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The archdioceses of New York, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis and the University of Notre Dame filed lawsuits over President Obama's contraception mandate Monday, along with dozens of other Catholic dioceses, schools and charities in a major legal challenge to a key part of Mr. Obama's health care overhaul law.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to take up a Boston University student's constitutional challenge of a $675,000 penalty for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them on the Internet.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Joel Tenenbaum of Providence, R.I., who ...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The June child-sex-abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky will not be delayed, a judge ruled Monday.

The one-sentence order by Judge John Cleland did not explain his reasons, but it means the case very likely will begin with jury selection inside ...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Golden Gate Bridge was heralded as an engineering marvel when it opened in 1937. It was the world's longest suspension span and had been built across a strait that critics said was too treacherous to be bridged.

But as the iconic span approaches its 75th anniversary over ...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — As many as 300 inmates, some of them armed with makeshift weapons such as broomsticks, rioted at a privately run prison for illegal immigrants, beating a guard to death and injuring 19 people, a sheriff said Monday.

More than two dozen officers were held hostage at ...

CHICAGO — Demonstrators launched another round of protests Monday in the final hours of the NATO summit, targeting Boeing headquarters and a suburban community that could become the site of a detention facility to hold illegal immigrants.

On the second and last day of the international meeting, the demonstrations were ...

WACO, Texas — Police officers suddenly rushed the young man wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a baseball cap as he walked out of a motel toward an idling cab near a Texas Army post.

They ordered him to lie face down, took off his backpack and then questioned him in ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate was sentenced Monday to just 30 days in jail — a punishment that disappointed some activists but came as a relief to others who feared he would be made a scapegoat ...

WASHINGTON — More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.

There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics ...

CHICAGO — New lung-cancer screening guidelines from three medical groups recommend annual scans but only for an older group of current or former heavy smokers.

The advice applies only to those aged 55 to 74. The risks of screening younger or older smokers or nonsmokers outweigh any benefits, according to ...

NEW YORK — It was on the streets of her Harlem neighborhood in the 1940s that teenager Althea Gibson began working on the tennis skills that would take her all the way to winning Wimbledon.

But according to the 1940 census, the trailblazing athlete didn't even exist.

There's no record ...

JEFFERSON CITY — The cost of 30 manhole covers that got sucked away: $5,800. A new concession stand at the destroyed high school: $228,600. Shelter and care for more than 1,300 homeless pets: $372,000.

The tornado that tore through Joplin a year ago already ranks as the deadliest twister in ...

MAINE

WATERVILLE — A handful of protesters briefly interrupted a Maine college graduation speech by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair calling for world unity.

Mr. Blair addressed more than 400 Colby College graduates and their guests Sunday morning at the school's 191st commencement in Waterville.

Police say the protesters ...

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

As grateful as I am for President Obama's profound, nonsensical meditations on the meaning of "hope," I am even more grateful that The One has come to make the world fair, and to tell us what fairness really means.

Mr. Obama has spent a lot of his time lately ...

CHICAGO (AP) — A diverse crowd of protesters began streaming into a downtown Chicago park Sunday for one of the city's largest demonstrations in years — a march to the lakeside convention center hosting a historic NATO summit.

Peace activists joined with war veterans and people more focused on the ...

CHICAGO (AP) — Prosecutors charged two more activists Sunday with crimes tied to the two-day NATO summit, accusing one of saying he wanted to blow up a downtown Chicago bridge and a second with seeking to build pipe bombs.

The Cook County state's attorney's office charged Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of ...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Tropical Storm Alberto weakened slightly off the South Carolina coast on Sunday, canceling tourist cruises, producing showers along the coast and serving as a reminder that the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season is just around the corner.

The first storm of the season, which officially begins June ...

NEW YORK (AP) — A blind Chinese legal activist who escaped house arrest and endured a nearly monthlong diplomatic tussle and a hurried daylong flight paused ever so briefly upon his arrival in New York before taking up a familiar fight.

Taken from a hospital in his homeland and put on a ...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — For Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it was quite a week — from birthday to IPO to "I do."

A day after the historic Facebook stock offering, Mr. Zuckerberg on Saturday wed 27-year-old Priscilla Chan, his girlfriend of nearly a decade, according to a guest ...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Marissa Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her. Nobody got hurt, but this month a northeast Florida judge was bound by state law to ...