02/23/12 06:54 AM UTC AP

President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period. But trouble could be ahead: Still-struggling Americans are fretting over rising gasoline prices. Just weeks before the summer travel season begins, the Associated Press-GfK survey finds pump prices rising in importance and most people unhappy with how Democratic president has handled the issue.

02/23/12 05:10 AM UTC AP

The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it. "If anyone in my police department had known this was a blanket investigation of individuals based on nothing but their religion, that strikes at the core of our beliefs and my beliefs very personally, and it would have merited a far sterner response," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said.

02/23/12 04:58 AM UTC AP

A former District of Columbia police commander whose division provided a police escort to actor Charlie Sheen last April has given notice that he intends to file a whistleblower lawsuit against the city, saying he was demoted because he testified to the D.C. Council that such escorts for celebrities were commonplace. Hilton Burton was demoted in August as commander of the special operations division and transferred to the medical services branch. In a whistleblower notice filed with the city and obtained by The Associated Press, Burton alleges the demotion was punishment for telling the council that there was nothing inappropriate or unusual about the escort provided to Sheen.

02/23/12 04:05 AM UTC AP

A jury convicted a former University of Virginia lacrosse player Wednesday of second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend in a drunken, jealous rage, rejecting a first-degree murder verdict and a possible life sentence. Instead, jurors recommended a 25-year prison term for George Huguely V in the May 2010 slaying of Yeardley Love. They added one more year for a grand larceny conviction.

02/23/12 03:54 AM UTC AP

At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide. Her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment are in jail, facing murder charges Wednesday.

02/23/12 03:21 AM UTC AP

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that the U.S. government cannot deny health benefits to the wife of a lesbian court employee by relying on the 1996 law that bars government recognition of same-sex unions. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said that because the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally discriminates against same-sex married couples, the government's refusal to furnish health insurance to Karen Golinski's wife is unjustified.

02/23/12 02:26 AM UTC AP

Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana. After drinking on the drive, and downing more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.

02/23/12 02:22 AM UTC AP

Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million. Wright's 345 comics, nearly all of which were published from 1936 through 1941, included many of the most prized issues ever, including Detective Comics No. 27, which features the debut of Batman, and Action Comics No. 1, in which Superman's first appears.

02/23/12 02:26 AM UTC AP

A 73-year-old gunman entangled in a love triangle shot and killed the treasurer of a remote-controlled airplane club who police said was having an affair with the estranged wife of the attacker. Before turning the gun on himself Tuesday, Robert Gully chased the woman from a parking lot into the lobby of a building where the club was meeting.

02/23/12 01:27 AM UTC AP

Troy James Knapp is a wanted man, a mountain recluse authorities say is responsible for more than two dozen cabin burglaries in the remote southern Utah wilderness. He's considered armed and dangerous, a ticking time bomb. After more than five years on the loose, a virtual ghost in the woods, authorities say they have finally identified their suspect. Now they just have to catch him.

02/23/12 01:16 AM UTC AP

President Barack Obama signed the payroll tax cut extension into law Wednesday, notching an election-year victory and rare bipartisan agreement in the continuing partisan battle over jobs, taxes and debt. The $143 billion measure that Congress passed overwhelmingly on Friday continues the 2 percentage-point reduction in the tax that funds Social Security, a cut begun last year to aid the nation's struggling economic recovery. It also extends jobless benefits for between 63 weeks and 73 weeks, and averts a big cut in the reimbursements doctors get for treating Medicare patients.

02/23/12 12:46 AM UTC AP

A Texas man who kidnapped his former neighbor and tortured her while holding her captive nearly two weeks was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison. Jeffrey Allan Maxwell, 59, will be eligible for parole after serving 60 years because the judge ordered him to serve two of his three life sentences consecutively. The same jury convicted Maxwell a day earlier of aggravated kidnapping and two counts of aggravated sexual assault. He faced a minimum sentence of probation.

02/23/12 12:34 AM UTC AP

An 8-year-old girl was in critical condition Wednesday after she shot in the abdomen at her elementary school near Seattle, and one of her classmates was detained, authorities said Wednesday. The injured third-grader was airlifted to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, where she underwent surgery Wednesday afternoon so doctors could assess her injuries, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.

02/23/12 12:32 AM UTC AP

Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, saying the state's true goal was to suppress religious objections by druggists — not to promote timely access to the medicines for people who need them. U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton sided with a pharmacy and two pharmacists who said state rules requiring them to dispense Plan B violate their constitutional rights to freedom of religion because such drugs can destroy a fertilized egg, which they consider equal to abortion.

