The investigation of Michael Jackson's death is widening as questions intensify about the drugs he took, the doctors who provided them and the actions of police.Why ...

Today is Friday, July 3, the 184th day of 2009. There are 181 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On July 3, 1863, the three-day Civil War Batt...

General Motors Corp. may have to wait out the long holiday weekend to learn if its bankruptcy plan is moving forward, after U.S. Judge Robert Gerber adjourned a three-day h...

A former surgery technician may have exposed thousands of Colorado patients to hepatitis C when she swapped her own dirty syringes for ones filled with a powerful narcotic,...

A Northern California elementary school teacher sent her students home for the summer with a video of class memories, only the DVD included six seconds of her having sex on...

Tilesha McClurkin wanted to join other Michael Jackson fans to celebrate his life, but she knew she wouldn't be able to go to whatever official memorial celebration might b...

The death of a gay sailor who was killed as he stood guard at Camp Pendleton doesn't appear to be a hate crime, officials said Thursday.Seaman August Provost of Hous...

A 30-second snippet of Michael Jackson rehearsing two days before his death was released Thursday, part of more than 100 hours of footage that could be turned into live alb...

The future of Michael Jackson's children was thrown into question Thursday when his ex-wife emerged and won a delay in a custody hearing while she decides whether she wants...

Herbert G. KleinSAN DIEGO (AP) — Herbert G. Klein, Richard Nixon's ex-White House director of communications and a former editor for Copley Newspapers, has died. H...

A sheriff says the shooting deaths of a peach farmer and two women in a rural South Carolina county the past week have been linked to the same killer.Cherokee County...

A New York Police Department rookie just couldn't wait to get started.One of the NYPD's newest officers made his first arrest Thursday just minutes after graduating ...

Wildlife agents rescued two Mexican gray wolf pups found abandoned in a New Mexico forest, but three others from the same litter were found dead, officials said Thursday.Yakima teacher reprimanded for backpack feces

A Washington kindergarten teacher who sent a 5-year-old student home with a bag of feces tucked in his backpack has been formally reprimanded.A West Valley School Di...

In a big break for online shoppers, Web retailers generally don't have to charge sales taxes in states where they lack a store or some other physical presence.Increa...

The chairman the House Veterans Affairs Committee is calling for a Defense Department and Marine Corps probe to see if the killing of a gay sailor at Camp Pendleton was a h...

A woman who shot her New York City fire marshal husband to death while he slept in their bed has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.Forty-year-old high sch...

Workers at the Frederick County Landfill were surprised by what they found in a large trash bin trucked in from a Goodwill Industries store: a woman who had apparently gott...

A former Pennsylvania state senator convicted of a multimillion-dollar fraud is seeking a new trial on corruption charges, alleging the jury was tainted.A jury in Ma...

As of Thursday, July 2, 2009, at least 4,322 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count....

As of Thursday, July 2, 2009, at least 642 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in ...

Herbert G. Klein, Richard Nixon's ex-White House director of communications and a former editor for Copley Newspapers, has died. He was 91.Klein died Thursday after ...

Metro officials say red line trains in greater Washington, D.C., will return to regular speeds this holiday weekend for the first time since a deadly crash.Nine peop...

The clogged tourist travel route between Southern California and Las Vegas has been designated a federal high-speed rail corridor, in a move that officials hope would signa...

Lightning has struck a historic eastern Massachusetts church, damaging its roof and destroying its steeple.The Medway Community Church was hit by a lightning bolt Th...

Federal marshals seized disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's $7 million Manhattan penthouse on Thursday and forced his wife to move out and leave her possessions behind, in...

Federal agents busted a drug-trafficking ring that distributed methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico in Washington state and carried unusually powerful weaponry, injectin...

Herbert G. Klein, Richard Nixon's former White House director of communications, has died. He was 91.Family members told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Klein died ...

Any doubt that remains found in the Utah wilderness were those of Everett Ruess, a legendary wanderer of the 1930s, seemed to be erased by a battery of forensic and genetic...

A federal judge in San Francisco said Thursday he wants to conduct a full trial on a lawsuit seeking to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban because he expects the c...

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she may be able to forgive her husband's much-publicized affair with an Argentine woman, but true reconciliation will take more...

A Los Angeles fashion designer convicted of sexually assaulting seven women and teenage girls should not be granted a new trial even though a juror flirted over the phone w...

The private pathologist who examined David Carradine's body says Thai authorities have determined the actor died of asphyxia and so far, he agrees.Dr. Michael Baden ...

