SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed an Army National Guard lieutenant colonel as California's first independent inspector general of the California Military Department.
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S.
NEW YORK (AP) - For his first professional acting job, a 22-year-old Anthony Hopkins took a train from South Wales to Manchester. With time to kill on a rainy day, he dropped off his bags and headed to the movies, where a long queue wound outside the cinema.
ELMIRA, N.Y. (AP) - A postcard mailed nearly 70 years ago has finally arrived at the former upstate New York home of the couple who sent it.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) - Police say a Massachusetts man left his girlfriend's 2-year-old son in a car while he went shopping for Black Friday bargains, then went home with his new 51-inch flat screen television and left the toddler behind.
The stock market enjoyed some Black Friday cheer, rising sharply as shoppers braved the annual post-Thanksgiving rush. Major stock indexes closed one of their best weeks of the year.
WASHINGTON (AP) - In Egypt we trust. In frantic diplomacy, the Obama administration helped seal a cease-fire that puts heavy responsibility on Egypt's young Islamist government to ensure the end of Hamas rockets from the Gaza Strip. If Egypt delivers, the United States will have rediscovered the stalwart regional partner it has lacked since the autocratic Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in a popular revolt last year. If it fails, stability across the region will suffer. ...
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli troops fired on Gazans surging toward Israel's border fence Friday, killing one person but leaving intact the fragile two-day-old cease-fire between Hamas and the Jewish state.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The election may be over, but a new campaign is being waged in the nation's capital as lobbyists, advocates and trade groups fight to shape the government's response to the looming fiscal cliff.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Catalog shopper Kerry Falagario would be hard-pressed to tell that there's been a decrease in catalog circulation. They're coming fast and furious this time of the year: catalogs from specialty tool companies for her husband, who likes to tinker; American Eagle, Justice, Delia's and Body Central for her daughters, ages 8 and 14; and Pottery Barn or others with a focus on home decorations for herself.
Team executives and agents wandered into the Agave Sunset lounge at the resort where the general managers' meetings were held in Indian Wells, Calif. Four of the six flat-screen televisions were showing election coverage, with the other two turned to sports.
NEW YORK (AP) - The giant spire that will top 1 World Trade Center is making its way to Manhattan.
SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) - The remains of a roller coaster that was knocked off a New Jersey amusement pier by Superstorm Sandy and partially submerged in the Atlantic Ocean might be left there as a tourist attraction.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Famed Puerto Rican boxer Hector "Macho" Camacho is clinically brain dead, doctors said Thursday, but family members disagreed on whether to take him off life support and two of the fighter's aunts said later that relatives had agreed to wait two more days.
BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian rebels strengthened their hold Thursday on an oil-rich province bordering Iraq, activists said, capturing a key military base that was considered one of the last bastions for President Bashar Assad's loyalists in the strategic region.
BEIJING (AP) - For state-backed cyberspies such as a Chinese military unit implicated by a U.S. security firm in a computer crime wave, hacking foreign companies can produce high-value secrets ranging from details on oil fields to advanced manufacturing technology.
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.