NATIONAL NEWS
NSA director says plot against Wall Street foiled
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. foiled a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange because of the sweeping surveillance programs at the heart of a debate over national security and personal privacy, officials said Tuesday at a rare open hearing on intelligence led by lawmakers sympathetic to the spying....
Gov't report: Smooth launch unsure for health law
WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no guarantee that President Barack Obama's health care law will launch smoothly and on time, congressional investigators say in the first in-depth independent look at its progress....
FBI hunt for Jimmy Hoffa's remains enters 3rd day
OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- FBI agents plan a third day of digging Wednesday in suburban Detroit for the remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared 38 years ago....
Search for Hoffa mystery endures for decades
Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance almost 40 years ago has been the stuff of urban legend, prompting numerous theories about what happened to the former Teamsters leader....
Chef describes kids' grief over Jackson's death
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Jackson's personal chef described for jurors the home lives of the children during the final months of the singer's life and their ongoing grief over their father's death nearly four years ago....
FBI digging at former home of famed NY mobster
NEW YORK (AP) -- FBI agents with jackhammers and shovels were digging Tuesday under a New York City house once occupied by a famed gangster who inspired Robert De Niro's character in the movie "Goodfellas."...
Former TWA Flight 800 investigators want new probe
NEW YORK (AP) -- Former investigators of the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island are calling on the National Transportation Safety Board to re-examine the case....
Zimmerman jury selection moving into a new phase
SANFORD, Fla. (AP) -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the George Zimmerman murder trial are about to move into the next phase of jury selection....
Baked Alaska: Unusual heat wave hits 49th state
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven - or a tropical paradise....
Award-winning journalist Michael Hastings dies
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Hastings, the war correspondent whose unflinching reporting from Afghanistan led to the resignation of a top U.S. army general, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, according to his employer and family....
WORLD NEWS
UK Girl Guides drop reference to God in pledge
LONDON (AP) -- Britain's Girl Guides have dropped a reference to God in their pledge....
5 Somalis, 7 militants die in attack on UN office
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Al-Qaida-linked militants detonated multiple bomb blasts and breached the main U.N. compound in Mogadishu on Wednesday, sparking gun battles with security forces that killed at least 12 people. U.N. personnel who reached the compound's secure bunker all survived, though officials hinted not all reached that bunker....
Karzai sets new conditions for talks with Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's president says he will not pursue peace talks with the Taliban unless the United States steps out of the negotiations and the militant group stops its violent attacks on the ground....
Obama: 'Lives have been saved' by NSA programs
BERLIN (AP) -- Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats....
Social-network gaffes plague Japanese politicians
TOKYO (AP) -- On the Internet, no one can save you from yourself. That is a lesson many Japanese politicians have learned recently in painful, awkward and at times costly fashion....
Turkey's 'standing man' to join ranks of icons?
The image was stark: a silent, solitary figure standing in passive defiance to the Turkish prime minister's demand for protesters to clear Taksim Square in central Istanbul....
Protesters out again in Brazil's biggest city
SAO PAULO (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country's biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament - people are weighed down by high taxes and high prices but get low-quality public services and a system of government infected with corruption....
Dutch manure silo fall kills 3 farmworkers
AMSTERDAM (AP) -- Dutch police say three farmworkers have died and a fourth has been critically injured after they fell into a silo filled with manure for use as fertilizer in the northern town of Makkinga....
Japan formally OKs new nuke safety requirements
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's nuclear watchdog formally approved a set of new safety requirements for atomic power plants Wednesday, paving the way for the reopening of facilities shut down since the Fukushima disaster....
AP PHOTOS: 3 little liligers cavort at Russian zoo
The zoo in Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, is home to a unique animal - the liliger. That's a big cat breed where the father is a lion and the mother is a lion-tiger hybrid, called a liger....