AP Interview: Obama says Putin has 'lot of sway' in Russia, must understand Cold War is overWASHINGTON (AP) — Days from his first Moscow summit, President Barack O...

The judge in the General Motors Corp. bankruptcy case adjourned a three-day hearing without indicating when he will rule on the company's plan to sell its good assets to a ...

A Texas couple was arrested after a state inspector found a half dozen children locked and unsupervised in a tool shed behind an unlicensed day care center, authorities sai...

A toddler left in a hot minivan outside his suburban Philadelphia day care center has died of hyperthermia.Bucks County authorities say 2-year-old Daniel Slutsky was...

Business consultant Katrina Kennedy has taken her young son out of preschool and put a family vacation on hold. Dairyman Mike O'Kelly is wondering whether he is going to ha...

Authorities say a programming error on cell phone towers misrouted 911 calls from a lost hiker who died in a rescue helicopter crash last month, but the problem has been co...

Army Reserve Maj. Miles Gengler didn't hesitate as he repeated the oath during his swearing-in as an attorney. His words just had to travel more than 6,000 miles from Baghd...

A Hawaii judge on Thursday blocked Gov. Linda Lingle from forcing thousands of public employees to take three unpaid days off per month, dealing her a setback in efforts to...

The chairman of the Senate's upcoming Supreme Court hearings says Republicans told him they would have objected no matter whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high ...

How bad is the current recession? Here's one measure: the United States now has fewer jobs than it did nine years ago, even though the work force — the number of people e...

An attorney for veterans potentially exposed to HIV and other infections by colonoscopies at three Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals said his clients are waiting to ...

Americans lucky enough to still have a job are noticing something unpleasant in their paychecks: They're making less money.Employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far mo...

Police say the wife of actor Gary Coleman was booked into jail after an argument at the couple's Utah County home.Shannon Price was arrested Wednesday and held for a...

An Texas teenager has been sentenced to life in prison for beating a homeless man to death in a trash bin.Sixteen-year-old Michael Martinez Jr. of Abilene was tried ...

In a quiet act of defiance, gay and lesbian Mennonites dressed in bright pink gathered outside the church's official convention in Columbus on Thursday and criticized its l...

A federal judge in San Francisco says he wants to conduct a full trial on a lawsuit seeking to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban because he expects the case to on...

The number of U.S. swine flu cases has reached nearly 34,000, and deaths have risen 34 percent in the past week to 170, federal health officials reported Thursday.Ab...

NASA has tweeted in space, but now one of its astronauts is breaking a new space Twitter barrier. He'll tweet from space in Spanish and English.Astronaut Jose Hernan...

The bright glow at the summit of Hawaii's Kilauea (KILL'-uh-WAY'-uh) volcano has been snuffed out by a series of large rock falls within its crater.The Hawaiian Volc...

When the middle-of-nowhere town of Woodward invited George W. Bush to its Fourth of July celebration, no one really expected the former president to accept. But he did....

The wife of embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford called his affair with an Argentine woman "inexcusable" but said Thursday she is willing to forgive him.Jenny ...

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the winner of its annual Sitting Duck Award, a tongue-in-cheek honor that pokes fun at the mos...

The trial of a man charged in the killing of a Connecticut real estate mogul could be in jeopardy because a copy of a defense motion pointing blame at the developer's ex-wi...

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford issued the following statement Thursday, breaking two days of silence that followed her husband's latest revelations to The Associat...

The Iron County sheriff's office said an inmate tried to escape from a correctional facility by fashioning a fake bomb. Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Pallesen said the 28-year-old...

In July 1785, the citizens of this waterfront town assembled to heap praise on their newly minted nation and to thank God for helping them survive a fierce assault by the B...

Three state employee unions are asking a state judge to block Gov. Linda Lingle from ordering thousands of their members to take three unpaid days off each month.Fir...

A Connecticut woman's close encounter with the mythical beast, Sasquatch or Big Foot, turned out to be nothing more than a boy in a costume. Fairfield police said a woman d...

South Carolina's first lady says Gov. Mark Sanford's actions are "inexcusable" but she is willing to forgive him.Jenny Sanford on Thursday made her first public stat...

Anna Karen Morrow, an actress who had a regular role on the prime-time soap opera "Peyton Place" and also appeared on Broadway, in films and on numerous other television sh...

A federal judge on Thursday tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up c...

A northwestern New Jersey man said he was mugged in his driveway by a sandwich-craving bear. Henry Rouwendal said he was packing his car last Friday when he was hit from be...

Gov. Mark Sanford used no taxpayer money to see his Argentine mistress during two visits to her country and three meetings in New York, South Carolina law enforcement agent...