02/22/12 11:38 PM UTC AP

A gunman walked into the Su Jung Health Sauna, argued with someone and then opened fire, killing two of his sisters and their husbands, then himself, authorities said Wednesday And the carnage could have been worse — about 20 people were inside the bath house when the shooting started near the front of the stand-alone brick building decked out with white columns and white Greek-style statues. Four people were found dead inside, and another was taken to a hospital before being pronounced dead, police said.

02/22/12 11:36 PM UTC AP

Current and former aides to Sarah Palin are strongly denouncing an upcoming HBO movie about the 2008 presidential campaign. None of them has yet seen the movie "Game Change," based on the best-selling book, with several saying Wednesday that they had been denied the opportunity for a screening.

02/22/12 11:25 PM UTC AP

Some congressional offices outside Washington and media organizations have received threatening letters containing a suspicious powdery substance that was tested and proved to be harmless, the FBI and the Senate's top law enforcement officer said Wednesday. Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer said in a memo to Senate offices that the letters were sent to three state and home district offices. A district office of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, received one of the letters, spokesman Kevin Smith said.

02/22/12 11:15 PM UTC AP

A Virginia man charged with plotting a suicide bombing inside the U.S. Capitol as part of an FBI sting will remain in jail while he awaits trial after he waived his right to a detention hearing Wednesday. Amine El Khalifi, 29, of Alexandria, appeared in U.S. District Court for a hearing lasting less than five minutes. He also waived his right to a preliminary hearing, and his case now goes to a grand jury for an indictment.

02/22/12 10:59 PM UTC AP

Violent crime at the nation's schools is declining, and students and schools are reporting less bullying and gang activity. But new government data reports an increase in cyber bullying and youth suicides.

02/22/12 10:47 PM UTC AP

The ink wasn't even dry on a settlement with the nation's top mortgage lenders when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon laid claim to a chunk of the money to avert a huge budget cut for public colleges and universities. He's not the only politician eyeing the cash for purposes that have nothing to do with foreclosure. Like a pot of gold in a barren field, the $25 billion deal offers a tempting and timely source of funding for state governments with multimillion-dollar budget gaps.

02/22/12 10:22 PM UTC AP

Free speech cases before the Supreme Court often lead justices to consider far-fetched scenarios, and Wednesday's argument over a law making it a crime to lie about having received top military honors was no exception. One after another, the justices wanted to know whether a decision upholding the Stolen Valor Act could lead down a slippery slope to new laws against such things as lying about the Holocaust, an extramarital affair, a high school diploma, college degrees or to impress a date.

02/22/12 10:17 PM UTC AP

President Barack Obama rolled out a corporate tax overhaul plan Wednesday that lowers rates but also eliminates loopholes and subsidies cherished by the business world. A long-shot for action in an election year, the plan nevertheless stamps Obama's imprint on one of the most high-profile issues of the presidential campaign. The president's plan to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent came on the same day Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney called for a 20 percent across-the-board cut in personal income tax rates, underscoring the potency of taxes as a political issue, especially during a modest economic recovery.

02/22/12 10:16 PM UTC AP

The Obama administration's top immigration official said Wednesday he wants to keep more foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs in the U.S. But to make that happen, he said he needs those entrepreneurs to turn their creativity to immigration itself. Members of Silicon Valley's startup community met with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Director Alejandro Mayorkas for what the agency billed as a summit to officially launch its unusual "Entrepreneurs in Residence" program.

02/22/12 10:08 PM UTC AP

In the field of climate science, when someone — especially skeptics — did something ethically questionable or misrepresented facts, scientist Peter Gleick was usually among the first and loudest to cry foul. He chaired a prominent scientific society's ethics committee. He created an award for what he considered lies about global warming. Now Gleick admits that he posed as a board member to get and then distribute to the media sensitive documents from a conservative think tank that is a leader in denying mainstream climate change science.

02/22/12 10:02 PM UTC AP

The Senate's top law enforcement officer says congressional offices have received threatening letters containing a suspicious powdery substance. Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer said in a memo to Senate offices that the letters were sent to three state and home district offices and that the substance was tested and found to be harmless.

02/22/12 09:55 PM UTC AP

Frederick Douglass was black and that was enough for the Smithsonian Institution to bar the famed abolitionist from speaking at a lecture series intended to convince President Abraham Lincoln that he should end slavery as war divided the nation in February 1862. A century and a half later, the country's first black president helped break ground on a National Mall museum meant to give voice to the African-American experience long ignored by the chief repository of U.S. history and heritage.

