High winds rip through Kansas City, damage homes

Hurricane-force winds, hail and heavy rain moving through Missouri have left hundreds of Kansas City-area homes and businesses damaged, and some destroyed.
Authorities say the worst damage is in the city's northern and eastern suburbs, where power was knocked out to thousands of customers. Firefighters say one Gladstone home was blown off its foundation.
Fire officials say several people were injured.
An 18-wheeler was blown over on Interstate 29 in Riverside, near five empty train cars that were toppled. The National Weather Service says winds reached 80 miles per hour in the Kansas City area.
Tornado warnings were posted in southwest Missouri overnight. The town of Ava is reporting several buildings are damaged or destroyed, including a school. Ozark schools are closed because of a power outage.
Other states also have been hit. The National Weather Service says a tornado likely touched down Friday morning in central Arkansas. There were injuries and damage reported, but no further details were available.
At least two tornadoes and large hail was reported in Oklahoma late Thursday, though no injuries or significant damage was reported there.

Parents in suspected kidnapping plead for son

Growing more anxious with each passing day, the parents of a suspected kidnap victim in Florida are increasing the reward for their son's return from $10,000 to $250,000.
"We want him back. We love him. We miss him," Thomas Wiles said of his son, weeping.
Robert Wiles, 26, of Lakeland, Florida, disappeared April 1. He was last seen at National Flight Services at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport, where he worked for his family's flight maintenance company as a business development manager.
Two days later, his father received a ransom note demanding money. The FBI won't say how much, nor will it release the name on the note because it doesn't want to spark copycats. The bureau only describes the name as unique and specific.
"It threatened Robert with harm if the terms were not complied with exactly as they say," said Thomas Wiles. "I think when I first looked at it, I felt it wasn't for real, but then subsequently I realized it was for real, and I'd best comply with the terms."

Economy still sputtering

The nation's economy continued its sluggish growth in the first quarter, according to a government report Wednesday that showed a slightly better-than-expected gain in economic activity.
Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the economy, rose at an annual rate of 0.6% in the first three months of the year, when adjusted for inflation. That matched the rise achieved in the fourth quarter as well as in the year-earlier period.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a 0.5% gain for the first quarter.
There has been a growing belief among many economists that the economy is in a recession, having fallen into it either late last year or during the course of the first quarter. Employers cut 232,000 jobs in the first three months of 2008 and consumers pulled back on spending in the face of higher prices.
The most common definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters in which GDP is negative, although the official designation of an economic downturn is based on broader measures as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The GDP reading was helped by a strong build in business inventories, following a deep cut in the fourth quarter. It was also helped by a smaller trade gap as a weaker dollar made U.S. exports more competitive elsewhere in the world. A pickup in government spending, particularly a 6% rise in defense spending by the federal government, also boosted GDP.

Bush calls out Congress on economy

President Bush addressed Americans' anxiety about the effects that the U.S. economic downturn has taken on their wallets Tuesday, calling on Congress to pass legislation that will help reduce energy and food costs, keep people in their homes, and make student loans more available.
Speaking at a White House Rose Garden news conference, Bush said Congress has not passed legislation that he proposed to help ease the effects of the economic slump.
"I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them," said Bush.
Bush said Congress failed to pass bills that expand safe oil exploration and build new refineries that would help to reduce energy prices. The president said his proposal to expand oil production at home would result in about a 20% increase of crude oil production and it would likely mean lower gas prices.
He added that the farm bill that Congress is considering is "bloated," and would do little to reduce the cost of food.
"The bill Congress is now considering would fail to eliminate subsidy payments to multimillionaire farmers," said Bush. "America's farm economy is thriving ... and this is the right time to reform our nation's farm policies."
The president also called out Congress for failing to pass his proposed legislation to help modernize the home loan industry through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae reforms, and by allowing state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance subprime loans.
Lastly, the president said lawmakers need to pass a bill that would temporarily give the federal government greater authority to buy federal student loans.
"This authority will safeguard student loans without permanently expanding the government's role in their financing," Bush said.
Bush said Americans are looking for politicians to come together to work on these issues in a bipartisan manner.
"I don't think it's just too much to ask even in an election year," he added.

Oil roars to new high near $120

Oil prices hit an all-time high near $120 a barrel Monday after a weekend refinery strike closed a pipeline system that delivers a third of Britain's North Sea oil to refineries in the U.K.
The shutdown comes amid supply outages in Nigeria that have helped to support oil against a strengthening dollar.
In the U.S., retail gasoline also hit a record for the 13th straight time. The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded rose to $3.603, up four-tenths of a cent from the previous day, according to auto organization AAA.
"We've got a confluence of a number of events that have really disrupted crude oil supply," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "That's what's driving oil to a new record even though the U.S. dollar actually strengthened a bit."
Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose to a record $119.93 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract eased back to $119.33 a barrel by midafternoon in Singapore, up 81 cents from Friday's close of $118.52.
BP PLC (BP) on Sunday shut down the Forties Pipeline System that carries more than 700,000 barrels of oil a day to the U.K. because of a 48-hour walkout by employees at a refinery in central Scotland.
Workers walked out of the Grangemouth refinery vowing not to give ground in their dispute with refinery owner Ineos over plans to close a generous pension scheme to new employees. Ineos chief executive Tom Crotty said it could take a week for the plant to return to production once the strike ends on Tuesday. BP said its pipeline could be up and running within 24 hours.

FHM names world's sexiest woman

Megan Fox is the sexiest woman in the world -- at least according to FHM magazine. The "Transformers" co-star tops FHM's annual 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll of FHM readers.
The 21-year-old model-actress beat out the likes of Angelina Jolie (No. 12), Rihanna (No. 14), Kim Kardashian (No. 17), Paris Hilton (No. 77) and last year's champion, Jessica Alba (No. 3).
Fox debuted on the annual list in 2006 at No. 68 and ranked at No. 65 in 2007. Joining her in the top 10 this year are -- in descending order -- Jessica Biel, Alba, Elisha Cuthbert, Scarlett Johansson, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Hilary Duff, Tricia Helfer, Blake Lively and Kate Beckinsale. Britney Spears came in at No. 100.
The women from MTV's "The Hills" duke it out on the list with Heidi Montag (No. 44) beating out Audrina Patridge (No. 80) and Lauren Conrad (No. 95).
Current "Dancing with the Stars" contestant Shannon Elizabeth (No. 46) returned to the ranking after being absent last year, joining professional dancers Cheryl Burke (No. 40) and Karina Smirnoff (No. 78).
FHM said nearly 9 million votes were cast for the 14th edition of the annual poll.

Clinton says she leads in popular vote

Sen. Hillary Clinton is arguing that she is ahead of rival Sen. Barack Obama when it comes to the popular vote. "I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anyone else," Clinton said Wednesday, one day after her decisive win in Pennsylvania.
Not so fast, says Obama's campaign. Clinton's count includes her wins in Michigan and Florida, but the Democratic presidential candidates agreed not to campaign in those states because they violated party rules by scheduling their contests too early.
Obama didn't even have his name on the Michigan ballot, so he received no votes from that contest.
"We think that, in the end, if we end up having won twice as many states and having the most votes, then we should be the nominee," Obama said.
If Michigan and Florida are counted, Clinton is ahead by 100,000 votes -- 15.1 million to Obama's 15 million. Without those states, Obama has a 500,000 vote lead, 14.4 million to 13.9 million.
Clinton says she has received more votes than any Democratic candidate in history.
"It's a very close race, but if you count, as I count, the 2.3 million people who voted in Michigan and Florida, then we are going to build on that," the New York senator said.
Obama's campaign manager said he doesn't expect the Illinois senator to lose his lead by June 3, the date of the last contest.
But Obama is facing questions about why he can't just bring the race to an end.
"You know the way we're going to close the deal is by winning. And right now we're winning. And what we'll do is keep on campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina and Oregon and these other states," he said.

Exit polls show sharp divide among Democrats

Election officials in Pennsylvania's largest cities reported solid but not record-breaking turnout for the state's Democratic primary after a bruising seven-week campaign.
Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama in published polls going into the primary, the biggest remaining contest of the Democratic presidential race. Analysts had said Obama would need to rack up a wide margin with strong turnout in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties to pull ahead.
CNN projected a Clinton victory. With about a quarter of precincts reporting Tuesday night, she was leading Barack Obama 54-46 percent.
Exit polls indicated that Philadelphia and its suburbs made up more than 30 percent of the vote, and those boxes were tilted heavily toward Obama. But Clinton supporters turned out heavily in Pittsburgh and the counties of western Pennsylvania, and she was racking up similarly lopsided margins in the state's industrial northeast, those surveys found.

Pennsylvania voters get say in key primary

The fate of the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination may be on the line Tuesday as voters head to the polls in Pennsylvania's primary.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. ET and will close at 8 p.m. in the state, which has 158 delegates at stake.
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both would love to come out of Pennsylvania with a win, but most political analysts agree that a victory is crucial for Clinton.
Obama leads in the delegate count, the popular vote and the number of states won so far this primary season. If Clinton is victorious, it would allow her to make a small dent in Obama's lead, and more.
"If she wins Pennsylvania by a hefty margin, she can prove she can win the traditional Democratic constituencies needed to win the election, mostly white working-class voters," said Gloria Borger, a CNN senior political analyst.
Many Clinton supporters agree with that observation.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, a top Clinton surrogate, said the former first lady has to carry the state impressively.
"Well, she has to. That's all there is to it," Murtha said.

