AP - A 7-year-old boy who called 911 from a locked bathroom while armed robbers threatened his parents hugged and high-fived on Wednesday the sheriff's dispatcher who took his call.
AP - Groups pushing for robust Hispanic participation in the 2010 census announced a new campaign Thursday that aims to reach the hard-to-count demographic through its smart-phone-toting youngsters.
AP - Governors and education leaders on Wednesday proposed sweeping new school standards that could lead to students across the country using the same math and English textbooks and taking the same tests, replacing a patchwork of state and local systems in an attempt to raise student achievement nationwide.
AP - The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half the district's schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy.
AP - After a $62 million overhaul, the Coast Guard will have its third icebeaker back in service in 2013, filling a critical need as the fleet takes on new responsibilities, the commandant of the service said Wednesday.
AP - In his 28 years with the Burbank Police Department, Sgt. Robert Quesada had never heard of anything quite like it: A well-respected teacher at one of the city's public schools walks into police headquarters and confesses to having an affair with a 14-year-old boy.
AP - A northern Mississippi school district decided Wednesday not to host a high school prom after a lesbian student demanded she be able to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.
AP - Gov. Bob McDonnell directed state agencies not to discriminate against gay people in employment practices Wednesday, essentially overriding the Virginia attorney general's advice to public colleges.
AP - When Juanita Goggins became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, she was hailed as a trailblazer and twice visited the president at the White House.
AP - As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.
AP - The federal government on Wednesday recommended an endangered-species listing for the loggerhead turtles in U.S. waters, a decision that could lead to tighter restrictions on fishing and other maritime trades.
AP - For soldiers patrolling in Iraq and Afghanistan, death can come from a bomb hidden in a trash pile or an innocent-looking face in the crowd. Returning home alive can depend on the quick turn of a steering wheel or pull of a trigger.
AP - Last year, Palm thought it had all the pieces for a turnaround in the market it pioneered: A new CEO known for making the iPod a household name, a sleek new smart phone called the Pre and fresh, intuitive operating software.
AP - The FBI arrested a reputed U.S. mobster Wednesday on charges he provided protection for a Sicilian counterpart mapping out criminal turf in Florida — part of an international sweep aimed at further crippling the storied Gambino organized crime family and disrupting its ties to the Italian mob.
AP - A former Detroit city councilwoman was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs.
AP - Ohio State University says a background check on a janitor who shot two supervisors didn't reveal a criminal record, even though he had spent five years in prison.
AP - After three Providence police officers were arrested last week in a cocaine-peddling sting, Chief Dean Esserman called it a "hard day" for the department.
