AP - Teachers in budget-stressed schools are accustomed to shelling out for paper, glue and pencils. But the staff here wasn't ready for this: a new fee for having coffee makers, microwaves and refrigerators in classrooms and offices.

AP - A tribal chairman says his son admits using the Internet inappropriately but does not accept responsibility for the shootings on an Indian reservation last March that left 10 dead.

AP - Jose Padilla's transfer from a military brig to Justice Department custody was delayed Wednesday by federal appellate judges who want more information from the government and Padilla's lawyers.

AP - Designers of a Flight 93 memorial have made a bowl-shaped piece of land its centerpiece, replacing a crescent-shape design that some critics had said was a symbol honoring terrorists, officials announced Wednesday.

AP - The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel.

AP - Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

AP - The Justice Department issued a broad defense Tuesday of an investigative tool used by the FBI to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a court order or grand jury subpoena.

AP - A day before Robin Lovitt was to become the 1,000th person executed since capital punishment resumed in 1977, Virginia's governor spared his life.

AP - Motorcycles and skiers, baseball players and lovers, a 40-stamp series featuring America's biggest, tallest and deepest, from sea cliffs to bison to waterfalls and lakes. They're all commemoratives planned for next year by the U.S. Postal Service.

AP - Four Christian peace activists taken hostage in Iraq belong to a group that has spent more than 15 years walking into some of world's hottest war zones, usually armed only with notes explaining that they aren't there to convert anyone.

AP - Every morning except Saturday, the buses stop at a bustling corner of Manhattan, and bearded men in dark suits and felt hats, some clutching prayer books and speaking Yiddish, step onto the sidewalk and disappear into a brick building.

AP - A pair of shooting deaths brought the number of homicides in Boston this year to 66, matching a 10-year high in a city that had made strides in curbing violent crime.

AP - Colorado pulled the plug Wednesday on its problem-plagued voter registration computer system and will miss a Jan. 1 federal deadline for having it up and running.

AP - Federal appeals court judges on Wednesday said they want more information from the government and lawyers for Jose Padilla before they order his transfer from a military brig to Justice Department custody.

AP - The Atlantic hurricane season ends Wednesday, but Tropical Storm Epsilon could still cause dangerous surf conditions in Bermuda, forecasters said.

AP - Power company crews were making progress in turning the lights back on Wednesday for thousands of customers who were blacked out in the Dakotas by this week's blizzard, and most highways had been reopened.

AP - Connie Ayres lost her 16-year-old daughter in a car crash in 1996. The next year she learned that a county morgue was using the autopsy photos in a slide show to help fight drunken driving.

AP - Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

AP - An inmate set to become the 1,000th person executed in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated said Wednesday he doesn't think he deserves death for murdering his estranged wife and her father.

AP - A California company is voluntarily recalling about 6 million children's necklaces and zipper pulls that pose a serious risk of lead poisoning, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Wednesday.

AP - U.S. Roman Catholic leaders praised the contributions of celibate gay priests in response to a new Vatican pronouncement against homosexuals in the priesthood, a move that could imply some dioceses and religious orders want flexibility in applying church policy.

AP - Relatives of a black woman shot to death in an attack by a mob of whites during a week of racial violence in York in 1969 will receive $2 million from the city under a tentative settlement, according to a published report.

AP - The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt the scheduled execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, the Crips gang founder who became an anti-gang activist while in prison and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Reuters - Since the U.S. Supreme Court banned the promotion of religion in public schools in 1963, the Bible has virtually disappeared from most American classrooms.

AP - The government's decision to allow airline passengers to carry small scissors is part of a broader shift in airport security, focusing more on keeping explosives off planes and less on stopping another Sept. 11-type attack.

AP - The government has earmarked $12.8 million for DNA tests to help Louisiana authorities identify people killed by Hurricane Katrina, breaking a bottleneck that has left 270 people unidentified.

AP - A Florida plan for quick, coordinated police response to child abductions — developed after the 2004 killing of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia — is being taken nationwide.

AP - Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

AP - A man who called himself 'Dr. Chaos' online was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in federal prison for hacking into computers and causing power failures in northeastern Wisconsin.

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - A hit-and-run victim was left dead on a Pittsburgh roadside for three days, probably because he was covered by snowfall, police said on Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The California Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stop the execution in two weeks of former street gang leader and convicted killer Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, whose supporters say has turned his life around in prison as an anti-gang activist and author.

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - Storm-weary residents on the Florida island of Key West celebrated the end of the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record on Wednesday by ceremonially burning red and black hurricane warning flags.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington, D.C., needs to improve its contracting practices, Mayor Anthony Williams said on Wednesday, but he denied a report in the Washington Post that widespread abuses cost the city $50 million a year.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - One of the highest murder rates in the world, a tradition of frontier justice and unwavering faith in biblical retribution have helped keep the death penalty alive in the United States even as much of the modern world has rejected it, experts on the subject say.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans lost its hospitals to Katrina's flood waters, and now risks losing its doctors and nurses to slow recovery -- leaving a big missing piece in the puzzle of putting the city back together.

AP - Mayor Michael Bloomberg, singer Harry Connick Jr. and children displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita set the 30,000 colored lights on this year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree aglow at a ceremony Wednesday evening.

AP - Government engineers performing sonar tests at the site of a major levee failure confirmed that steel reinforcements barely went more than half as deep as they were supposed to, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said Wednesday.

AP - A wind-driven grass fire sparked Wednesday on a military bombing range in eastern New Mexico destroyed two buildings, charred 27,000 acres and forced dozens of people to evacuate this small farming community.

AP - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said his city will never be totally safe from hurricanes, no matter how much its levees are strengthened, but he urged Hurricane Katrina evacuees Wednesday night to come home anyway.

AP - The Atlantic hurricane season officially ended Wednesday, but Tropical Storm Epsilon could still cause dangerous surf conditions in Bermuda as it nears hurricane strength, forecasters said.