DNA testing to determine parents, sex abuse

More than 400 children taken from a polygamous sect's ranch will undergo DNA testing this week, an attempt to determine who their parents are and if any sexual abuse took place.
Officials plan to begin taking DNA samples Monday at the coliseum in San Angelo where the children are being housed, but may need three or four days to complete the job.
Judge Barbara Walther ordered the tests at the request of state officials, who have complained that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have continually changed their names, possibly lied about their ages and sometimes had difficulty naming their relatives.
The process will likely take about half an hour per sample because of the paperwork and care needed to avoid contamination, said Darrell Azar, a spokesman for Child Protective Services.

S. Korea, U.S. reach beef deal

Hours before a U.S.-South Korean summit, the two nations have reached an agreement that could clear the way for South Korea to resume imports of U.S. beef, a South Korean news agency reported Friday.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is scheduled to visit. President Bush in Washington.
Negotiators on both sides have "agreed to rewrite import sanitation rules for U.S. beef," according to the Yonhap news agency. The parties were fine-tuning details and plan to make a formal statement about 6 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), a government spokesman told CNN.
Officials were "extremely hopeful" that negotiations would yield an agreement, senior White House aide, Dennis Wilder said on Thursday.
South Korea banned U.S. beef imports in 2003 amid concerns over a case of mad cow disease in the United States, closing what was then the third-largest market for U.S. beef exporters.
South Korea resumed imports on a limited scale in April 2007 allowing the United States to ship boneless beef from young animals but it halted them again in October 2007.
The closure of the South Korean market has cost the beef exporters in the United States $3.5 billion to $4 billion, said Jim Herlihy, vice president for information services at the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Air marshal training 'a national disgrace'

Their mission is to protect airline passengers from acts of terror on U.S. flights. But in a special investigation, former and current air marshals told CNN that the number of marshals assigned to police flights is so low that the federal agency overseeing them has drastically lowered its firearms and psychological testing standards just so it can qualify new hires.
More than a dozen current and former marshals told CNN that so many federal air marshals have resigned and are not being replaced that airport screeners are being employed to fill the dwindling ranks.
But the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, says that's not true and the rate of those leaving has remained at 6.5 percent a year since 2001.
A former federal air marshal and weapons trainer who left the agency in 2006 after four years of service said the situation was so bad that managers at his office fudged the numbers by assigning marshals to short, no-risk flights.
The former marshal said that was done to make it appear that the percentage of manned flights was higher than it really was.
"I think it's a national disgrace,'' said the former marshal, who asked not to be identified because he still works in law enforcement.

Three killed in Colorado wildfires

Firefighters were hoping rain and snow Wednesday would help them quell blazes that scorched thousands of acres, forced hundreds of residents to evacuate and left three people dead.
Winds gusted up to 50 mph along the Rocky Mountain Front Range and eastern plains on Tuesday, fanning flames that quickly spread across 7,100 acres -- or 11 square miles -- of grassland near Ordway. Authorities told all 1,200 residents to leave.
On Wednesday morning, wind was blowing at less than 10 mph at Pueblo, about 50 miles west of Ordway, the National Weather Service said.
By late Tuesday, firefighters had contained 50 percent of the blaze, which damaged at least 20 buildings, four within town limits, fire information officer Chris Sorensen said.
Officials said two people died in the fire, though they didn't immediately release details.
A firefighting plane crashed near Fort Carson, killing the pilot, who was battling a blaze that scorched 9,000 acres about 14 square miles and forced the evacuation of people living near the base.

Students want chance to defend themselvesStory Highlights

"Would you rather just sit there and cower underneath a desk when someone executes you or would you rather have a chance to defend your life? That's what it really boils down to."
Michael Flitcraft, a 23-year-old sophomore at the University of Cincinnati, has become a leading advocate for college students to carry weapons on campus. He's an organizer for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a grass-roots organization that was formed after last year's Virginia Tech massacre that left 32 college students and professors dead.
The group boasts more than 25,000 members.
Standing on the Cincinnati campus, Flitcraft calmly explained he is licensed to carry a weapon in Ohio. He wants to carry his gun on campus to defend himself from potential killers, but by law he can't.
"To me it makes no sense that I can defend myself legally over there," he said, pointing to the city streets. "But I am a felon if I step on the grass over here."
The issue of guns on campuses has intensified over the last year in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings and picked up again after the more recent killings at Northern Illinois University. Lawmakers in at least nine states are considering legislation to allow guns on campus. Other states have struck down legislation.
Utah is the only state to allow weapons at all public universities. Colorado allows students at universities to carry weapons, except the main university campus in Boulder. In Virginia, Blue Ridge Community College allows students with a proper concealed-weapons permit to be armed.

Obama mocks Clinton 'throwing back a shot and a beer'

Barack Obama furthered his recent criticisms of Hillary Clinton Monday by mocking the fact that she recently "threw back a shot and a beer" in front of the media.
After first saying too many candidates are only giving voters "rhetoric," the Illinois senator said, "They'll promise you anything. They'll even give you a long list of proposals. They'll even come around with TV crews in tow and throw back a shot and a beer."
The shot came Saturday at Bronko’s Restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana. With the national media in tow, Clinton made a stop there to drink a beer and speak with voters. After ordering her beer the bartender asked, “You want a shot with that Hillary?” After some deliberation, Clinton settled on a shot of Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey.
But Obama is not totally in the clear himself when it comes to photo-ops at bars. The White House hopeful nursed a beer in front of cameras with Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey at a sports bar during his Pennsylvania bus tour on March 28. He has since mentioned that moment of drinking in front of audiences on the trail in the Keystone State.

More pain for travelers - American grounds 595 flights

The chaos facing air travelers continued Friday as American Airlines grounded 595 more flights, or 25% of its schedule, and stranded tens of thousands of passengers.
Friday marked the fourth straight day of trouble for American - the nation's largest airline - which has canceled nearly 2,500 flights affecting some 300,000 passengers.
Overall, U.S. carriers have shut down about 3,700 flights since late March in response to failed Federal Aviation Administration safety inspections of MD-80 airplanes. The FAA is conducting industrywide inspections of all jets that will continue through the end of June.
The canceled flights have reduced air travel to a crawl for many passengers. They come at a difficult time in air travel: Carriers are being hammered by ever-higher fuel costs and passengers are facing rising tickets prices and delays.
"It's a very troubled time for the industry," said Air Travelers Association president David Stempler. "It leaves passengers in a very unsettled state."
What American customers can do
American on Friday was asking customers booked on MD-80 flights to check their flight status on the airline's Web site, AA.com. Filers can also call the airline's standard reservation telephone number, 800-433-7300.
The company said customers whose flights were canceled can apply for a full refund or credit toward another ticket.
Any flyer booked on board a MD-80 aircraft between April 8 and 13 can re-book for free as long as they fly by April 17, even if the flight has not been canceled, according to the airlines. American is allowing only one ticket change.
American also urges customers who were forced to stay overnight due to a cancellation to request compensation by filling out an email form.
The airline is leaving "no stone unturned" to find seats for bumped passengers, said American Airlines spokesman Roger Frizzell. American will try to seat bumped passengers in the empty seats of existing flights, and even try to seat customers on competitors' flights if none are available, he said.
Bumped passengers will likely not supersede booked passengers on flights that are still scheduled to fly, he added.
The airline expects to have 60% of its MD-80 flights in operation by the end of Friday, according to Frizzell. "By end-of-day Saturday, our hopes are that our airline will be back to normal," he said.
Stempler said he recommends passengers reschedule their flights - for another time or on another airline. He urged passengers to try to get on direct flights. "You don't want to get stranded at an intermediary city," he said.
More than 31% of U.S. commercial flights were delayed, canceled or diverted in February, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. That's a jump from 2007, when 26% of flights were delayed.
Last year was the worst on record for airline delays since the government began collecting that data in 1995.

American Airlines cancels 900 more flights

American Airlines canceled more than 900 flights Thursday as it continues to perform safety inspections on certain jets. It's the third consecutive day of cancellations for American Airlines, which has apologized to customers and offered to make amends with refunds, vouchers, and compensation for overnight stays.
American also canceled several hundred flights for the same reason about two weeks ago.
Roger Frizzell, an airline spokesman, said the inspections involve technical compliance as opposed to flight safety.

American expects to cancel more flights

American Airlines expected to cancel more flights Wednesday and perhaps beyond as it tried for a second time to comply with federal rules about wiring on about 300 of its planes.
Airline officials said they canceled about 500 flights Tuesday but didn't know how many would be scrubbed Wednesday. It depended on how quickly the airline could inspect and, if necessary, rework the wiring in its MD-80 aircraft.
American operates about 2,300 daily flights, and more than one-third use MD-80s, most commonly on midrange flights from hub airports in Dallas and Chicago.
It was American's second bout with mass cancellations in less than two weeks for failing to meet the same wiring rules set by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is cracking down on airlines after admitting its inspectors were too lax last year with Southwest Airlines Co.
Since the FAA began looking more closely at airlines' compliance with safety directives, there have been cancellations at Southwest, Delta Air Lines Inc. and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines. The agency levied a $10.2 million civil penalty against Southwest for using planes that had missed inspections for cracks in the fuselage.
Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said an FAA inspector checked several MD-80s Monday and found that some of the wiring work performed two weeks ago didn't meet FAA standards. At issue: the spacing and direction of cords used to secure bundles of wires in the planes' auxiliary hydraulic systems.