Gay and lesbian Mennonites dressed in bright pink have gathered with others outside the church's biannual convention in Columbus to criticize its leaders for trying to push...

A man distraught that his wife wanted a divorce is suspected in the shooting at a Southern California dental office that killed her and wounded four other employees, police...

Reports of shots fired near a Detroit school have sent dozens of students fleeing from classes just two days after seven teenagers were shot near the school.Police r...

He was born on the Fourth of July, an irony he would only appreciate later, during the dark period of his life, when liberty and freedom became far more than mere words in ...

A spokesman says South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will head to Florida to spend the holiday weekend with his family.Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said the governor w...

The Florida Supreme Court says Gov. Charlie Crist can't reject an all-white list of appeals court nominees, even though he wants to appoint someone who will make the judici...

SC first lady calls husband's actions 'inexcusable,' says she's angry but willing to forgive...

Police used a Taser on a pastor and pepper spray to disperse his congregants Wednesday after the pastor allegedly interfered with a traffic stop in the church parking lot. ...

The Marine Corps says one Marine has been killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan during a major offensive against the Taliban.Capt. William Pelletier said the Ma...

When carpenter Greg Douglas crashed his pickup truck, his toolbox hit him and smashed his ribs and collarbone. After a month in the hospital, the medical bills hit him even...

Tennessee prosecutors dropped charges Thursday against a Georgia man accused of kidnapping and raping a woman in a remote mountain cabin, saying they doubted her credibilit...

A federal judge on Thursday ordered prosecutors to produce affidavits explaining why photographs were released and publicity generated following the arrests of two Boston p...

A prosecutor agreed Thursday that the government will not dismantle overseas locations where a former Guantanamo detainee claims he was interrogated by the CIA before he wa...

South Carolina's top prosecutor is calling on Gov. Mark Sanford to publicly release travel records tied to his affair with an Argentine woman.State Attorney General ...

A person with knowledge of the situation says Los Angeles officials are holding closed-door talks about a possible event for Michael Jackson on Tuesday at a downtown arena....

Prosecutors have added a child endangerment charge against a Long Island, N.Y., mother accused of posting a suggestive Craigslist ad to target a 9-year-old girl.Marg...

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's deal to write a book on fiscal conservatism has been terminated amid revelations about his affair with a woman from Argentina.Publ...

Prosecutors are playing audiotapes of former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson talking with a woman about business deals he is accused of brokering in exchange for br...

A September 2010 trial has been set for a Guantanamo detainee charged in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.Federal judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan se...

A high-ranking federal judge who made sexually explicit material available on the Internet was cleared of judicial misconduct with an admonishment Thursday by fellow judges...

Torrential rains are soaking New England and causing traffic backups and power failures as the holiday weekend approaches.Parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and R...

A computer problem temporarily disrupted United Airlines flights at O'Hare International Airport on Thursday, causing long delays and lines for travelers headed out for the...

A 16-year-old girl thought she heard her mother being assaulted by her boyfriend and rounded up some friends who beat him up, only to learn later that the couple actually w...

A judge will decide the case of a woman accused of killing her four daughters, whose bodies were found decomposing in the family's southeast Washington home in January 2008...

A federal investigation has found that heart attack survivors enrolled in a study of a controversial alternative medicine treatment were not told enough about potential dan...

A Texas couple were arrested after a state inspector found several children locked in a tool shed behind an unlicensed daycare center.State officials said the childr...

A Boston city councilor charged with extortion alleges the state's former U.S. attorney targeted him at the behest of former Attorney General John Ashcroft.City Coun...

While researching a case, attorney Ed Blackmon stumbled across leftovers of Mississippi's segregationist past — laws enacted to discourage the fight for equal rights for ...

The nation's largest utility can dump millions of tons of coal ash from a Tennessee spill into an Alabama landfill, federal regulators said Thursday, despite criticism that...

The police chief of a northeast Ohio township has retired after a video became public showing him and a female office kissing and caressing in the front of a police cruiser...

A northwestern Pennsylvania man was sentenced to two to 10 years in state prison for conspiring with his son to cause an oil spill in the Allegheny National Forest because ...

A computer problem grounded all United Airlines flights at O'Hare International Airport Thursday, causing long delays and lines for travelers headed out for the Fourth of J...

A California-based poultry company that recently took over a closed Louisiana processing plant with assistance from the state says it will not extend contracts to all of th...

A passenger stripped naked during a US Airways flight and resisted a flight attendant's efforts to cover him with a blanket before two off-duty law enforcement officers on ...

