AP - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to slowly lower an inflatable dam Thursday to release some of the water that's been building in a lake threatening to overflow and flood a Des Moines neighborhood.

AP - Authorities late Thursday found a small leak in a levee near downtown Des Moines, but officials said there was no imminent danger to a flood-prone neighborhood it protects and that residents had not been asked to leave.

AP - A day of searching for a 57-year-old climber who unclipped his rope and vanished near Mount Rainier's summit has ended without locating the man, a National Park Service spokeswoman said Friday night.

AP - For Sale: Two square miles of Grand Teton National Park.

AP - A patient and his wife were among the dead when an air ambulance crashed shortly after takeoff from a West Texas airport, killing all 5 people on board.

AP - People streamed into a storefront on a recent summer day at an upscale Dallas mall, but they weren't drawn to a heavy discount on designer clothes. It was story sing-a-long time for babies at one of the city library's newest outposts.

AP - The biological mother of a 7-year-old Oregon boy missing for more than a month issued a fresh appeal Tuesday to the boy's stepmother, again asking her to cooperate with police.

AP - A lawyer for one of 11 people accused of spying for Russia said their case could be resolved as early as Thursday.

AP - Diplomats say the U.N. Security Council is set to approve a statement condemning a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors, but the declaration stops short of directly blaming North Korea.

AP - U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged Congress on Friday to act soon to increase education funding because cash-strapped states can't wait until the fall to determine if they must lay off thousands of teachers.

AP - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is meeting privately with her successor as Arizona governor as the Obama administration challenges the state's immigration law.

AP - Federal prosecutors have spent five weeks showing Rod Blagojevich spewed a river of profanity while lavishing money on his wardrobe and ducking his job as governor of Illinois. But will jurors believe he was a racketeer who schemed to sell or trade Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat for personal gain?

AP - Rebuffed twice by the courts, the Obama administration is taking another crack at a moratorium on deep-water drilling, stressing new evidence of safety concerns and no longer basing the moratorium on water depth. But those who challenge the latest ban question whether it complies with a judge's ruling tossing out the first one.

AP - Through a sign-language interpreter at the Dallas County Jail, Stephen Brodie cops to all sorts of crimes save the one that put him behind bars for 10 years: sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl.

AP - When police arrived at a suburban Dallas mayor's sprawling upscale home, they quickly realized something was very wrong. Rather than attend a City Council meeting, Mayor Jayne Peters had apparently taped an envelope to the door with a key and an ominous note inside.

AP - Severe thunderstorms that sparked at least a dozen brush fires in Southern California are helping firefighters gain the upper hand on those blazes.

AP - BP says it's encouraged as it nears the end of the experimental 48-hour run of its new cap on the busted well in the Gulf of Mexico.

AP - Provocative new research shows that treating people with the AIDS virus can provide a powerful bonus: It cuts the risk that they will infect others.

AP - A convicted felon armed with three guns and wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers for several minutes during a traffic stop on an Oakland freeway Sunday before he was shot several times and wounded, authorities said.

AP - Authorities in the U.S. territory of Guam have turned away a ship after thousands of spiders overflowed from its cargo.

AP - A United Airlines jetliner was diverted to Denver on Tuesday after 30 people onboard were injured, one critically, when the plane hit severe turbulence while flying over Kansas, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

AP - A National Weather Service employee and his British-born wife pleaded guilty Wednesday to domestic terrorism charges of lying to the FBI about a hit list of possible targets who the couple suspected were enemies of Islam.

AP - The City Council in this small, blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles intends to ask three administrators whose salaries total more than $1.6 million to resign or face possible firing.

AP - A 27-year-old Army sergeant from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state has pleaded guilty in federal court to sex trafficking of a child and attempted sex trafficking of a child.

AP - Ships were getting back in place Sunday at the Gulf of Mexico site of BP's leaky oil well as crews raced to resume work on plugging the gusher before another big storm stops work again.

AP - Instead of planning Abby Guerra's funeral, family and friends hope for her recovery after learning that Arizona authorities misidentified her in an auto accident.

AP - The father of one of two women misidentified after a deadly Arizona traffic crash says the problem stemmed from a communication mistake at a Phoenix hospital.

AP - Jurors will go off to deliberate the fate of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich with the image of an immaculately dressed and smiling man with his two daughters sitting nearby in the courtroom, but also with the memory of him cursing in the vilest of terms about everyone from the president to the voters who elected him.

AP - A military cargo plane on a training run crashed Wednesday at an Air Force base near downtown Anchorage, but there was no immediate word on casualties, the Air Force said. Witnesses reported seeing a ball of fire rising hundreds of feet high.

AP - Prosecutors insist that a doctor accused of masterminding a bombing that disfigured the Arkansas State Medical Board chairman was a weapons fanatic bent on avenging the restriction of his medical license.

AP - Officials investigating the cause of a huge oil spill along a major river in southern Michigan say it will take months to clean up the mess, and damage to wetlands and wildlife may last considerably longer.