Petraeus: Return to 'pre-surge' troop levels, then wait

Iraq is making "fragile but reversible" progress on security, but it's too early to set dates to pull out all U.S. troops, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq told Congress on Tuesday.
Gen. David Petraeus said the number of troops should return to "pre-surge" levels this summer, but the military should gauge conditions before making further decisions.
After the 20,000 troops sent during last year's surge are withdrawn, by July, the military should wait 45 days before deciding on more reductions, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable," he said. "However, it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still fragile security gains our troopers have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve."
There has been "significant but uneven progress," Petraeus said, adding that recent violence shows the progress is "fragile but reversible."
"The situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain," he said.
Petraeus said the surge of U.S. troops last year and the incorporation of Iraqi citizens' security groups have yielded results. Both efforts have helped reduce "the areas where al Qaeda enjoys support."
"Iraq has also conducted a surge, adding well over 100,000 additional soldiers and police to the ranks of its security forces in 2007 and slowly increasing its capability to deploy and employ these forces," Petraeus said.
Recent military operations in the southern city of Basra demonstrate that Iraqi forces can do things today that would have been impossible a year ago, the general said.

Race tightens in Pennsylvania

The Democratic presidential race is tightening in the key state of Pennsylvania, according to a new CNN analysis of recent polls there.
In the latest CNN "poll of polls," Hillary Clinton now holds a 7 point lead over Obama, 49 percent to 42 percent. Nine percent remain unsure of their vote.
That gap is 4 points narrower than a similar CNN poll of polls conducted Friday. In that average, Clinton held an 11 point lead, 51 percent to 40 percent.
The most recent poll of polls included recent surveys from the American Research Group, Muhlenberg College, and Quinnipiac University.
A decisive win in Pennsylvania's April 22 primary vote is seen as crucial for Clinton as she seeks to finish the primary season with enough momementum to convince the party's undecided superdelegates to give her the nomination.

80,000 job losses, unemployment spikes

U.S. employers slashed jobs for the third straight month in March and unemployment rose to a nearly three-year high, offering the latest signs that the economy has fallen into a recession.
The Labor Department's much anticipated report showed a net loss of 80,000 jobs last month. That marks the third straight month that jobs have fallen - the longest period of decline since early 2003.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast that payrolls would fall by 50,000 in the latest reading.
The new report also pegged job losses in January and February at 76,000 each month.
Those revisions added an additional 67,000 job losses to previous readings. The Labor Department now estimates that the economy has shed 232,000 jobs in the first three months of this year.
"The revisions are the real surprise in the report," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wachovia. "If we had known it was anything like that, there would not have been any debate going on about whether we were in a recession. It's pretty stark."
The job losses were widespread, with the battered construction sector losing 51,000 jobs and manufacturing employment falling by 48,000. But there were also losses in key service sector industries. Retail employment dropped by 12,000 jobs, and business and professional service employers cut staff by 35,000.
The unemployment rate jumped to 5.1% from 4.8% in February. The new reading is the highest level since May 2005. Economists had forecast that unemployment would rise to 5%.
The unemployment rate is based on a separate survey of households, rather than the employer survey that produces the closely watched payroll number.

ATA Airlines files for bankruptcy

ATA Airlines has ceased all flights as it files for bankruptcy, apologizing to its customers for the airline's "sudden shutdown," according to a company statement released Thursday.
The low-cost, charter airline based in Indianapolis, Indiana, filed for Chapter 11 status on Wednesday as a result of financial problems "following the loss of a key contract for our military charter business," ATA said.
"Unfortunately, we were not in a position to provide our customers or others with advance notice," ATA said.
The airline, founded in 1973, served major business centers - including Chicago, Dallas and Oakland - and popular vacation spots throughout the United States, including Hawaii, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. The airline also operated as a leading carrier for the U.S. military.

Judge admits mistake in kicking whites out of court

An Atlanta, Georgia, judge who ordered white lawyers out of his courtroom so he could lecture African-American defendants called that decision a "mistake" Tuesday night.
"In retrospect, it was a mistake," Judge Marvin Arrington told CNN. "Because my sheriff said to me, 'Judge, that message should be given to everybody' 'Don't violate the law, make something out of yourself, go to school, find a role model, somebody that will help you advance your life.'"
Arrington, who is African-American, is a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes the city of Atlanta.
He said he got fed up seeing a parade of young black defendants shuffle into his courtroom and decided to address them one day last week -- out of the earshot of white lawyers.
"I came out and saw the defendants, and it was about 99.9 percent Afro-Americans," Arrington told CNN affiliate WSB-TV of Atlanta, "and at some point in time, I excused some lawyers most of them white and said to the young people in here, 'What in the world are you doing with your lives?'"
The judge thought his message would make a greater impact if he delivered it to a black-only audience, he said.

One man's story: When an autistic child grows up

When meeting Jeff Donohoo, it's not immediately apparent he is a 36-year-old man living with autism. In fact, unless you get him talking about the Atlanta Braves one of his true passions in life he is a very quiet person.
Early on, his younger brothers and sister didn't know, either.
"Since they grew up with him, they just knew Jeff was Jeff," said Nancy Donohoo, his mother. "They didn't think of him as weird or anything."
But when friends started to notice Donohoo was different, Nancy Donohoo was quick to explain to a group of 10-year-olds why.
"Jeff has a social problem, not a mental problem," she explained. "He's very smart. He reads encyclopedias ... he just doesn't know how to talk to people."
From then on, friends who visited the house always made an effort to interact with Donohoo, through a high-five or a simple "hello."
Today, it's unlikely Donohoo will be the first to say hello in a group setting, but interacting with people is easier for him than it once was.
Questioned about his childhood, his most elaborate response is "yeah" or "no." But when the topic is the Braves, it's hard to get him to stop talking about the latest statistics or his favorite player, Mark Teixeira.
Asked how long he's been a Braves fan, there was little hesitation: "All my life."
He's come a long way since he was a child. Then, just teaching Donohoo to talk was a challenge in itself, Nancy Donohoo said. "There was no eye contact, so I would hold his face in front of me, and say the word I wanted him to say."
Donohoo entered the first grade as a special education student. It was the first year special education was offered in his family's hometown of Florence, Alabama. He carried on with special education until the sixth grade, when he was mainstreamed, or put in classes with children without disabilities.

Dad killed kids in hotel, then called front desk

A man killed his three young children at a downtown hotel room, then called the front desk to report their deaths Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
Police officers who responded to the 10th-floor room at the Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards found the three children's bodies and Mark Castillo, 41, with minor cuts that appeared to have been self-inflicted, police spokesman Sterling Clifford said.
"Why he brought them here to do this is something we don't know yet," Clifford said.
Police identified the children as Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 2.
Castillo was taken to a hospital for treatment and was being questioned by investigators, the spokesman said.
Clifford said investigators had not determined how the children died, but said they hadn't been shot or stabbed.
The children's mother was notified, Clifford said. It wasn't clear who had legal custody of the children, he said.
An online search of Maryland court records showed Mark and Amy Castillo of Silver Spring, which is about 35 miles south of Baltimore, were involved in a child custody dispute.
A telephone call Sunday night by The Associated Press to a number listed for Amy W. Castillo in Silver Spring was answered by a voice mail message that said the caller had reached the home of Amy Castillo and Anthony, Austin and Athena.

College student missing almost two months

The more the snow melts, the more the mystery deepens: What happened to Nicholas Garza? The disappearance of the 19-year-old Middlebury College freshman missing since he walked out of a dormitory February 5 continues to puzzle searchers, with no trace of him on campus, no suggestion he left and no indication of foul play.
On Thursday, for the first time in more than a month, a large-scale search was conducted using dozens of Vermont State Police members and search experts, but it turned up nothing.
The hope had been that the gradual disappearance of the snow pack could end the uncertainty. Tom Scanlon, a police spokesman, said searchers would try again in two weeks.
Members of the Vermont State Police's search-and-rescue team, with help from the Colchester Technical Rescue Squad and New England K-9 Search and Rescue, scoured the campus for Garza's body or clues to his disappearance.
Garza was last seen leaving Stewart Hall at about 11:05 p.m., headed for his dormitory, about 500 yards away.
When friends couldn't find him the next day, they notified campus security, but his mother didn't file a missing persons report until five days later because friends thought Garza might have left campus to go to a cabin that was out of cell phone range.
Searches of the 350-acre campus have yielded no clues as to what happened to him. The last large-scale search ended February 23, though there have been spot searches since then. All 109 buildings on campus have been searched twice, as have roofs.
On Thursday, searchers used long Fiberglas poles, search dogs and global positioning systems to keep track of the areas covered. They looked near Otter Creek and in the north end of campus, where students were on spring break.
The poles were used to poke holes in the snow, in the hope that the holes would lead to a scent that the dogs could respond to, said Scanlon, who called it a recovery operation, not a rescue.
Snow depth has been a major concern throughout the investigation, as New England has endured one of the snowiest winters on record.
Garza's mother, Natalie Garza, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who has maintained a constant vigil here, was not talking to reporters Thursday, hoping to keep the focus on the search, according to Middlebury College spokesman Stephen Diehl.
Foul play is not suspected, police said. A $20,000 reward has been offered for information leading to Garza's return.
"There's always been the hope for Nick's safe return," said college spokesman Sarah Ray. "It's just a sad situation and people continue to deal with it as best they can."

