St. James Place and Tennessee Avenue. Wind

Dozens of protesters are occupying the main administrative building at University of California, Santa Cruz in the third straight day of protest over fee hikes and cuts to campus services.

School officials said Saturday they wouldn't negotiate with the demonstrators until obstructions at the occupied Kerr Hall are cleared.

Protests began Thursday after the university system's regents approved a 32 percent fee hike at a meeting in Los Angeles.

On Friday, 41 people inside UC Berkeley's

Vice President Joe Biden told Iowa Democrats on Saturday that the Senate handed the president a big victory with its decision to move forward with debate on sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation's health care system.

"Tonight we have more momentum than we've ever had in the history of health care discussions,'" Biden told about 1,000 Democrats in Des Moines.

Biden's comments at the Iowa Democratic Party's largest fundraiser, the Jefferson Jackson Dinner, came shortly after the

Police say a bank robbery suspect in Ohio may have eaten evidence when he gobbled a piece of paper while handcuffed and lying across the hood of a police cruiser.

A police video camera captured the 35-year-old John Ford of Cleveland grabbing the paper with his mouth as police emptied his pockets.

Ford was arrested following a report of a bank robbery in Streetsboro just south of Cleveland on Thursday.

Police say a man walked into the bank and handed a teller a note that demanded

Authorities say four people were hurt when one of San Francisco's historic cable cars jarred to a sudden stop while traveling through downtown.

Municipal Transportation Agency spokesman Judson True says two passengers, the cable car's gripman and conductor were hospitalized on Saturday after the accident. Their injuries are not life-threatening.

The cable car on the Powell Street line came to a quick halt after a problem with an underground cable forced central control to shut the

A court-martial acquitted a former military nurse of murder Saturday after he was accused of giving lethal doses of painkillers to hasten the deaths of three terminally ill patients at the Air Force's largest hospital.

Capt. Michael Fontana, wearing his Air Force uniform, showed no emotion as a military judge cleared him of three counts of murder, then collapsed into the arms of weeping family members inside a Lackland Air Force Base courtroom.

Military prosecutors had painted Fontana

Authorities arrested a Sacramento fisherman Saturday in connection to shooting a sea lion in the head.

California game wardens said they arrested Larry Allen Legans, 43, on misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty, negligent discharge of a firearm, and take of a marine mammal. Legans told authorities he grew tired of competing with the protected animals so he fired his 12-gauge shotgun at the sea lion, injuring the creature.

"He said he was tired of watching sea lions take his fish,"

Democrats seal 60-vote majority to advance health care bill; Landrieu, Lincoln to vote 'yes'

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a show of unity, Senate Democrats sealed a 60-vote majority needed to advance health care legislation Saturday ahead of an evening showdown with Republicans eager to doom the bill and inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

Two final holdouts, Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced in speeches a few hours apart on the

A Fort Benning spokesman says Army officials are investigating whether a suspicious note and package found at the west Georgia post is a viable threat.

Bob Purtiman says a soldier found the note and package Thursday morning in an outdoor gazebo. The soldier immediately told a supervisor, who called 911.

Purtiman would not say what was in the note or what was in the package.

He said authorities are investigating whether there is a viable threat against Fort Benning. He says security

Every afternoon, seven days a week, Ed Epley has a 5 p.m. appointment with the war.

He pulls a protest sign from his maroon 1961 Volkswagen van _ he has 30 to 40 stashed inside _ and joins a one-hour peace vigil at the Benton County courthouse in Corvallis, Ore. Epley has been doing this, day in and day out, since the U.S. launched its first air strikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.

"I really don't look at it as a job, it's just part of the daily task of being a citizen," says

Police found him sitting on the floor of his old apartment near a bucket of urine, still dressed in his hospital gown.

The apartment had been condemned for the squalor _ food on the floor, flies _ and his smoking in bed. But the mentally ill man, just released from the hospital, had managed to get back in. For the second time in four days, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

Three firefighters, a battalion chief, the police chief, two police officers, a code enforcement person

When Liz Fitzgerald realized her son and daughter were forced to read books in math class while the other children caught up, she had them moved into gifted classes at their suburban Atlanta elementary school.

