SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap steadily higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the increasingly important mobile device market.
Two major sponsors, Oakley and Nike, distanced themselves from Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Monday after the South African sports star was charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Somebody hacked Burger King's Twitter account on Monday, posting obscene messages and changing its profile picture to a McDonald's logo.
Waiting in line for the bus, a Pennsylvania kindergartener tells her pals she's going to shoot them with a Hello Kitty toy that makes soap bubbles. In Maryland, a 6-year-old boy pretends his fingers are a gun during a playground game of cops and robbers. In Massachusetts, a 5-year-old boy attending an after-school program makes a gun out of Legos and points it at other students while "simulating the sound of gunfire," as one school official put it.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - Oscar Pistorius told a packed courtroom Tuesday that he shot his girlfriend to death by mistake, thinking she was a robber. The prosecutor called it premeditated murder.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The CIA thrillers "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Southern California woman who grew up knowing little of her father - a heroic casualty of World War II - is now the proud owner of his long-lost battle medals, including a Silver Star and Purple Heart.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday that he's heading to California in an effort to get West Coast businesses to consider setting up shop in Iowa.
NEW YORK (AP) - Letters from John Lennon's killer detailing his obsession with the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" to the police officer who arrested him went on sale Monday through a Los Angeles auction house.
CARSON, Calif. (AP) - Drivers near Southern California's notorious Interstate 405 had reason to tone down their road rage when it was revealed the thing stopping traffic was a baby seal on city streets several miles from the ocean.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard says an Oregon man injured in a high-speed crash on the San Francisco Bay between a ferryboat and a motorboat has died.
GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) - His city's best fishing days are long past it, but lifelong Gloucester resident Ron Gilson still sees what once was when he drives past what remains.
WASHINGTON (AP) - With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.
HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) - Mindy McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, died Sunday in Arkansas in an apparent suicide. She was 37.
PALM CITY, Fla. (AP) - Michelle Obama jokingly says a mid-life crisis is what inspired her new haircut with bangs.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Immigration officials briefly detained the Palestinian director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "5 Broken Cameras" on his way into town for Sunday's Academy Awards.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Federal officials on Wednesday blamed unsafe working conditions and poor training for the death of a young Veterans Affairs medical center researcher in San Francisco who died after handling bacteria that causes meningitis.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Lawyers for an Oregon hunter who killed a man he mistook for a bear say they concede their client shot the Marine reservist, but they maintain the death in a field near Silver Falls State Park was an accident.
GROSSE POINTE SHORES, Mich. (AP) - Marguerite Joseph can be forgiven for lying about her age on Facebook.
NEW YORK (AP) - A World Trade Center developer asked a judge Wednesday to disqualify American Airlines from using an "act of war" defense to dodge property liability resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., holding back tears, entered a guilty plea Wednesday in federal court to criminal charges that he engaged in a scheme to spend $750,000 in campaign funds on personal items. He faces 46 to 57 months in prison, and a fine of $10,000 to $100,000, under a plea deal with prosecutors.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if automatic government spending cuts kick in on March 1 he may have to shorten the workweek for the "vast majority" of the Defense Department's 800,000 civilian workers.
CHICAGO (AP) - Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3-D glasses can do all that and more.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the growing mobile market.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Confidence among U.S. homebuilders slipped this month from the 6½ year high it reached in January, with many builders reporting less traffic by prospective customers before the critical spring home-buying season.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The mayor of Kansas City says search crews have found a body in the rubble of a Kansas City restaurant destroyed by an explosion.
NEW YORK (AP) - The scene: Tehran's Mehrabad airport, January 1980. Six U.S. diplomats, disguised as a fake sci-fi film crew, are about to fly to freedom with their CIA escorts. But suddenly there's a moment of panic in what had been a smooth trip through the airport.
WASHINGTON (AP) - As public evidence mounts that the Chinese military is responsible for stealing massive amounts of U.S. government data and corporate trade secrets, the Obama administration is eyeing fines and other trade actions it may take against Beijing or any other country guilty of cyberespionage.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A gas explosion that sparked a massive, block-engulfing blaze in an upscale Kansas City shopping district injured 14 people, a city official said Tuesday evening, adding it is believed that an accident by a utility contractor may have caused the blast.