Dozens killed as Iraq fighting rages

Forty-two people were killed Thursday in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry said, the latest casualties in three days of clashes between militias and Iraqi security forces.
Iraq's offensive against what it characterizes as "outlaws" of hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia began Tuesday in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has been overseeing the operation in southern Iraq, has given militants an ultimatum to surrender their weapons by Saturday.
The fighting, which also saw Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government -- come under fire, has threatened to unravel a delicate al-Sadr cease-fire credited with reducing bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites.
Since Tuesday, clashes in Basra and throughout Iraq's Shiite heartland have left more than 100 dead and many wounded in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, Kut, Karbala and Diwaniya.

Toddler rescued after 27 hours in well

A two-year-old girl was rescued Wednesday after spending 27 hours trapped inside a narrow well outside the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Video footage from the scene showed a man emerge carrying the girl, named Vandana.
She fell 45 feet into the uncovered well while playing Tuesday night in a village near Agra, a northern Indian city outside New Delhi. The girl was being taken to a hospital.
Earlier, India's army was called in to help, and rescuers dug a parallel well to tunnel into where Vandana was trapped. Officials said the girl frequently asked for fruits and sweets, which was sent to her with the help of a rope. Oxygen was also pumped inside the well through tubes to prevent any suffocation.

U.S. says missile parts mistakenly sent to Taiwan

The U.S. Defense Department accidentally shipped non-nuclear ballistic missile components to Taiwan, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Four nose-cone fuses for intercontinental ballistic missiles were shipped instead of helicopter batteries that Taiwan had requested, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said.
The fuses were shipped to Taiwan in the fall of 2006 and kept in a warehouse there. The Taiwanese military informed the United States last week about their presence on the island.
"There are no nuclear or fissile materials associated with these items," Wynne said. "The United States is making all appropriate notifications in the spirit of candor and openness in an effort to avoid any misunderstanding."
An investigation is under way, he added.
"In an organization as large as DOD, the largest and most complex in the world, there will be mistakes. But they can not be tolerated in the arena in strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment, as was in this case," Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Ryan Henry said.
He said the parts were 1960s technology, designed for use with Minuteman ballistic missiles.
Officials said China, which considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, has been notified about the mistake.
Wynne said the missile components were first shipped from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to Hill Air Force Base in Utah in 2005.
On arrival at Hill, they should have been placed in the classified storage section, Wynne said, but were instead moved to a storage area for unclassified items.
He said stocks at the Utah base should be checked quarterly and a key part of the investigation will be determining how those checks did not turn up the missile parts before they were shipped to Taiwan.

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000

Four U.S. soldiers died Sunday night in a roadside bombing in Iraq, military officials reported, bringing the American toll in the 5-year-old war to 4,000 deaths.
The four were killed when a homemade bomb hit their vehicle as they patrolled in a southern Baghdad neighborhood, the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq said. A fifth soldier was wounded.
The grim milestone comes less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the start of the war.
"No casualty is more or less significant than another; each soldier, Marine, airman and sailor is equally precious and their loss equally tragic," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the U.S. military's chief spokesman in Iraq.
"Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is keenly felt by military commanders, families and friends both in theater and at home."
Of the 4,000 U.S. military personnel killed in the war, 3,263 have died in attacks and fighting and 737 in nonhostile incidents, such as traffic accidents and suicides. Eight of those killed were civilians working for the Pentagon.

Bill Richardson to endorse Obama

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico plans to endorse Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic race for president Friday. Richardson plans to join Obama at a rally in Portland, Oregon, at 12:30 p.m. ET Friday.
In an e-mail to supporters, Richardson said Obama will be a "historic and a great president, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad."
Richardson also said in the e-mail that he was touched by Obama's recent speech on race in America, saying he "understands clearly that only by bringing people together, only by bridging our differences can we all succeed together as Americans."
Richardson is the nation's only Hispanic governor. Hispanics have tended to support Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But Richardson's endorsement will have an impact beyond Latino voters, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley said.
"This is an endorsement that may help with the Latino voting bloc around the edges, but if that were Richardson's target he would have done this before the New Mexico and Texas contests, both of which Obama narrowly lost, largely due to the Latino vote," Crowley said. "So this is a larger message to superdelegates, those elected officials and party officials who in the end may well decide who the nominee will be."
Richardson said the country is blessed to have two great American leaders and great Democrats running for president.
"My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver," Richardson wrote in his e-mail. "It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall."
Richardson, who served as United Nations ambassador and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination on January 10.
He drew 5 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and 2 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Obama: Wright flap has 'shaken me up'

Sen. Barack Obama told CNN on Wednesday the recent uproar over his former pastor's sermons has reminded him of the odds he faces in winning the White House.
In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates," the Illinois senator told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive one-on-one interview.
Obama declined to speculate on whether the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons may damage him politically, but said his campaign does best when it doesn't follow the "textbook."
"If I was just running the textbook campaign doing the conventional thing, I probably wasn't going to win because Sen. [Hillary] Clinton was going to be much more capable of doing that than I would be," he said. "We had tremendous success, and I think we were starting to get a little comfortable and conventional right before Texas and Ohio."
The exclusive interview came one day after Obama delivered a speech on race and politics in Philadelphia, during which he denounced some of Wright's comments, but said he could not repudiate the man himself.
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love," Obama said in the speech.
Asked why he didn't denounce the controversial comment when he first heard of them more than a year ago, Obama noted Wright was on the verge of retirement.
"I told him that I profoundly disagreed with his positions. As I said before, he was on, at that stage, on the verge of retirement. You make decisions about these issues. And my belief was that given that he was about to retire, that for me to make a political statement respecting my church at that time wasn't necessary."

Five years later, Bush says Iraq war must go on

President Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war on Wednesday by calling the debate over the conflict "understandable" but insisting that a continued U.S. presence there is crucial.
"The answers are clear to me," Bush said in a speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday, five years from the day the war began in 2003.
"Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win."
Almost 4,000 American troops have died in the war, a painful toll that Bush acknowledged.
"No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq," the president said.
Bush contends the so-called troop surge he ordered in January 2007 has been a success and was necessary at a point when "the fight in Iraq was faltering."

Supreme Court hears arguments on gun ownership

The Supreme Court on Tuesday took up gun control, hearing arguments concerning a District of Columbia ban on handguns more than two centuries after the Second Amendment gave Americans the right to "keep and bear arms."
Lawyers for both sides tried to strike a moderate tone before the court, arguing that there was an individual right to own a weapon, but that governments could impose reasonable gun-control legislation.
Alan Gura, arguing against the ban on Tuesday before the court said the city "simply doesn't trust the people to protect themselves in their homes."
But Walter Dellinger, a lawyer for the District of Columbia, said there should be a "a reasonable standard" to allow cities to pass gun-control legislation.
More than 100 people stood in line outside the court for a chance at one of the few seats to hear the arguments in person.
Jason McCrory and his friends were the first in line, having arrived Sunday.

Tornado takes 'Mrs. Bonnie,' animal lover

I met Bonnie Turner seven years ago when I was looking for a puppy.
There was just simply no one better to turn to than the eccentric grandmother who loved animals so much that her 86-acre North Georgia farm was home to donkeys, goats, high-priced show dogs and even a few wayward deer.
On Saturday, nothing was left of that bucolic sanctuary after a 130-mph tornado ravaged it. Bonnie died, thrown 50 feet from her home as her husband, Michael, cried out her name, their neighbors Joe and Jamie Wheeler said.
Her death has shaken me. Images of the animals that died -- at least 35 dogs and 100 still missing -- make my voice crack when I speak about her.
But I want her to be remembered as more than a victim, as probably does the family of the tornado's second victim in Floyd County.

Dupre's MySpace page evolves with scandal

In three days, Ashley Alexandra Dupre went from being an unknown 22-year-old aspiring musician to the fifth most-searched subject on Google because of her alleged sexual encounters with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
After she was identified by The New York Times, throngs of journalists staked out her home.
At the same time, she appeared to have jumped on her MySpace page, which was identified by the Times, and a Facebook profile with the same name and photos.
It seemed she was trying to stay one step ahead of journalists, attempting to limit what information they could access.
She was seemingly aware that the press would have access to her friends and every word, photo and comment on her profiles, so she began by deleting connections between her friends on Facebook.
Facebook and MySpace have become one of the go-to background tools for journalists in the past couple of years, allowing members of the press to put a face to the subject of their story and find out more about them.

Spitzer's escort: 'I love who I am'

When the Emperors Club VIP said it was sending Kristen, a call girl it described as a "petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds," Client 9 was pleased.
"Great, OK, wonderful," he told the escort service's booking agent, according to a federal affidavit.
Client 9, later revealed to be New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, was caught arranging the liaison on a federal wiretap. It was the beginning of the end for him.
For the woman at the heart of the prostitution scandal, it was just another step on what she calls an "odyssey" of degrading abuse and high aspirations.
Court documents reportedly identified Ashley Youmans -- now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupre as Kristen, the high-priced prostitute who met with Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on February 13.
Dupre is a 22-year-old would-be singer from New Jersey, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
She has not been charged with any crime.
Dupre made a brief appearance Monday in U.S. Magistrate Court as a witness against four people charged with operating Emperor's Club VIP, the prostitution ring, the Times said.
Spitzer announced his resignation Wednesday as governor of New York, two days after reports of his connection to the Emperors Club VIP emerged.