Just 100 miles down the road in Taliaferro County, that wouldn't have been an option. All the gifted classes were canceled because of budget cuts.

"If they didn't have it, they would get bored and distracted easily," said Fitzgerald, whose children are 14 and 12. "It just wouldn't

Wide-eyed children around the world will be hearing from Santa's "elves" at the North Pole after all.

During Christmas seasons for decades, these dedicated elves responded to thousands of letters addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole."

All that was ending with a U.S. Postal Service decision to discontinue the program based in the small Alaskan town amid privacy concerns.

The elves from Santa's Mailbag vowed to fight the decision, while North Pole residents voiced outrage.

A

The gunman who carried out Saipan's most violent attack in recent memory ended his life on the same rocky cliffs where numerous Japanese leapt to their deaths to avoid capture by U.S. troops during World War II.

Police and witness say that after the attacker went on a shooting rampage Friday that left four dead, he parked his van and walked to edge of Banzai Cliff. But instead of jumping, the gunman shot himself.

Six people were also wounded in the violence that left this usually

Heavy rains was forecast to continue over the Gulf States on Saturday while the Pacific Northwest was expected to see scattered precipitation.

A strong low pressure system that developed over the Southern Plains continued to spin over the western Gulf of Mexico. Flow around this system was expected to continue picking up moisture from the Gulf, spreading wet conditions over eastern Texas and Louisiana and into the Florida Panhandle. Flooding was expected to remain a threat over the Lower

Thieves shot to death five Arkansas family members and burned their bodies for the meager bounty of a set of wheel rims and some flat-screen televisions, court documents said Friday.

Samuel Conway and Jeremy Pickney, both 23, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of capital murder, aggravated residential burglary and arson, Garland County court documents showed.

Police fatally shot a third suspect, 22-year-old Marvin Lamar Stringer, in a nighttime raid at a motel Thursday.

Firefighters

The son of a late San Francisco pornography mogul will stand trial on accusations that he crushed his ex-girlfriend's skull with a baseball bat.

Marin County Judge Kelly Simmons ruled Thursday the evidence was sufficient to put 27-year-old James Raphael Mitchell on trial for first-degree murder in the July 12 bludgeoning death of Danielle Keller. Mitchell is the son of the late "Behind the Green Door" director Jim Mitchell.

Simmons' decision followed a preliminary hearing that included

The U.S. Army said Friday it would open Sarah Palin's appearance on Fort Bragg to media, a reversal from earlier in the week when the military wanted the event closed out of fears it would prompt political grandstanding against President Barack Obama.

The attempt to ban media at the event scheduled for Monday was met with protests from The Associated Press and The Fayetteville Observer. The military then proposed limited media coverage, but lifted that plan Friday.

"Given an outpouring

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

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

Dozens of demonstrators who barricaded themselves inside a campus building at the University of California, Berkeley in a protest over fee hikes and budget cuts were removed late Friday, bringing the daylong occupation to an end, university officials said.

The occupation of a campus building at the University of California, Santa Cruz meanwhile continued.

Forty-one people inside UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall were arrested on suspicion of trespassing around 5 p.m. Friday, said Claire

A woman lost control of her car and struck nine children and an adult who were standing outside a middle school Friday afternoon, police said.

Debrah Johnson, 46, died after undergoing surgery at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Fairfield Police Sgt. Matthew Romei said. At least three of the children were in a hospital Friday night, ranging from fair to serious condition.

Police said the driver was a 67-year-old woman who was picking up a student at Forest Hills Middle School. Her identity

Police say a woman has died after being struck along with nine children by a car outside an Alabama middle school.

The nine children were injured in the accident Friday afternoon in Fairfield, about eight miles southwest of Birmingham. Three of the injured were listed in fair to serious condition at Children's Hospital in Birmingham.

Fairfield Police Sgt. Matthew Romei says 46-year-old Debrah Johnson died after undergoing surgery Friday night.

