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WASHINGTON — Trayvon Martin's parents went before a congressional panel and thanked those who turned their 17-year-old son's death into a rallying cry against racial profiling.

Martin's parents spoke briefly Tuesday at a Capitol Hill forum that began with a moment of silence for their son, who was shot and ...

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — More than 1,000 private abortion records from a defunct clinic have been found discarded in a recycling bin outside an elementary school near Kansas City, Kan., prompting a police investigation and outrage from people on both sides of the abortion debate.

The patient records found ...

DETROIT — A federal judge dismissed the most serious charges Tuesday against seven members of a Michigan militia who were rounded up as homegrown extremists accused of plotting war against the U.S., saying their expressed hatred of law enforcement didn't amount to conspiracy against the government.

The decision is an ...

WASHINGTON — Conservative justices on Tuesday sharply questioned whether the government can force Americans to carry health insurance, wondering in arguments over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul if Congress might next force people to buy broccoli or burial insurance.

"If the government can do that, what else can it" ...

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — Students taking college entrance exams this fall will have to submit photo IDs with their applications — a key security upgrade following a widespread cheating scandal at a number of high schools on New York's Long Island, a prosecutor and testing officials announced Tuesday.

The security ...

CONIFER, Colo. — State forest officials had conducted a prescribed burn last week in the same area where a wind-driven wildfire has destroyed at least 15 homes and left one person dead, authorities said Tuesday.

Ryan Lockwood, a spokesman for the Colorado State Forest Service, said his agency conducted the ...

NORFOLK, Va. — Milky white chemical clouds were briefly visible in much of the night sky along the Eastern seaboard on Tuesday after NASA launched a series of rockets to study the jet stream at the edge of the earth's atmosphere.

The five sounding rockets began blasting off just before ...

SANFORD, Fla. — Trayvon Martin had been suspended from school for having marijuana when the unarmed teenager was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer, a family spokesman said Monday.

Trayvon, 17, was suspended by Miami-Dade County schools because traces of marijuana were found in a plastic baggie in his ...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Organizers of an annual Easter egg hunt attended by hundreds of children have canceled this year's event, citing the behavior of aggressive parents who swarmed into the tiny park last year, determined that their children get an egg.

That hunt was over in seconds, to the ...

PENNSYLVANIA

HARRISBURG — An organization that includes atheists and agnostics is suing over a Pennsylvania House resolution that declares 2012 the "Year of the Bible," saying the measure violates the U.S. Constitution.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the measure's main sponsor, the House clerk and the House parliamentarian Monday ...

TIOGA, N.D. — Along the wide-open expanses and rolling prairie of western North Dakota surrounding the state's booming oil patch, all sorts of bizarre litter can be found clogging the once-picturesque roadside: derelict hard hats, single boots, buckets, pallets, pieces of machinery, shredded semi tires, oily clothing, cigarette butts.

The ...

SAN FRANCISCO — A 35-year-old man was booked on five counts of murder after the bodies of three women and two men were found at a gruesome crime scene in a San Francisco home.

The aftermath of the killings was so tangled that police couldn't initially determine whether they were dealing with ...

PHILADELPHIA — A landmark sex-abuse trial opening Monday in Philadelphia may unveil the operations of a Roman Catholic archdiocese and detail how children's complaints were buried for decades in secret archives next to a soaring cathedral as the priests they named went unpunished.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first ...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As Talma Isabell coped with the crushing heartache of losing her daughter and five grandchildren in a house fire that killed nine people in all, several dozen people surrounded the woman and her family at church Sunday with their arms raised and their heads bowed in ...

NEW YORK

Training on Everest climb helps man wins memory contest

NEW YORK | A Florida man who trained for a national memory competition by memorizing a randomly shuffled deck of cards as he climbed Mount Everest won the mental bout Saturday and broke a U.S. record.

Nelson Dellis, 28, ...

I have often asked myself, and heard it asked by others, why so many wealthy people support liberal causes. (This is the flip side of the usual election-year frustration of the liberals with the working classes' clinging to their guns and religion.) In this presidential campaign season, as in 2008, ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a heart transplant Saturday and is recovering at a Virginia hospital, his office said.

An aide to Cheney disclosed that the 71-year-old, who has had a long history of cardiovascular trouble including numerous heart attacks, had been waiting for a transplant ...

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say a Florida man is charged with threatening the police chief who had been overseeing the investigation into the shooting death of an unarmed black teen by a neighborhood watch captain.

The Seminole County Sheriff's Office says John Carnduff Stewart of Melbourne Beach emailed Sanford ...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia mayor says no smoke detector was working when a fire erupted inside a home, killing six children and two adults in what he says is the city's deadliest fire in six decades.

Charleston Mayor Danny Jones tells the Associated Press only one smoke ...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says Tim Tebow was treated "shabbily" by the Denver Broncos when they traded him to the New York Jets for Peyton Manning.

Robertson also said that if Manning suffered a recurrence of the neck injury that sidelined him for a full season, ...