Obama Win Defined By Race

Illinois Senator Barack Obama easily captured a majority of Mississippi's 33 Democratic delegates Tuesday as his one-on-one battle with Hillary Clinton race verged once again on deeper racial turmoil. With 90% of all precincts reporting, Obama led Clinton in Misissippi by a margin of nearly three to two.
Obama's win — his second in four days — came at the end of a day of cross-campaign, finger-pointing following comments by the party's 1984 Vice Presidential nominee, Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter who suggested that Obama's front-runner status owed more to his race than his talent or effort. Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod accused the Clinton campaign of quietly countenancing such divisive comments; later in the day, Hillary Clinton called Ferraro's comments "regrettable." Obama called Ferraro's remarks "absurd."
The steady erosion in relations between the Obama and Clinton camps — less than a week has passed since Obama's foreign policy adviser (and TIME columnist) Samatha Power called Clinton "a monster" — was almost certainly one reason why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared on Tuesday that the chances of a joint ticket between the two Democrats to now be impossible.
Broken down, the Mississippi vote had an unmistakable racial descant — and unmistakable limits for Obama. Exit polls revealed once again an emerging racial divide that has opened in the Democratic party between whites who tend by healthy margins to favor Clinton and blacks who overwhelmingly favor Obama. African Americans comprised nearly half of the Democratic vote in Mississippi — and 90% of those voters, according to exit polls, pulled the lever for Obama, his strongest showing yet among African Americans. But Obama did poorly among whites, winning only 30%, according to exit polls. While this split was visible in Alabama and the border state of Tennessee earlier this year, it was visible in Ohio's primary last week, too.
Mississippi is one of the most reliably Republican states in presidential elections. Only a Democrat who could win 35 to 40% of the white vote, while holding onto a lopsided percentage of blacks, could put the state in play in a head to head match with a Republican in the fall. Obama's 30% showing in the primary against Clinton falls short of that target.

Spitzer 'cannot hold on to his job'

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's hold on office seemed less certain Tuesday, as a legislative staffer said gubernatorial aides were in transition talks with the lieutenant governor and Democratic sources said Spitzer had no choice but to step down.
"It is a 'when' question on the resignation. Not an 'if.' He knows that," said a Democratic source with firsthand knowledge of the issue.
"It is hard to come to terms with, and there are legal issues that are related to any big political decisions. But Eliot knows he cannot hold on to his job here. He might want to, but he is absolutely aware of his predicament."
A Democratic campaign veteran with ties to the Spitzer team added, "A resignation was part of the discussions early yesterday but was tabled. The political people were clear about the options. There are none -- not for him."
If Spitzer resigns, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, 53, would become the state's first black governor and the fourth in U.S. history. The former Senate minority leader is legally blind and is the son of Basil Paterson, a longtime Democratic operative in New York City.
No further information was immediately available about the reported meetings between Spitzer and Paterson staffers.
Political opponents quickly called for Spitzer's resignation after federal investigators linked the Democratic governor to a high-rolling prostitution ring.

Two slain students from Georgia mourned at services

Heartbroken mourners searched soul and scripture Sunday to understand why someone would fatally shoot a popular University of North Carolina student body president and cut short a life with such promise.
For the hundreds gathered at Athens First United Methodist Church, Eve Carson should still be in school, studying political science and biology, teaching science to grade schoolers or planning her next trip abroad.
"We should not be here this afternoon," senior minister Bill Britt said, angry that the 22-year-old was not instead celebrating spring break or watching the mighty Tar Heels play basketball.
"It is too soon to be remembering the life of Eve Marie Carson," he told the mourners who gathered here in her hometown. Some came down from the university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Many wore Carolina blue ribbons in her honor.
During the nearly two-hour service, there were just as many references to her beauty, intelligence and leadership as to her kindness, dedication to service and concern for others.

Florida, Michigan re-votes come down to money

Democrats agree that new voting is needed to determine convention delegates for Florida and Michigan, but they can't figure out how to pay for it.
Both states held their Democratic presidential preference primaries early, in January. For that, the Democratic National Committee followed through on its warning and stripped both of their delegates for violating party rules by scheduling their primaries too early.
The Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in either state, and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won both states, was the only top-tier candidate on the ballot in Michigan.
Florida and Michigan moved up their primaries because the states wanted to be sure their political clout was not lost to the four states that had Democratic Party permission to vote before the official kick-off of the primary season on February 5. Those four were Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Now, neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor Clinton will be able to attain the 2,024 delegates needed to clinch the nomination without delegates from Florida and Michigan.
"People are now looking to Florida and Michigan as overtime, that we're going to finish a sense in a tie, and Florida and Michigan could actually help tip the balance one way or the other," Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein said.
"With two outstanding candidates battling so closely for their party's nomination, there's no way you can tell nearly 2 million Florida voters they don't count," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said.

Student fatally shot; car found miles away in flames

An Auburn University student was found fatally shot on a highway just before her car was discovered in flames on campus, several miles away.

Auburn police were investigating Tuesday's death of Lauren Burk as a homicide but made no immediate arrests.
"As soon as we know more we might release it, but what information we have now we're holding it close to our chest," police Capt. Tom Stofer said.
University officials advised students in an e-mail around noon Wednesday that there was "no indication of additional danger to campus or student safety." But the school said the police presence on campus had been increased.
Burk, an 18-year-old freshman from Marietta, Georgia, was found wounded on Alabama Highway 147 around 9 p.m. Tuesday, and Auburn police said her Honda Civic was found engulfed in flames at the campus about 20 minutes later. She died Tuesday night at a hospital.

Clinton: Campaign has 'turned a corner'

Sen. Hillary Clinton Wednesday said her campaign had "turned a corner" with dramatic wins in Ohio and Texas Tuesday night.
The New York Democrat broke a 12-contest winning streak by her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama.
Clinton also won Rhode Island, while Obama won Vermont. Cinton's victories mean the Democratic race will continue at least through the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
Clinton attributed her wins to the belief of voters that she would be the best candidate to protect the nation.
"For me, this election has always been about who can be the best president, and, you know, that includes who can be the best commander in chief," she told CNN Wednesday.
Voters also choose her because she would be the best candidate to challenge Sen. John McCain, who locked up the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night, on national security issues in the fall, she said.
"People who voted a month ago didn't know who the Republican nominee was going to be. They didn't perhaps factor in that it will be about national security because, indeed, with Senator McCain, that's what it will be about," she said.

Brett Favre Set to Retire After 17 Years

Brett Favre has decided to retire from the NFL after 17 seasons. FOX Sports first reported Tuesday that the Green Bay Packers quarterback informed the team in the last few days. ESPN.com said that according to Favre's agent the quarterback told coach Mike McCarthy of his decision.
The team did not immediately confirm or deny the report. An assistant to Packers general manager Ted Thompson said he was in meetings all day but would release a statement later Tuesday morning.
The news was a surprise to at least one of Favre's teammates. Most players expected Favre to return after a successful 2007 season.
"I just saw it come across the TV," Packers wide receiver Koren Robinson said, when reached on his cell phone by The Associated Press.
The 38-year-old Favre, a three-time NFL MVP and one of the NFL's grittiest players, has made his annual flirtation with retirement a winter tradition in Wisconsin. He has taken weeks and even months to make his decision after recent seasons, with Cheeseheads hanging on his every word.
But unlike the final game of the 2006 season — when Favre provided a cliffhanger by getting choked up in a television interview as he walked off the field in Chicago, only to return once again — nearly everyone assumed he would be back this time. They were wrong.
Only two years removed from perhaps his worst season, Favre had a resurgence in 2007. He broke several career records. Among them was Dan Marino's career mark for career touchdown passes. He powered the Packers to an NFC North title and a 13-3 regular-season record and earned his ninth Pro Bowl spot.
Surrounded by an underrated group of wide receivers who proved hard to tackle after the catch, Favre had a career-high completion percentage of 66.5. He threw for 4,155 yards, 28 touchdowns and only 15 interceptions.
It was a remarkable turnaround from 2005, Favre's final season under former head coach Mike Sherman, when he threw a career-worst 29 interceptions as the Packers went 4-12.
Given Favre's career resurgence, it was widely assumed that he was leaning toward returning for the 2008 season.
He even said as much just before the Packers' Jan. 12 divisional playoff game against Seattle, telling his hometown newspaper that he wasn't approaching the game as if it would be his last and was more optimistic than in years past about returning.
"For the first time in three years, I haven't thought this could be my last game," Favre told the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald. "I would like to continue longer."
Those comments sent premature shock waves across the state — all the way up to the governor's office, where the political version of a false start was committed.
"Like all Packer fans, I am thrilled that Brett Favre will return to action next year for the green and gold," Gov. Jim Doyle said in a statement. "Brett Favre's tremendous work ethic and willingness to go out and play hard every day represent the true spirit of Wisconsin. I am hopeful that with this announcement behind us, Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers can focus on the task at hand: defeating the Seattle Seahawks."
The governor's office later amended the statement to say Doyle was "excited to hear Brett Favre talking about returning to action next year."
It was another example of the state's fascination with the future of its favorite quarterback.
Favre then finished the season on a sour note, suddenly showing his age in the Packers' 23-20 overtime loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship game.
Favre struggled in subzero temperatures, throwing an interception on the Packers' second play from scrimmage in overtime to set up the Giants' game-winning field goal.
After that game, Favre was noncommittal on his future. McCarthy said he wanted Favre to take a step back from the season before making a decision. But it was widely assumed he would be back.
"I think he's going to come back," Packers receiver Donald Driver said in early January. "I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back. He's having a great year, so it'd be great to see him come back if he decides to."
Retiring Packers chairman Bob Harlan figured Favre would be back, too.
"Yeah, I think he'll be back," Harlan said, on his final official day as the Packers' top executive. "And I felt that way the last couple years, when we've had these long debates about it. I just think he's such a competitor that as long as he feels he can compete, he's going to keep coming back."
Still, in the week leading to the playoff game against Seattle, Favre said his injuries were starting to linger.
"I'm not getting any younger," Favre said. "I wake up some days and think I can't even touch my toes. I think about that. I think, well, next year is not going to be like some refreshing, awakening season where all of a sudden you're going to feel great. That's not going to happen.
"I carry some of these things with me that maybe you wouldn't see. I tend to dwell on them, at least internally, more than I used to. I don't write them off as quickly as I used to."

