HOUSTON (Reuters) - Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001, will face a second trial after the state's highest criminal court refused on Wednesday to reinstate the murder convictions against her.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mondays are the busiest days for online holiday shopping during the season that runs from the Thanksgiving holiday to the end of the year, and advertisers should plan their spending accordingly, a study released on Thursday said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Victoria's Secret fashion show staged an exuberant return on Wednesday evening as the lingerie retailer brought back its sexually-charged runway extravaganza for the first time in two years.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Los Angeles-area men already facing drug and conspiracy charges were indicted on Wednesday for conspiring to smuggle shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles into the United States, federal prosecutors said.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man convicted of strangling a schoolteacher during a sexual assault in 1993 was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday.

AP - A jury took less than two hours Wednesday to convict a man of raping a woman 32 years ago at knifepoint — a verdict made possible by DNA technology that did not exist when the suspect escaped conviction in the 1970s.

AP - As a defense attorney, James Ruane formed a strong bond with a client who authorities say was one of Bridgeport's biggest drug dealers.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001, will face a second trial after the state's highest criminal court refused on Wednesday to reinstate the murder convictions against her.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles police are investigating a car crash and traffic stop involving heiress Paris Hilton to determine if officers allowed her friend to drive while drunk, a police spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Victoria's Secret fashion show staged an exuberant return on Wednesday evening as the lingerie retailer brought back its sexually-charged runway extravaganza for the first time in two years.

AP - More than 30 people died waiting for liver transplants at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center while the hospital turned down scores of organs, according to a report in Thursday's Los Angeles Times.

AP - The brother of a man accused of raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl wiped his eyes Wednesday as he recounted how his sibling described sexually assaulting and killing the girl.

AP - A hunter who drew one of two dozen coveted licenses to take part in one of Montana's first bison hunts in 15 years is a convicted felon who legally can't carry a gun.

AP - When Fritzie Fritzshall was 12, she and her family were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from a Jewish ghetto in what was then Czechoslovakia. Her grandfather did not survive the journey.

AP - Former Presidents Clinton and Bush received the International Rescue Committee's Freedom Award for helping the victims of December's tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When rapper Lil' Kim was sentenced to a year in federal prison this summer for lying to a grand jury about a Manhattan shootout, she was lionized by media covering the hip-hop music scene for not 'snitching.'

AP - More than 30 patients died waiting for liver transplants while the understaffed University of California Irvine Medical Center turned down organs, a published report said.

AP - Scientists will begin testing in January whether they can stretch the nation's limited supply of an experimental bird-flu vaccine by pairing it with an immune-system booster.

AP - A judge threw out a manslaughter charge against a young man who fatally stabbed a teenager who allegedly attacked him because he is gay.

AP - The Republican chairman of a House panel investigating the response to Hurricane Katrina threatened Wednesday to issue subpoenas for documents if the White House and other agencies don't provide them by Nov. 18.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional panel said on Thursday it could not determine if baseball slugger Rafael Palmeiro had lied when he testified he had never used steroids -- and then later tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. on Thursday introduced a mini-fleet of hybrid taxicabs to serve New York City, part of its push to promote cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

AP - The smoking rate among U.S. adults continues to inch downward, with 20.9 of Americans describing themselves as regular puffers last year.

AP - Child welfare officials apparently lost track of a Louisiana infant in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and he died after his father smashed his head into a wall, authorities said.

AP - Police have stepped up patrols of hotels in Manhattan as a precaution following the suicide bombings of three hotels in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

AP - A bus returning tourists to their hotels after a boat cruise collided with a tractor-trailer, killing two people and critically injuring three others, authorities said.

AP - Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into the levee failures that swamped New Orleans, looking into the possibility of corruption in the design, construction and maintenance of the flood barriers.

AP - Lloyd Brown remembers Armistice Day in 1918 as few — ever so few — veterans can.

AP - The increase in the number of people without health insurance has occurred largely because of illegal immigration, a study found.

AP - Prosecutors said they will drop charges against 80 poker players arrested after what police called the biggest gambling raid in the city since Prohibition.

AP - City Hall and a post office were evacuated and a bomb squad was called in after a car carrying chemical tanks was parked nearby, but officials later determined the vehicle was not a threat.

AP - In the city once known as the world's slaughterhouse, restaurants, politicians and animal rights activists are worked up over a goose liver delicacy.

AP - Police stepped up patrols of Manhattan hotels as a precaution following three hotel suicide bombings in Jordan, and many visitors went about their business as usual Thursday, saying they trusted the city's terrorism expertise.

AP - A bus returning tourists to their hotels after a riverboat cruise collided with a tractor-trailer, killing two people and critically injuring three others, authorities said.

AP - The final goodbyes for those killed in the deadliest tornado to hit Indiana in 30 years began Thursday with a slow walk past the tiny white casket of a 4-year-old boy.

AP - A 200-year-old house believed to have been a way station on the Underground Railroad has been almost entirely knocked down, angering preservationists.

AP - The government has not developed an organized way to stop people from illegally importing prescription drugs, a congressional study issued Thursday said.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - An incident in which New Orleans police killed two suspected snipers accused of firing at officers in the chaos following Hurricane Katrina will be reviewed by prosecutors, the district attorney said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, seeking to avert a possible controversy, said on Thursday he never to his knowledge ruled in a case in which he had an obligation to recuse himself -- and had been 'unduly restrictive' in a 1990 vow on possible conflicts of interest.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York quickly deployed police special forces to protect hotels and hunted for evidence at hotel bombings in Amman in case the suicide attacks in Jordan's capital presaged future strikes here.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army, in its first recruiting month since missing its fiscal 2005 goal, topped its target for October, and the Army National Guard beat its goal for the first time in 13 months, officials said on Thursday.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - The commander of an elite U.S. Forest Service firefighting team was indicted on arson charges on Thursday, accused of setting two wildfires in a national forest, officials said.

AP - A federal prosecutor said Thursday he's pursuing tips about corruption relating to the building and maintenance of levees that broke during Hurricane Katrina.

AP - An FBI witness said Thursday that hair samples taken from Carlie Brucia's head had the same characteristics as two hairs found in a station wagon driven by the man on trial for abducting, raping and strangling the 11-year-old girl.

AP - An American woman living in Beirut was among dozens killed in the triple hotel bombings in Jordan and her father, the executive producer of the "Halloween" horror movies, was critically injured, a family member said Thursday.