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Loriann and Justin Earp thought they were sending their daughter, Ashley Long, to the usual neighborhood sleepover when a popular party prank took her life. Ashley inhaled helium - something any 14-year-old girl might do to make her voice sound like a cartoon character - and died when the gas ...

CHICAGO — Some air travelers over the age of 75 will soon get a break at airport security checkpoints under a test program announced Wednesday that could allow them to keep their shoes and light jackets on and skip pat-downs.

The new guidelines from the Transportation Security Administration, which take ...

BEAUMONT — A man opened fire Wednesday outside a Texas courthouse where he was on trial in a family dispute, killing an elderly woman and wounding three other people, including a daughter he ran over with a pickup truck as he tried to escape, authorities said.

Bartholomew Granger, 41, was ...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit from conservation groups that want to block wolf hunts that have killed more than 500 of the predators across the Northern Rockies in recent months.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Friendly arguments aren't hard to find in a barbershop, but try cutting in on a hallowed symbol - that red, white and blue pole - and it may be time to hide the scissors.

Steeped in history and symbolism, those iconic cylinders spinning on storefronts across ...

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety.

The 74-22 vote stepped up pressure for quick action by House because the government's power to collect about $110 million a day in federal gasoline ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man stabbed four people at a downtown office building Wednesday afternoon and was shot by a police officer at whom he lunged with his weapon, authorities and a witness said.

Three of the victims are in critical condition, and a fourth received minor injuries, Sgt. ...

Hollywood actor George Clooney on Wednesday accused the Sudanese government of committing war crimes in a mountainous border region, which he and U.S. officials said was teetering dangerously on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Clooney, who returned this week from a trip to Sudan, told the Senate Foreign ...

BEAUMONT, Texas — A man at court with family members opened fire outside a Southeast Texas courthouse Wednesday, killing one person and wounding at least three others, police said.

The gunman also was injured in the incident outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in Beaumont, about 80 miles east of Houston, ...

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — A jury found Virginia Tech negligent on Wednesday for waiting to warn students about a gunman during a 2007 campus massacre that left 33 dead.

Jurors deliberated for 3 ½ hours before siding with the parents of two students who were killed on April 16, 2007, in ...

BROOKVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A southeastern Indiana man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting five people during an apparent drug dispute was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole after telling a judge he deeply regretted the killings.

David Ison of Glenwood, Ind., avoided a possible death sentence by ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — After nearly two weeks of testimony, the case that kick-started national conversations about gay youths and Internet privacy went on Wednesday to a jury that must decide whether a former Rutgers University student is a criminal or just a young man who was confused by ...

NOME, Alaska (AP) — Mushers always pose with their lead dogs under the burled arch in Nome after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

When Dallas Seavey won Tuesday, he posed with Diesel and Guinness, but he could have used a little more podium space.

"I had five lead ...

SEATTLE — A 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in a car while his family stopped for gas early Wednesday in Tacoma, police said. It was western Washington's third recent shooting by a child.

"It is incredible in light of the other ones," said Tacoma police ...

WASHINGTON — Actor and human rights activist George Clooney on Wednesday warned of a humanitarian crisis in the volatile border area between Sudan and South Sudan, where residents are taking refuge in the Nuba Mountains because of aerial bombardments.

Clooney, just back from a visit to the region, described how ...

CHICAGO (AP) — Hours after Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. announced it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time in more than 200 years, someone among the editing minions of free online rival Wikipedia made an irony-free note of that fact.

"It was announced that after ...

CHICAGO — Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich embraced the public spotlight one last time Wednesday, claiming on the day before he reports to prison that he always believed what he did was legal and expressing faith that an appeal of his corruption convictions will succeed.

The famously talkative Blagojevich seemed ...

JACKSON, Miss. — Despite dozens of allegations of neglect and sexual abuse over the years, the U.S. State Department has scrapped a plan to require FBI-based fingerprint searches for people hosting foreign high school exchange students, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The federal agency in recent years ...

HANOVER, N.H. — Things have only gotten messier at Dartmouth College in the weeks since a former fraternity brother went public with hazing allegations involving swimming in and swallowing vomit.

Senior Andrew Lohse brought the issue to the forefront in January, when he wrote a column in the school newspaper ...

DYERSVILLE, Iowa — Should we build it, and would they come?

Those are the questions being debated in the Iowa town where "Field of Dreams" was filmed as it considers a $38 million proposal to turn the farmland around the famous cornfield diamond into one of the nation's largest youth ...