Some crack convicts could soon be set free

New sentencing guidelines were expected to lead Monday to the early release of more than a dozen federal inmates convicted on crack-cocaine charges.

Approximately 1,600 federal inmates are currently eligible to ask a court to reduce their sentences because of December's decision by a federal agency to make retroactive reduced sentences for some crack-cocaine related convictions.
The decision was based on the stark difference in terms handed out for crack convictions versus those convicted on charges for powder cocaine.
Judges could reduce sentences for nearly 20,000 inmates following the decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- an independent federal agency that advises all three branches of government on sentences. Advocates of the sentence reduction say it is only fair, but the Justice Department counters and says that the move will allow dangerous criminals back on the street.
The Justice Department is concerned "that so many people would be released all at once -- people who have shown that they are repeat offenders, and without the possibility of any kind of transition or re-entry program to bring them from prison back to the streets.

Clinton raises the stakes in new ad

The Democratic White House hopefuls took to the airwaves Friday to battle over national security credentials, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign releasing a tough new ad that pegged her as the presidential candidate best-prepared to take on foreign crises, and Barack Obama’s team responding with the re-release of a spot that painted him as the White House hopeful with the best judgment to be commander-in-chief.
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something’s happened in the world,” says the announcer in the 30-second Clinton spot, which is set begin running in Texas Friday. A phone rings insistently over images of sleeping children.
“Your vote will decide who answers the call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military. Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?”
The Clinton campaign said the new ad — titled “Children” — is meant to make voters ponder “who they want in the White House during a crisis.”
Within roughly an hour of the ad’s debut, the Obama campaign announced that it was re-releasing “Gulf,” a 30-second spot that first ran prior to the Iowa caucuses. The ad features retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former combat pilot who was the service’s highest-ranking uniformed officer during the first Gulf War.
“As a combat pilot and Air Force chief during Desert Storm, lives depended on the judgments I made,” McPeak says in the spot. “And judgment is what we need from our next commander in chief. Barack Obama opposed this war in Iraq from the start, showing insight and courage others did not.”

Bush pressures Congress on FISA

President Bush on Thursday urged Congress to vote on an update to the terrorist surveillance bill, which allows the intelligence community to conduct surveillance on foreigners without a warrant.
A temporary update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expired more than a week ago.
Bush has been pressing Congress to pass a permanent update, arguing that its delayed passage hurts national security.
The Senate passed a bill, but members of the House have taken issue with a provision in the Senate version that grants retroactive immunity from prosecution for telecommunications companies that assisted the government in its surveillance program.
Democrats have said that the existing 1978 law gives the government all the authority it needs to carry out surveillance and that passage of the final bill can wait until the House and Senate reconcile their differences.
Both the House and Senate versions of the bill would allow U.S. intelligence to tap into phone and Internet traffic overseas without obtaining a judge's warrant, even if the calls were routed through communications centers in the United States.
The Senate version contains a controversial measure that grants legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the no-warrant wiretapping program Bush acknowledged in 2005. The immunity would apply retroactively.

Clinton, Obama clash over campaign tactics in debate

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparred with each other over negative campaigning, health care and free trade Tuesday, a week before key primaries in Texas and Ohio.
Those contests are must-wins for Clinton if she is to continue to contest Obama for the nomination, as even former President Clinton suggests.
Debating at Cleveland State University, Clinton repeated angry claims from the campaign trail that Obama mischaracterized her stances on health care and NAFTA in political material mailed to voters in Ohio.
"I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Obama, but we have differences," she said. "In the last several days, some of those differences in tactics and choices that Sen. Obama's campaign has made regarding fliers and mailers and other information that has been put out ... have been very disturbing to me."
The mailers, which Obama defends, claim that Clinton's health care plan would force people who don't want insurance to buy it. They also say she has been inconsistent on NAFTA, which many in industrial states like Ohio blame for shipping blue-collar jobs overseas.

Bosnian Serbs try to attack U.S. consulate

Police fired tear gas at Bosnian Serb rioters Tuesday to prevent them from storming the building of the U.S. Consulate after protests against Kosovo's independence.
A smaller group split away from the almost 10,000 peaceful protesters in Banja Luka and headed toward the U.S. Consulate, breaking shop windows along the way and throwing stones at police who blocked the streets leading to the building with armored vehicles.
Several officers were seen limping after a rain of stones poured down on them before police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Police were also seen detaining several demonstrators as they withdrew to a nearby park.

Visiting sites of tragedy to touch history, ease grief

On a blustery January day, a few tourists gather at the spot where the World Trade Center once stood in New York City. In pictures, words and a roll call of the dead, an area of kiosks and signs near the eastern edge of the site recounts the events of September 11, 2001.
These days, the 16-acre hole in the ground -- known to the world as ground zero -- is partially obscured by tall mesh-wire fences that surround a busy construction site. Yet one visitor is visibly moved by a photo taken during a fireman's funeral, one of the many images found on the information panels.
"I feel a little ashamed to be so curious," says Esther Winter, a tourist from Ringsted, Denmark, "but we watched it on television and were so shocked. I had to come here and get the feeling."
Like Winter, many visitors to New York City now include a trip to the World Trade Center site on their agenda. In 2006, more than 5.6 million toured the downtown site, a figure expected to double once the WTC memorial and museum are completed in 2010. Ground zero is just one of many destinations for "grief tourism," a relatively new term for an age-old human inclination -- that of traveling to and bearing witness at the sites of terrible or tragic events.

No survivors in Venezuela plane crash

Rescue teams on Friday found the wreckage of a plane that crashed Thursday night in the mountains of Venezuela, but none of the 46 people aboard survived, an official said.
Witnesses saw the Santa Barbara Airlines plane go down, according to Antonio Rivero, Venezuela's national director of civil protection.
Harsh weather and rough terrain in the Andes Mountains likely will make the job of emergency crews difficult, Rivero said on a state-run television station.
The plane went missing while flying from Merida to the international airport near Caracas, an official said.
The pilot did not check in with controllers 20 minutes into the flight, as scheduled, suggesting the plane encountered problems shortly after takeoff.
Nelson Marquez, chief of civil defense for Merida, said the plane was carrying 43 passengers and three crew members.

Boxing legend's sister found frozen to death

The 92-year-old sister of boxing great Joe Louis was found frozen to death outside her apartment at an assisted-living center, authorities said.
The body of Vunies High, who had Alzheimer's disease, was found Monday outside The Heatherwood retirement complex in Southfield, a Detroit suburb, said Capt. Tom Colombo of Southfield emergency medical services.
High, who spent 25 years as a teacher and counselor for Detroit Public Schools, was last seen Sunday.
When she was found, she was dressed only in pajamas and was wearing one shoe, with the other lying nearby.
An autopsy shows she died of hypothermia.
An official at Swanson's Funeral Home in Detroit confirmed that High was Louis' sister. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday at The Heatherwood.
Southfield police Lt. Nick Loussia told The Detroit News that there was no indication of any crime.
Louis, who transcended racial divisions 1930s and 1940s, remains a local hero in Detroit, where he grew up. The arena where the NHL's Detroit Red Wings play bears his name, and one of the city's most famous landmarks -- a bronze sculpture of an arm and fist -- is dedicated to his memory. He died in 1981.

Obama, McCain extend winning streaks

Wisconsin and Hawaii handed Sen. Barack Obama his 9th and 10th consecutive wins Tuesday, CNN projects, while Sen. John McCain picked up two more states in his march to the Republican nomination.
"The change we seek is still months and miles away," Obama said Tuesday night in Houston, Texas.
He's emerged as the Democratic front-runner over Sen. Hillary Clinton after a split-decision on Super Tuesday two weeks ago.
"It is going to require more than rousing speeches. ... It is going to require something more, because the problem that we face in America today is not the lack of good ideas. It's that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die," he said.
Obama and Clinton have turned their attention to Ohio and Texas, which hold contests March 4. Early voting began in Texas on Tuesday.
In the Republican race, Wisconsin gives McCain at least 13 more delegates; 24 more delegates are to be awarded to the winner of each congressional district.
The remaining three GOP delegates are unpledged Republican National Committee members.
McCain also picked up a win in Washington state's primary.
McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee were competing for 19 delegates in Washington. Eighteen delegates were awarded earlier in the state's caucuses.
As Obama has edged ahead of Clinton in the Democratic race, McCain has increasingly directed criticism toward the Illinois senator.

