BAGHDAD - A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.
IOWA CITY, Iowa - The place where police found the five bodies slain Monday in a still-mysterious tableau is a subdivision of rolling lawns, curved streets, elaborate wood playsets and bird feeders. The spacious homes of Windsor Ridge are where the children of successful, close-knit families play in driveways and where young parents go to dinner with their neighbors on Friday nights.
ST. LOUIS _ Responding to the October 2006 suicide of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., teen Megan Meier, Illinois and Missouri lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at keeping teens safe from cyber bullies. One proposal could put cyber bullies in prison for up to five years.
SEATTLE - Federal agents have solved one mystery by learning the real identity of the man previously known as "John Doe," but now they're faced with another, possibly more vexing question: Why has he repeatedly switched identities for the past 20 years? Federal agents identified the man in custody in the SeaTac Federal Detention Center as Scott Andrew Shain, 52, who they say has adopted the identities of at least five dead people and obscured his past so well that it took federal agents nearly five months to determine his real name.
RALEIGH, N.C. - North Carolina finally owns outright its lost-and-found original draft copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights, a judge ruled Monday. Superior Court Judge Henry "Chip" Hight Jr. ruled that the state has full legal ownership of the disputed document, which federal agents recovered five years ago in an undercover operation.
COLUMBIA, S.C. - An emotional Ric Flair accepted a key to the city of Columbia Monday a week before what could potentially be the last match of the wrestler's 36-year career. The limousine ridin', jet flyin', kiss stealin', wheelin'-dealin' son-of-a-gun was in town for the WWE Raw event at the Colonial Center.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina _ As the world scrambles to save dwindling resources and halt global warming, a long-scorned population is becoming the latest hope in the environmental battle. The unsung heroes are the impoverished trash pickers who fill the streets of countless cities around the developing world, searching garbage for cardboard, plastic bags and other treasure that can be sold and recycled.
WASHINGTON _ The U.S. military mistakenly shipped four nuclear-missile detonators to Taiwan in 2006, then failed to detect the error for more than a year, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. It was the second time in recent months that Pentagon officials acknowledged losing track of parts of the country's nuclear arsenal.
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday against President Bush in a far-reaching legal dispute with his home state, concluding that the president can't order Texas courts to conduct a new hearing for a Mexican national who's on death row. In a 6-3 decision, the court sided with the state of Texas in denying an appeal for Jose Ernesto Medellin, who's on Texas' death row in the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls in Houston 15 years ago.
WASHINGTON _ Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Tuesday called for mortgage lenders to help struggling homeowners stay in their homes, but said government's role should be temporary and limited. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, also called for increased transparency and accountability in the mortgage industry, among both lenders and borrowers.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Fear of losing their health insurance if they change jobs haunts nearly three-fourths of American workers, according to a survey released Tuesday by the AFL-CIO. More than 26,000 individuals responded during a seven-week "Health Care for America" survey, accessible at www.
DETROIT _ As Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff Christine Beatty were arraigned on felony charges Tuesday, a newly revealed text message showed that _ back in 2003 _ Kilpatrick was left scrambling to explain the reason for firing Detroit cop Gary Brown.
MIAMI _ An incident of alleged mistreatment of passengers with ties to Haiti's president on an American Airlines flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami has sparked an outcry of discrimination from the Caribbean nation's top South Florida diplomat. American Airlines exhibits "an ongoing pattern of disrespect" to Haitian customers, according to a letter sent as "an official complaint" to the carrier this past weekend by Ralph Latortue, Haiti's consul general in Miami.
IOWA CITY, Iowa _ A former bank vice president distraught over being indicted for embezzling went on a grisly rampage in which he killed his wife and then may have botched his first attempt to kill himself and his four children in the family garage by carbon monoxide poisoning, police revealed Tuesday.
WASHINGTON _ Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation. Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church.
DETROIT _ Borders Group Inc. put itself up for sale Thursday, after years of speculation that it would merge with the nation's largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble. While industry analysts said New York-based Barnes & Noble will be a likely suitor for Borders, the Ann Arbor, Mich.
WASHINGTON _ The campaign of Sen. John McCain suspended an aide Thursday for distributing a YouTube video linking Sen. Barack Obama with his longtime pastor, whose history of intemperate remarks has roiled the presidential campaign in recent days. The aide, Soren Dayton, used a personal account on Twitter.
WASHINGTON _ President Bush contended that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program. Iran, however, has never publicly proclaimed a desire for nuclear weapons and has repeatedly insisted that the uranium enrichment program it's operating in defiance of U.
MIAMI _ In a new tactic, lawyers for an alleged archterrorist held at Guantanamo argue in an unlawful detention suit that their client is insane _ and that U.S. agents concluded long ago that any intelligence he could provide is unsound. A Washington, D.C.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Give birth, get a parking pass? California lawmakers are considering granting special parking privileges to women in the final three months of pregnancy and the first two months after birth. The legislation would apply to more than a half-million women who give birth every year in California.
BEIJING _ The Dalai Lama said Thursday that he was ready to meet China's leaders to discuss violent protests in Tibet, but China nearly ruled out any such possibility, assailing the exiled Tibetan as deceitful and even criminal. Speaking in Dharamsala, the hill station in northern India that's the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama said the talks could take place once violence died down in Tibet.
WASHINGTON _ President Bush on Wednesday gave a rousing defense of the Iraq war on its fifth anniversary, claiming that "the successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable," but Democrats _ and war protesters _ made it clear that they'll continue to insist that the conflict is a disaster.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. _ North Carolina's first meaningful presidential primary in a generation was launched Wednesday, with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama saying that the five-year war in Iraq had failed to make the United States safer from terrorism. In a speech delivered near the sprawling Fort Bragg army base on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war's beginning, Obama said he would bring U.
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court Wednesday overturned the guilty verdict and death sentence of a Louisiana man convicted of hacking his wife's lover to death, concluding that an African-American juror was unfairly excluded from the panel. In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said the state trial judge made a mistake when he allowed prosecutors to strike an African-American college student from the jury.
BELLEVILLE, Ill. _ The spring flooding has begun, and the weather has been linked to at least 13 deaths around the Midwest. In southern Illinois, two bodies were found hours after floodwaters swept a pickup truck off a rural road. Five deaths were linked to the flooding in Missouri, five people were killed in a highway wreck in heavy rain in Kentucky and a 65-year-old Ohio woman appeared to have drowned while checking on a sump pump in her home.
CHICAGO _ Two Northbrook, Ill., art dealers played key roles in international art-fraud rings that reaped more than $5 million selling thousands of fake "limited edition" prints around the world, federal prosecutors charged Wednesday. In one case with links to Europe, a dealer sold so much fake art that distributors warned her to cut back, prosecutors alleged.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan _ Shaheed Rehman Afridi lay in a casualty-packed trauma ward, unable to make sense of the blast that punctured his body with tiny metal missiles and killed dozens of his kinsmen as they met for a traditional tribal assembly. On nearby beds, children with head wounds writhed in pain, inconsolable by frantic parents.
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. _ In an elegant hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean, more than 30 of the world's leading stem cell researchers gathered Wednesday to strategize on the most effective means of developing novel stem cell medical treatments, while keeping public expectations in line with the actual state of scientific research.
