LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop diva Mariah Carey suffered a surprise setback in the resurrection of her career on Tuesday when she picked up just one prize at the American Music Awards, having led the field with four nominations.

USATODAY.com - James Windham, 63, of Hattiesburg, Miss., is a contract trucker for Buddy Moore Trucking in Birmingham, Ala. High diesel prices - which further increased after Hurricane Katrina - are an enormous problem, cutting into his earnings and savings and making it likely that he will have to postpone retirement.

AP - The frail girl arrived at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan weighing scarcely 35 pounds, sluggish and prone to alarming episodes of bluish skin if she so much as walked briskly.

AP - If you're flying for the holidays you have lots to think about: what to pack — and leave behind — what to wear and how early to get to the airport.

AP - The frail girl arrived at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan weighing scarcely 35 pounds, sluggish and prone to alarming episodes of bluish skin if she so much as walked briskly.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop diva Mariah Carey suffered a surprise setback in the resurrection of her career on Tuesday when she picked up just one prize at the American Music Awards, having led the field with four nominations.

LAREDO, Texas (Reuters) - The United States is closing a legal loophole which has allowed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to slip into the country and join the estimated 11 million undocumented foreigners already here.

LAREDO, Texas (Reuters) - Heat-sensing cameras. Motion detectors. X-ray systems. Drones. Night-vision goggles. Helicopters. More than 11,000 border patrol officers, and more to be recruited.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits grew by a larger-than-expected 30,000 last week, government data showed on Wednesday, taking claims to their highest point since mid-October.

MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Hollywood Reporter) - Fans of sex and comedy (and who isn't?) rejoice. It's not quite a Renaissance, but the cultural transition of South Beach continues.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - CNN apologized on Tuesday and offered a rare explanation from its control booth for a technical glitch many viewers failed to notice -- a large 'X' the network flashed over Vice President Dick Cheney's face.

Some 1 million adult New Yorkers are obese, but nearly two-thirds of them don't think they are, according to a study released on Tuesday by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

AP - Three years after the Bush administration labeled U.S. citizen Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and denied him normal access to the courts, he's facing criminal charges that he trained as a terrorist in preparation to fight a jihad.

AP - Psychiatrists have approved the release of a sex criminal who was among 27 held in mental hospitals on Gov. George Pataki's orders after their prison sentences were completed.

AP - The wife of a pastor murdered and burned alongside their daughter in the family's home offered forgiveness to their killer before he was sentenced to life in prison.

AP - If you're flying for the holidays you have lots to think about: what to pack — and leave behind — what to wear and how early to get to the airport. Tight security, new technology and airlines' financial woes are making air travel more complicated than ever this Thanksgiving, when many travelers take their one big trip of the year.

AP - The Indiana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the state's abortion waiting-period law which requires women seeking an abortion to receive in-person counseling about medical risks and alternatives.

AP - Traffic was snarled around the nation's capital early Wednesday after a tanker truck carrying 8,700 gallons of gasoline exploded on Interstate 95 on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

AP - After they spent the night together at his house, David Ludwig drove his 14-year-old girlfriend home at about 5:30 a.m. and then waited for the customary text-message that she had made it into her room safely.

AP - The law office of Douglas R. Beaty sits in a small business park near the city's more prosperous suburbs. Nothing on the front door says anything about the CIA or airplanes.

AP - Prison officials Wednesday fired a corrections officer who they say let an inmate use a cell phone to talk to his wife about three weeks before a courthouse escape that left another prison guard dead.

AP - The FBI says it has completed its investigation into the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a brutal slaying that helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

AP - A new Vatican decree against gays in the priesthood has brought mixed reactions from U.S. Roman Catholic observers, with some seeing notable benefits and others predicting morale problems and a worsening clergy shortage.

AP - The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for 'Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.'

AP - Blacks have a complicated love affair with the South. Their ancestors were enslaved in the region for generations, then Jim Crow laws pushed them to the back of the bus. From inner-city slums to old plantation counties, being black too often still means a second-class existence.

AP - The weather is lovely and the golf above par. But all is not well at Leisure World, one of the nation's first and biggest retirement communities.

AP - After Hurricane Katrina, Americans sent waves of trucks loaded with food to the many thousands of people driven from their homes by the storm. But that generosity may have had a hidden cost.

AP - President Bush is celebrating Thanksgiving in traditional American style — turkey dinner with the family. Granted, it's a free-range turkey, and the family includes a former president.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans' colorful Mardi Gras parades will roll again next year, despite the hole that Hurricane Katrina punched in the city budget.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day before millions of Americans sit down to eat traditional Thanksgiving dinners, a Virginia woman grabbed the world turkey-eating title on Wednesday by gobbling down a whole roast bird in 12 minutes.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Supporters of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, the street gang leader and convicted killer facing execution in three weeks, have filed a federal complaint against a Los Angeles radio station for a 'Tookie Must Die' campaign by two talk-show hosts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medicare will pay for surgery to treat obesity but only for disabled beneficiaries, the agency said on Wednesday, expressing concerns about possible risks from the procedure among older patients.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumers who shop and bank online believe criminals have no plans to take any holidays this season.

AP - A Pakistani man who claimed he was pressured into a false confession was convicted Wednesday of trying to help an al-Qaida operative slip past U.S. immigration officials.

AP - Millions of Americans hit the road or took to the sky Wednesday in the annual dash to someone else's house for Thanksgiving turkey, despite the prospect of traffic jams, snowy highways and crowded airports and train stations.

AP - Floods and hurricanes aren't enough to stop the New Orleans revelry: City officials announced Wednesday that the Mardi Gras celebration is on for February, though it will be a few days shorter than usual.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A commuter train crashed into five vehicles at a rail crossing near Chicago on Wednesday, triggering a chain reaction collision that injured 16 people, officials said.

AP - War protesters say they are determined to demonstrate outside President Bush's ranch during the Thanksgiving holiday despite the arrests of a dozen people on Wednesday.

BusinessWeek Online - Type the term 'human growth hormone' into Google and the screen immediately fills up with paid ads from Web sites eager to sell the drug as a cure for old age. Human growth hormone (HGH) is approved by the Food & Drug Administration to treat children with growth deficiencies as well as adults with two very specific disorders, but the Web ads make it appear as if HGH can stop the aging process. 'Improve overall health by boosting HGH levels,' promises one site. 'Anti-aging in your own home,' screams another.

AP - A fired employee shot two supervisors at a food distribution business Wednesday, then shot fatally himself in the head just outside the front door, authorities and the business owner said.