Delta-Northwest deal could mean fewer cheap seats

It may be time to wave goodbye to some of those discount fares. If Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines complete a merger to form the largest U.S. airline, travelers can expect fewer deals and higher fares on some remote routes.
A combination has been rumored for weeks and reports Tuesday indicated that a deal was close.
Airlines generally try to keep flights as full as possible, and the proposed new carrier would continue that trend. "If all the planes are full," said Rick Seaney, founder of fare search site FareCompare, "they can increase prices and have them stick."
With fewer available seats, airlines cut back on the supply of cheapest seats first.
Small and mid-size markets will likely be the first to feel the squeeze, said airline consultant Michael Boyd. For example, Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) or Northwest (NWA, Fortune 500) handle most of the flights for Roanoke, Va. - those fares would likely rise as travelers' options are reduced, Boyd said.
But prices aren't likely to change much at major hubs like New York or Los Angeles, since they're already served by a large number of airlines, creating plenty of competition.
The potential for higher fares is one reason a Delta-Northwest deal would get a lot of scrutiny from antitrust regulators and Congress. At a Senate hearing a year ago, many senators expressed concern that any airline merger would produce other deals that could leave about 80% of the nation's air traffic handled by only three new mega-carriers.

Military man arrested with grenades at airport

A 20-year-old member of the military was arrested after trying to get through airport security with two training grenades in a carry-on bag, police said.
Transportation Security Administration agents saw the grenades using a belt scanner at Yakima Air Terminal around 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Police Sgt. Tim Bardwell said.
The grenades contained live fuses but had no explosives packed around them, Bardwell told the Yakima Herald-Republic. The man was released Sunday afternoon while prosecutors and the FBI look into the incident.
Police locked down the small airport for a few minutes, then evacuated about 30 or 35 people while explosive experts from the Army's Yakima Training Center dismantled the grenades. All scheduled incoming flights stayed on the ground at other airports.
Authorities said the man lives on a military base in California, but Bardwell would not disclose his name, his branch of service or details about his questioning.
Police temporarily allowed the only incoming flight that was already in the air to land. Passengers were offloaded at the police precinct, a few hundred yards away from the terminal, Bardwell said.
Normal operations resumed around 12:45 p.m.

Shootings at Northern Illinois University

A former student opened fire in a lecture hall Thursday at Northern Illinois University, shooting 21 people before fatally shooting himself. Seven people died, including the gunman.

Friend questioned in therapist's slasher slaying

A law enforcement official says NYPD investigators are in Pennsylvania questioning a man in the slaying of a psychologist hacked to death in her office with a meat cleaver.
The man being questioned met victim Kathryn Faughey at a guitar camp six years ago with her husband and were friends but not romantically linked,according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman Cpl. Linette Quinn confirmed that New York detectives conducted an interview related to the case Thursday morning inside the agency's Bethlehem barracks.
The man is in his 40s and has not been arrested. Further details about the man are not known, including whether he is an actual suspect in the killing itself.
Faughey was stabbed 15 times in her office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who works in the building was badly injured by the attacker.
Police released a detailed sketch and grainy surveillance footage of him entering and leaving the Upper East Side building where Faughey was killed.

The Suns Make Room For Daddy

He took part in his first Suns practice Monday, and first practice anywhere in almost a month. And while Shaquille O’Neal said he was happy with the progress of his injured hip, his conditioning may keep him on the sidelines until the team returns from the All-Star break next week.
“It was terrible. I’m not going to sit here and tell you otherwise,” said O’Neal, who hasn’t played since Jan. 21 and hadn’t been on a practice floor until Sunday.
“I haven’t done anything in a month, but I’m in pretty good shape. It’ll probably take me a few more days … the good thing about these guys here is they tell me when I’m comfortable, when I’m at 100 percent, I can join them.”
The final decision is still pending, but O’Neal has all but ruled out Wednesday’s game against Golden State in Oakland, Calif.. And any appearance in Thursday’s home game against Dallas — Phoenix’s last before taking a six-day break that includes All-Star weekend — would likely be a cameo.

Candidates eye prize of Potomac primaries

Sen. Barack Obama heads into Tuesday's so-called Potomac primaries looking to sustain the momentum he mustered in his sweep of five Democratic contests last weekend.
The demographics in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia primaries suggest the senator from Illinois could pull off a political hat trick Tuesday over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton. However, the senator from New York said Obama's recent success doesn't faze her because future primaries will swing her way.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is coming off big wins in Kansas and Louisiana, but Sen. John McCain of Arizona scoffed at the notion that the former Arkansas governor could close the roughly 500-delegate gap that separates the two GOP contenders.

'Jaws' actor Roy Scheider dies

Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," has died. He was 75. Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release a cause of death.
However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.
Scheider received two Oscar nominations, for best-supporting actor in 1971's "The French Connection" in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and for best-actor for 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse film.
However, he was best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's1975 film, "Jaws," the enduring classic about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers and well as millions of moviegoers.
Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was also the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer.
In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie "You're gonna need a bigger boat" -- was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies.
That year, some 30 years after "Jaws" premiered, hundreds of movie buffs flocked to Martha's Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark.
The island's JawsFest '05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that inspired Spielberg's classic. Spielberg, Scheider and Dreyfuss were absent.
Scheider was also politically active. He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.

Six dead as gunman 'goes to war' with Missouri city

A gunman killed five people and wounded two Thursday night at a police station and City Council meeting in suburban St. Louis before officers shot and killed him, police said.
Two police officers were among the dead, said Tracy Panus, spokeswoman for the St. Louis County police.
Witnesses identified the gunman as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, a man who they said regularly disrupted meetings to make complaints, though he didn't make it clear what his concerns were.
Police have not identified the suspect. No one has made an official statement on Thornton's behalf, but his brother said Thornton "went to war tonight with the people that were of the government."
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, citing police, said the dead included police officers Tom Ballman and William Biggs, Councilwoman Connie Karr and Public Works Director Kenneth Yost.

Britney Spears' life at risk after discharge, parents say

Pop star Britney Spears is an "adult child in the throes of a mental health crisis" whose "life is presently at risk," her parents said Wednesday night after the singer was released from a hospital.
Jamie and Lynne Spears said in a statement that they were dismayed to learn that their daughter had been discharged from the University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center Wednesday over the recommendation of her psychiatrist.
They said the hospital could "best care for her and keep her safe."
"We are deeply concerned about her safety and vulnerability and we believe her life is presently at risk," the statement added.
"There are conservatorship orders in place created to protect our daughter that are being blatantly disregarded. We ask only that the court's orders be enforced so that a tragedy may be averted."
Spears left the Los Angeles hospital Wednesday afternoon, nearly a week after being admitted in the latest stage of an extraordinary public meltdown.

No rest for Clinton, Obama; 7 more contests fast approach

With Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton almost even in delegate counts, the two Democratic presidential candidates will focus on several weekend contests and then a trio of primaries in the Washington area next Tuesday.
Super Tuesday delivered a split decision for the Democrats. CNN estimates showed Clinton earned a handful more delegates than Obama, who surprised observers by taking states where the senator from New York had large polling leads until recently.
The latest estimate gave Clinton 582 of the 1,681 delegates at stake Tuesday, compared with 562 for Obama. It will take time to determine the final distribution because of complicated formulas.
CNN's overall count showed Clinton leading at this point in delegates with 823 to Obama's 731. They'll need 2,025 to secure their party's nomination.
Both candidates fly to Washington on Wednesday afternoon for Senate votes, but the next day Obama holds a major rally in New Orleans ahead of this weekend's Louisiana primary.
Washington state and Nebraska also hold caucuses Saturday, and Maine will holds its caucuses Sunday.
Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia hold their presidential primaries next Tuesday.

Democrats in dead heat as voters cast Super Tuesday ballots

The Democratic presidential candidates waited Tuesday for the voters' verdict, as a new poll showed the race in a virtual dead heat nationally. Sen. Hillary Clinton started her day with several broadcast interviews, then voted in Chappaqua, New York.
Sen. Barack Obama also appeared in a broadcast interview, and picked up an early victory as American expatriates in Indonesia gave him 75 percent of their votes.
Clinton took just nine seconds behind a closed curtain to cast her vote in New York's Democratic presidential primary.
She arrived at the polling station in Chappaqua's Douglas Grafflin Elementary School at 8 a.m. with her husband and daughter.
When a poll worker joked, "I just want to confirm, you're a Democrat, right?" Clinton responded, "I am, true blue."
"The stakes are huge for our country, a lot of big challenges, but America's up to it," Clinton said after casting her vote.
"We just need a president who's ready on day one to turn the economy around and become commander in chief and get our country back on the right track."

Giants upset Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII

The New York Giants won Super Bowl XLII with a last-minute touchdown, upsetting the New England Patriots' hopes of becoming the first team since 1972 to complete a National Football League season undefeated.
The Giants beat the Patriots 17-14 in Sunday night's championship game, giving New York its first NFL title since 1991.
Giants quarterback Eli Manning was named the game's Most Valuable Player -- a year after his brother, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, took the same honor.
''There's something about this team,'' Eli Manning told The Associated Press. ''The way we win games, and performed in the playoffs in the stretch. We had total confidence in ourselves. The players believed in each other.''
The heavily favored Patriots, who have won three of the last seven Super Bowls, went undefeated in the regular season and playoffs.
A win Sunday would have made them the first team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins to go undefeated.