Nearly two in three Americans say news organizations have given too much coverage to the death of Michael Jackson, but half say the media have struck the right balance betw...

Sayyid Syeed remembers an interfaith event several years ago when a Jewish leader went to embrace him, saw someone snapping a photo, then suddenly pulled back."He sa...

The Rev. Peter Morales of Colorado has been elected as the first Latino president of the Unitarian Universalist Association.Morales, senior minister of Jefferson Uni...

Today is Thursday, July 2, the 183rd day of 2009. There are 182 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress p...

Stock futures are slumping ahead of a key monthly unemployment report.Investors are awaiting the Labor Department's June unemployment figures. Economists expect the ...

In one especially soul-baring e-mail to his Argentine mistress, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 about the nature of love.It is patient ...

A Missouri mother faces up to three years in prison at her sentencing Thursday in Los Angeles for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who lat...

The U.S. government has been plunging deeper and deeper into debt, and the White House expects the budget deficit to get close to $2 trillion by the end of the year....

A jury on Thursday was set to consider the case of Jesse James Hollywood, who is accused of kidnapping a 15-year-old boy over a drug debt then ordering his death and going ...

Crewmembers hooted and applauded as the last boat in Honolulu's failed city ferry service sailed into another gorgeous Hawaii sunset to end one of the seas' best bargains f...

Even in a scorched economy, there's still some money to burn.Operators of the thousands of fireworks stands on Indian reservations and in parking lots throughout the...

The Eastern U.S. was expected to continue seeing severe storm development on Thursday from a slow-moving low pressure system hovering over the Great Lakes region.Wid...

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces." — Marine Corps Brig. Gen....

California's controller will start paying many of the state's bills with IOUs as soon as Thursday after lawmakers failed to close the state's worsening budget deficit, addi...

Almost every Saturday at 9:30 a.m. Candace McCann, inmate No. 188342, sits down for a scheduled video conference with her daughter.Seven-year-old Kashmir appears fro...

After all the officials took turns explaining a plan to end a bedbug infestation in an apartment building where mostly refugees live, Michel Ndayavugwi simply pointed to th...

Cassy Hayes and Jasmine Coleman were among the first fans to arrive outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles where Michael Jackson was brought and later...

The man who lost the 1998 Minnesota governor's race to pro wrestler Jesse Ventura now holds the distinction of losing his U.S. Senate seat to former "Saturday Night Live" c...

The parents of a 3-year-old boy who died after an Oregon doctor operated on him have agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit for $200,000.The parents of Ian McClel...

After days of soul-baring and often odd confessions and apologies about an adulterous affair, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford went silent as the clamor for his resignation...

A gunman who opened fire inside a busy dental office in an apparent domestic dispute — killing one woman and critically wounding three others — was being interrogated, ...

A jury is considering the case of Jesse James Hollywood, who is accused of kidnapping a teenager over a drug debt and then ordering his death in a case that inspired the 20...

An ex-aide to John Edwards who claimed he fathered a child born to the mistress of the two-time Democratic presidential candidate spent Wednesday in a federal courthouse, b...

Tributes to the King of Pop continued Wednesday at the Apollo Theater, where the weekly Amateur Night turned into a Michael Jackson celebration, with impersonators emulatin...

Police used a Taser on a pastor and pepper spray to disperse his congregants Wednesday after the pastor allegedly interfered with a traffic stop in the church parking lot.<...

The finances of several states around the nation are sinking deeper into chaos as lawmakers struggle to work out budget differences amid a recession that has wiped out tax ...

On Independence Day, 2009, America finds its economic future tied to the whims of unstable, and sometimes, hostile foreign powers who control our energy supply.  Although ...

PAILIN, Cambodia _ Don't ever accept an invitation to go fishing in Thailand. You might not come back.Almost daily, bodies are washing ashore along the coasts of Tha...

The following editorial appeared in The Miami Herald on Wednesday, July 1:___Iraqi police officers danced atop their vehicles Tuesday as their convoys moved a...

The following editorial appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday, June 30:___With a 150-year prison sentence on Monday, Bernard Madoff got what he had...

Now that Iran has officially confirmed its tainted election outcome, President Obama must reconsider how to deal with the regime.The big question is whether Obama sh...

The following editorial appeared in The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday, June 30:___Babe Ruth hit his 714th and last home run in 1935, retiring later that year from...

YORKTOWN, Va. _ First, we did the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, "America the Beautiful," and then "God Bless America." A person is struck with such impulses standing on the e...

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, July 1:___For the first time, someone has put a price on what Americans are will...