LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The daughter of a Missouri woman accused of conspiring to send cruel Internet messages to a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide says her mother wanted to shut down a MySpace account used in the alleged hoax two weeks after it was created.... (More...)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- A new federal study predicts Tennessee would see the highest level of damage if a major earthquake were to shake the New Madrid Seismic Zone in the southern and central part of the country.... (More...)
LONDON (AP) -- Some advanced lung cancer patients already treated with chemotherapy might be able to skip some of the bad side effects of another series of chemo by taking a pill instead, a study suggests. An international study showed patients on Iressa, an expensive, newer targeted treatment, survived about as long as those on another course of chemotherapy.... (More...)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two years after the government urged making HIV tests as common as cholesterol checks, there are small gains but still one in five people infected with the AIDS virus doesn't know it, scientists said Thursday.... (More...)
MIAMI (AP) -- D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart."... (More...)
ATLANTA (AP) -- A little less "I'm Lovin' It" could put a significant dent in the problem of childhood obesity, suggests a new study that attempts to measure the effect of TV fast-food ads.... (More...)
DETROIT (AP) -- Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz, a cardiac surgeon who performed the nation's first human heart transplant and who also developed lifesaving medical implants, has died. He was 90. Kantrowitz died Friday in Ann Arbor of complications from heart failure, said his wife, Jean Kantrowitz.... (More...)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama intends to name Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, as his treasury secretary to confront the nation's intense economic turmoil, senior Democratic officials said Friday. The stock market soared on the news. Word of Geithner's likely selection emerged as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in line to become secretary of state, said through a spokesman that discussions were on track for her appointment but no final... (More...)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- While President-elect Barack Obama publicly sidelined himself during congressional debate over an auto industry bailout this week, he and his top aides quietly prodded congressional leaders to find a solution to rescue struggling automakers. Obama personally talked to congressional leaders, while his new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and congressional liaison, Phil Schiliro, were routinely dialed into conference calls to discuss the status of negotiations.... (More...)
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Gov. Dave Heineman signed into law Friday a bill adding a 30-day age limit to a safe-haven law that allowed 35 children - including teenagers as old as 17 - to be abandoned at state hospitals. The law, approved hours earlier by the Legislature in a 45-3 vote, goes into effect Saturday, and makes Nebraska the 14th state with a 30-day age cap. It had been the only state with a safe-haven law without an age limit.... (More...)
POTSDAM, Germany (AP) -- Germany is dropping its pursuit of a ban on Scientology after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity, security officials said Friday. Domestic intelligence services will continue to monitor the group, officials said. The German branch of the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology has been under observation by domestic intelligence services for more than a decade. Top security officials asked state governments in December to begin gathering informatio... (More...)
CORNWALLIS, Nova Scotia (AP) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday he would like to add significant U.S. forces to the war in Afghanistan before national elections scheduled for next year, and that grim depictions of backsliding in the seven-year-old war are "far too pessimistic."... (More...)
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico accused its former drug czar Friday of taking $450,000 from a cartel he was supposed to destroy, going public with a scandal that deals a serious blow to the country's U.S.-backed drug war.... (More...)
BAGHDAD (AP) -- Chanting "no to America," supporters of a radical Shiite cleric burned an effigy of President George W. Bush Friday in a protest demanding parliament scuttle a U.S.-Iraqi security pact and American troops begin withdrawing from Iraq immediately.... (More...)
PARIS (AP) -- A vote tally between two women vying to head the Socialist Party and lead the opposition against France's conservative president was too close to call, a senior party official said early Saturday.... (More...)
KIBATI, Congo (AP) -- Looting soldiers tried to rape one woman and fatally shot another at a refugee camp, witnesses said Friday, as the United Nations prepared to send more peacekeepers to help protect traumatized civilians in eastern Congo.... (More...)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Libya wants to open a new chapter in relations with the United States by tapping into a major government fund to invest in U.S. companies and sending thousands of students to study in America, the son of Libya's leader said Friday.... (More...)