Giant storm pounds Midwest, barrels toward Northeast

A huge storm that stretched from Texas to the Great Lakes blanketed the nation's midsection with snow, tying up air travel and making roads treacherous, and headed for the Northeast on Friday.
Five inches of snow was reported at Chicago's Midway Airport by early Friday and more was expected to begin around rush hour.
More than 600 flights were canceled Thursday at O'Hare International Airport, where low visibility continued to be a problem Friday, officials said.
Between eight to 12 inches of snow was forecast for the Chicago area by Friday afternoon.
"It looks like this morning's rush hour is going to be really impacted," National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Merzlock said. "With what's going to be coming down at the rate it'll be coming down, all the roads are going to be snow-packed and snow-covered."
Elsewhere, Indianapolis received less than 2 inches of snow overnight, despite predictions for much more.
But the National Weather Service said northern Indiana could get up to a foot of snow. Fort Wayne had received 4 inches by early Friday.
Hundreds of schools in Michigan canceled class Friday in anticipation of the storm, which was expected to drop as many as 13 inches of snow in the southeastern portion of the state. Up to 4 inches had fallen by early Friday.
Billowing snow in the Texas Panhandle caused a 40-car pileup on Interstate 40 on Thursday that killed at least person. Three other deaths were blamed on the storm, two in Texas and one in Oklahoma.

Britney Spears resting at L.A. hospital

Pop star Britney Spears was resting at UCLA Medical Center on Thursday, her mother said, hours after police escorted her to the hospital from her Hollywood home.
A long convoy of police and a Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance transported the 26-year-old singer to the hospital after midnight, acting on what the Los Angeles Times reported was a "mental evaluation hold."
It was the second hospitalization for Spears this month. The police operation was planned far in advance and, according to the L.A. Times, followed a phone call to police from Spears' psychiatrist.
Asked if her daughter was resting, mother Lynne Spears said "Yes" to a throng of reporters as she departed the medical center.

Cancer struggles inspire patient crusader

Long before she took on America's embattled health-care system, Nancy Davenport-Ennis was riding high. She was a national speaker for the homebuilding and real estate industry, teaching classes at the University of North Carolina and writing a textbook about selling new homes. Her husband, Jack, ran a successful funeral parlor and they had two daughters in good private schools. Then, Davenport-Ennis got breast cancer.
"My diagnosis was probably the best thing that ever happened in my life," Davenport-Ennis said. "Until that diagnosis, I was so focused on my own family, my own community and my own career, that I really was not sensitized to what happens to you if you're diagnosed with a life-threatening illness."
But this isn't a self-help story. It's about a woman who got angry and decided to change the world.
Two years after her own diagnosis, a close friend of Davenport-Ennis was found to have advanced breast cancer. "She was told there were no options for treatment," said Davenport-Ennis. Cheryl Grimmel was 31 years old. "She had a 12-year-old son, and she essentially was making legal arrangements for what was going to happen next.
"I just felt there was a travesty, that a 31-year-old woman needed to have a second opinion, that a 31-year-old woman needed to have options."
Davenport-Ennis took charge of Grimmel's case calling hospitals, calling Grimmel's insurance company, calling her own doctors at Duke University Hospital and getting her into a clinical trial for an experimental drug.

Bush overshadowed by presidential race

Most striking to me about President Bush's final State of the Union address Monday night was how unsurprising it was. Before the speech, White House officials set low expectations -- and Bush met them.
This is a president who had previously used this same stage of a packed House chamber to dramatically talk about an "axis of evil" to build the case for war in Iraq or to launch massive domestic initiatives like Social Security reform. But this time he offered little that was new or bold.
In fairness to the president, his hands are fairly well tied as he begins his final year in office. With a Democratic Congress, he's unlikely to get to very much of his agenda enacted. And truth be told, if he had walked up to the rostrum and outlined 10 complicated new initiatives, I'd be writing today about how unrealistic Bush was being.
So this was in part an acknowledgement of the new political reality, especially with that exciting, wide-open campaign to replace Bush getting more attention. (Did you notice how all the TV networks justifiably spent so much time on those delicious cutaway shots in the chamber of Sen. Barack Obama huddling with new best-friend-forever Sen. Edward Kennedy, while Sen. Hillary Clinton sat nearby, no doubt fuming?

McDonald's dishes up diplomas to go

McDonald's employees trained in skills needed to run outlets for the fast-food chain can get credit toward high school diplomas, the British government announced Monday.
Along with two other large companies, McDonald's Corp. was given the power to award the equivalent of advanced high-school qualifications as part of a plan to improve young people's skills, said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government education regulator.
It is the first time the government has granted national recognition to corporate training schemes. But universities and colleges will have to decide whether to accept the corporate qualifications as grounds for admission.
The fast-food chain had been granted approval to develop courses and set exams up to the standard of A-levels -- the final exams taken by high school students that determine college and university admission.
Rail infrastructure firm Network Rail Ltd. and regional airline Flybe Ltd. have also been given the power to award their own qualifications.
McDonald's has said it is introducing a "basic shift manager" course, designed to train staff in skills needed to run a McDonald's outlet, from marketing to customer service.
"It is right that we recognize and accredit employers that have shown a commitment to training and developing their staff," said the government's skills minister, John Denham.
"This is an important step towards ending the old divisions between company training schemes and national qualifications, something that will benefit employees, employers and the country as a whole.

Bill Gates gets serious about hunger

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates announced a new direction Friday as he pledged $306 million in grants to develop farming in poor countries, leading the charge for corporate responsibility at a major meeting of business chiefs.
The announcement by Gates, who is to step down from the computer giant later this year, drew attention from the financial woes that have dominated the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Gates received a standing ovation for his announcement at the suggestion of U2 frontman Bono.
The move, the first foray into agriculture by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help boost efforts by the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland to shake off its image as a billionaire's talking shop that does little to solve the problems it discusses.

Deal near on economic stimulus, sources say

A deal is imminent on a $150 billion plan to boost the lagging U.S. economy, two officials close to the negotiations said Thursday. A planned Thursday morning meeting between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who is negotiating on President Bush's behalf -- and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on hold now, the sources said, while leaders on Capitol Hill sell the plan to their respective caucuses.
An announcement on the plan could come Thursday afternoon, the two sources said.
"They're trying to put a bow on it" after progress on the deal was made Wednesday night, a senior Republican official said.
"They're very close to an agreement in principle," a senior Democratic aide said.
Democrats have dropped plans to increase food stamp aid and extend unemployment benefits while Republicans have agreed to allow tax rebates to go to people who don't pay income taxes, sources said.
Paulson ended a day of meetings with House leaders Wednesday night with signs of hope but no indication of a deal reached on the economic stimulus package.
"We're hopeful," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday night.
Aides in both parties said Paulson has been working aggressively in recent days as he tries to make progress before House Republicans head out of Washington for a legislative retreat at the end of the week.

Our leaders have squandered our wealth

President Bush's assurances that we'll all be "just fine" if he and Congress can work out an economic stimulus package seem a little hollow this morning.
Much like Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances last May that the subprime mortgage meltdown would be contained and not affect the broader economy. And it seems Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has spent most of the past year trying to influence Chinese economic policy rather than setting the direction of U.S. economic policy.
There is no question that Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will quickly come up with an economic stimulus package simply because they can no longer ignore our economic and financial crisis. That economic stimulus plan will amount to about 1 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, an estimated $150 billion.

Church's Sexual Billboard Shocks Passerbys

Sexually themed billboards have shocked some drivers traveling on Blanding Boulevard and in Clay County, but more surprising than the billboards themselves is what they're advertising -- a church.
"At first, I thought it was a porn site thing," said one passerby.
However, that's certainly not what the billboards are promoting. They're promoting a series of sermons called Pure Sex God's Way at New Life Fellowship in Orange Park, according to WJXT-TV.

S.C. debate to highlight Democratic fight for black vote

The top three Democratic presidential candidates face off in a Monday night debate in South Carolina, with the hearts and minds of African-American voters on the line.
Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina share the stage at Myrtle Beach's Palace Theatre in a showdown as the nation honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday.
The debate, put together by CNN and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, comes five days before the Democratic primary in South Carolina, where almost half of the Democratic primary voters are African-Americans.
These voters will be crucial to the outcome of Saturday's primary in South Carolina. They now appear to be leaning heavily toward Obama, who if elected would become the country's first black president.

Bin Laden's dreadlocked son on peace mission

Omar Osama bin Laden bears a striking resemblance to his notorious father -- except for the dreadlocks that dangle halfway down his back. Then there's the black leather biker jacket.
The 26-year-old does not renounce his father, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but in an interview with The Associated Press, he said there is better way to defend Islam than militancy: Omar wants to be an "ambassador for peace" between Muslims and the West.
Omar -- one of bin Laden's 19 children -- raised a tabloid storm last year when he married a 52-year-old British woman, Jane Felix-Browne, who took the name Zaina Alsabah. Now the couple say they want to be advocates, planning a 3,000-mile horse race across North Africa to draw attention to the cause of peace.
"It's about changing the ideas of the Western mind. A lot of people think Arabs -- especially the bin Ladens, especially the sons of Osama -- are all terrorists. This is not the truth," Omar told the AP last week at a cafe in a Cairo shopping mall.
Of course, many may have a hard time getting their mind around the idea of "bin Laden: peacenik."
"Omar thinks he can be a negotiator," said Alsabah, who is trying to bring her husband to Britain. "He's one of the only people who can do this in the world."
Omar lived with the al-Qaida leader in Sudan, then moved with him to Afghanistan in 1996.