02/22/12 09:52 PM UTC AP

The Obama administration declared Alzheimer's "one of the most feared health conditions" on Wednesday as it issued a draft of a new national strategy to fight the ominous rise in this mind-destroying disease. More than 5 million Americans already have Alzheimer's or similar dementias, a toll expected to reach up to 16 million by 2050 — along with skyrocketing medical and nursing home bills — because the population is aging so rapidly.

02/22/12 08:59 PM UTC AP

Authorities say they are searching for a man they believe kidnapped two young children after offering help to their mother after the family car broke down along an Atlanta-area interstate. Police say the children were subsequently found uninjured with two women, who reported a male acquaintance had asked them to babysit the pair.

02/22/12 08:51 PM UTC AP

Federal prosecutors investigating the West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 29 men are working their way up the corporate ladder with criminal charges. On Wednesday, the former superintendent of the Upper Big Branch mine became the highest-ranking company official charged in the 2010 disaster, and he is apparently cooperating with prosecutors, who said the investigation is far from over.

02/22/12 08:47 PM UTC AP

A convicted rapist accused of killing a 16-year-old girl he met online pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder Wednesday, several days after authorities found the girl's body in a blue, plastic barrel in western Arkansas. A judge appointed a public defender to represent Lloyd Jones, 36, in the case of Angela Allen's death. The public defender's office said an attorney hasn't yet been assigned.

02/22/12 08:22 PM UTC AP

The Supreme Court seemed divided Wednesday on whether to allow an Arkansas man to be retried on murder charges even though a jury forewoman said in open court that they were unanimously against finding him guilty. Alex Blueford of Jacksonville, Ark., was charged in July 2008 in the death of 20-month-old Matthew McFadden Jr. Blueford testified at trial that he elbowed the boy in the head by accident. Authorities say the child was beaten to death.

02/22/12 07:58 PM UTC AP

An Associated Press survey of the nation's top methamphetamine-producing states shows national lab seizures rose again last year. The survey confirmed that Missouri regained the top spot for lab seizures in 2011 with just more than 2,000 busts. It also found that Tennessee came in second with almost 1,700, followed by Indiana, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

02/22/12 08:15 PM UTC AP

The widow of country music legend Roger Miller doesn't own the rights to some of his biggest hits, including "King of the Road," a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Sony/ATV Music Publishing owns the renewal copyrights to the songs the artist published in 1964. Federal courts have already ruled that Sony owns the rights to Miller's songs that were published from 1958 to 1963.

02/22/12 07:36 PM UTC AP

Newark Mayor Cory Booker and his top police official say the city was misled by the New York Police Department and never would have authorized such wholesale spying on Muslims if they had known about it. Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party, says he was offended to read a 2007 NYPD report that catalogued all his city's mosques and Muslim businesses. Police Director Samuel DeMaio said the NYPD simply asked local police to show them around the city. He says Newark officers had no idea it was part of the NYPD's effort to build databases on where Muslims eat, work, shop and pray.

02/22/12 06:36 PM UTC AP

The housing market is flashing signs of health ahead of the spring-buying season. Sales of previously occupied homes are at their highest level since May 2010. More first-time buyers are making purchases. And the supply of homes fell last month to its lowest point in nearly seven years, which could push home prices higher.

02/22/12 06:04 PM UTC AP

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman's house. The high court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials, who were being sued personally by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.

02/22/12 06:00 PM UTC AP

A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality. The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

02/22/12 05:55 PM UTC AP

A spokesman for the international military force in Afghanistan says findings from an investigation into the burning of Muslim holy books at a NATO base may come out as early as Wednesday. German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson told reporters at the Pentagon by video-teleconference from Kabul that Afghan authorities joined the probe of what he called a mistaken burning of religious materials, including Qurans.

02/22/12 05:28 PM UTC AP

The Supreme Court sided with a power company Wednesday in a dispute with Montana over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers. In a case that reached back to the travels of Lewis and Clark more than 200 years ago, the court voted unanimously to throw out a state court ruling that could have cost the company, PPL Montana, more than $50 million.

02/22/12 05:11 PM UTC AP

A federal advisory panel wants all U.S. adults to get vaccinated against whooping cough. The panel voted Wednesday to expand its recommendation to include all those 65 and older who haven't gotten a whooping cough shot as an adult.