Witnesses tell The Birmingham News

Prosecutors say they will not appeal the dismissal of a woman's convictions in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide.

Friday's announcement effectively ends the case against Lori Drew.

Federal Judge George Wu threw out Drew's conviction on three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization in July, citing the vagueness of the law.

Prosecutors had said the 50-year-old Drew sought to humiliate Megan Meier by helping create a fake

The U.S. Army said Friday it would open Sarah Palin's appearance on Fort Bragg to media, a reversal from earlier in the week when the military wanted the event closed out of fears it would prompt political grandstanding against President Barack Obama.

The attempt to ban media at the event scheduled for Monday was met with protests from The Associated Press and The Fayetteville Observer. The military then proposed limited media coverage, but lifted that plan Friday.

"Given an outpouring

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

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

Nao Takasugi

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) _ Former state Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (NAH'-oh tah-kah-SOO'-gee), who was sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II, has died. He was 87.

Takasugi, a Republican from Oxnard, spent six years in the Legislature before he was termed out of office in 1998. He had been the mayor of Oxnard for 10 years before winning the Assembly seat.

His son, Ronald Takasugi, said Friday that his father died Thursday night of complications from

A 3-year-old Arizona boy helped his 1-year-old sister escape Friday from a house fire that killed their 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 mother, 22-year-old Michelle Mariano, lying just a couple of feet from the mobile home's doorway, said sheriff's spokeswoman Lt. Tamatha Villar.

Authorities said Mariano's sister, 28-year-old Marion Mariano, was also severely

Federal officials say they arrested a man who strapped 15 live lizards to his chest to get through customs at Los Angeles International Airport.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that 40-year-old Michael Plank of Lomita, Calif., was returning from Australia when U.S. Customs agents found two geckos, two monitor lizards and 11 skinks _ another type of lizard _ fastened to his body Tuesday.

Plank has been released on $10,000 bond and will be arraigned in federal court on

Two congressional Republicans say federal prosecutors rushed into a settlement with a nonprofit operated by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson that had been accused of misspending government grants.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released a report Friday concluding that a settlement in which Johnson and his foundation agreed to repay $424,000 whitewashed a government investigation into the matter.

Issa is the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government

As of Friday, Nov. 18, 2009, at least 842 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EST.

Of those, the military reports 650 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 72 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

As of Friday, Nov. 20, 2009, at least 4,364 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,476 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is two fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST.

The British military has reported 179 deaths;

A bus carrying 35 elementary school children on an outing has caught fire on a New York City bridge, but the children and their escorts have been rescued.

The bus was transporting students from Brooklyn's P.S. 5 on Friday morning when it burst into flames near the Staten Island-bound toll plaza of the double-decked Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman says bridge workers used fire extinguishers to douse the flames and removed the 4- and 5-year-old

Thieves shot to death five Arkansas family members and burned their bodies for the meager bounty of a set of wheel rims and some flat-screen televisions, court documents said Friday.

Samuel Conway and Jeremy Pickney, both 23, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of capital murder, aggravated residential burglary and arson, Garland County court documents showed.

Police fatally shot a third suspect, 22-year-old Marvin Lamar Stringer, in a nighttime raid at a motel Thursday.

Firefighters

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

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

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

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

A black school teacher charged with assaulting white police officers, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace has agreed a plea deal with prosecutors convicting her of two misdemeanor counts.

The deal announced Friday night means 24-year-old Heather Ellis will avoid a felony conviction for her part in a January 2007 scuffle at a Missouri Wal-Mart.

Ellis agreed to plead guilty to resisting arrest and peace disturbance. Prosecutor Morley Swingle dropped two felony counts of assault

Police say they have arrested a third person in the shooting death of an off-duty Las Vegas police officer in his garage.

North Las Vegas police said Friday that they arrested a 17-year-old boy and booked him in a juvenile detention center on suspicion of murder and attempted robbery charges. Police declined to identify him because of his age.

Police also say 18-year-old Prentice Marshall has been released from a hospital and booked into jail. He was treated for non-life threatening

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

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

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:

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

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,

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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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

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