NEW YORK (Reuters) - America voted and ended contestant Antonella Barba's hopes of becoming the next 'American Idol' on Thursday, after several racy photos of the New Jersey resident surfaced on the Internet.

AP - An author who wrote a vivid book about gang life and is considered one of the city's most wanted gang members has been taken into custody, police announced Thursday.

AP - A tour helicopter crashed at an airport on the island of Kauai on Thursday, killing four people, including the pilot, and critically injuring three, officials said.

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - A CBS News correspondent badly injured in an Iraqi bomb attack that killed two members of her crew said Thursday that it was still crucial that journalists cover the war despite the dangers.

AP - The fire started late at night and climbed quickly through the house. By the time Fatoumata Soumare called her husband from inside, she seemed to know she was doomed.

AP - A Texas Ranger told lawmakers he was stymied in his two-year struggle to bring justice for the alleged victims of an expanding sex abuse scandal in the state's youth prison system.

AP - Colorado's top wildlife officer would rather not see the burgeoning elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park thinned by park employees hunting at night with rifles and silencers.

AP - After an unusually warm December rattled the nerves of anyone eagerly anticipating Washington's grand rite of spring, the National Park Service predicted the cherry blossoms will bloom in time for the two-week National Cherry Blossom Festival.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Change a light bulb and stop a war. Build smarter homes and keep the seas from rising.

AP - The father of five children killed with their cousins in the city's deadliest fire in 17 years flew home to the U.S. Friday after learning the devastating news while on a business trip in his native Mali.

AP - He has never been to Sicily, but that isn't stopping a retired math professor from running for a city council seat there.

AP - Mayor Frank Melton was back on the job Friday after the state Supreme Court ordered his release from jail, where a judge had sent him two days earlier for violating probation.

AP - A man walked into an appliance company and shot a woman several times Friday, then fled, leaving the victim in critical condition, authorities said.

AP - Kroger Co. said Friday it was reiterating its drug policies to all of its pharmacists after a Georgia woman claimed she was denied the so-called 'morning after' pill at one of the company's stores.

AP - A gunman chased his ex-girlfriend through her office Friday morning, shooting at her over the cubicles and leaving her in critical before fleeing, authorities said.

AP - The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent among dozens of large U.S. cities since 2004, a study shows in the latest sign of the end of a national lull in violent crime.

AP - Exactly 145 years after the USS Monitor faced the Confederate ship CSS Virginia in the first clash of ironclads, a $30 million center dedicated to the Union vessel opened Friday.

AP - A teenager who shot his ex-girlfriend outside her school before killing himself had struggled with anger and depression and recently had stopped taking his medication, his mother said.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Investigators hunting a suspect who has mailed inoperable pipe bombs and threats to U.S. financial houses since 2005 released photos of two of his hand-addressed packages on Friday as well as phrases he has repeatedly used in messages -- including 'Bang you're dead.'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Financial Services Committee plans a March 22 hearing on whether to close the federal banking loophole that allows retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Home Depot Inc. to operate banks, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Even schoolyard bake sales have gone high-tech.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Calls made on cell phones do not affect hospital medical devices, U.S. researchers said on Friday, but store anti-theft alarms might make implanted heart devices misfire.

AP - A videotape showing Pentagon officials' final interrogation of al-Qaida suspect Jose Padilla is missing, raising questions about whether federal prosecutors have lost other recordings and evidence in the case.

AP - Joseph Kopera was known admiringly as 'Dr. K' and Joe 'No Compare 'em' Kopera, a veteran police ballistics expert who testified in hundreds of cases over four decades and was respected by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike.

AP - Federal product-safety officials said Friday they were investigating whether there were any design flaws in a portable space heater blamed for a house fire that killed nine people.

AP - Federal authorities raided a southern Arizona business accused of hiring illegal immigrants Friday, three days after immigration agents detained more than 360 workers at a leather factory in Massachusetts.

AP - The three passengers killed when their tour helicopter crashed on Kauai and the three survivors were from Arkansas, California and New York, authorities said Friday.

AP - The end of a little-known federal subsidy that funneled millions of dollars to rural counties to compensate them for restrictions on logging is forcing communities in the West to close libraries, reduce police patrols and put off road repairs.

AP - Winona State University senior Rick Howden, a business administration major, figures he knows a bad deal when he sees it. A $4,500 tab for his college textbooks by the time he graduates? Bad deal.

AP - A chemical weapons incinerator destroyed the last of nearly 36,000 rockets carrying the deadly nerve agent VX, part of a huge munitions stockpile that dated back to the Cold War.

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania sportsmen's club was fined $400 on Friday for cruelty to animals after using live turkeys as targets, prosecutors said.

AP - Jean Kennedy Schmidt, one of the nurses dubbed the 'Angels of Bataan' who were held prisoner in the Philippines during World War II, has died. She was 88.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Chrysler Group said on Friday it would recall almost half a million vehicles, including recent models of the Jeep Liberty and Dodge Durango after reported fires and its new Dodge Avenger sedan because of faulty door latches.

AP - Two shattered fathers who lost eight children to the city's deadliest fire in nearly 20 years reunited in grief Friday to plan funerals as members of the Mali immigrant community rallied to their aid.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will become by year's end the first U.S. university to offer all of its roughly 1,800 courses free on the Internet, a school official said on Friday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Newly eliminated 'American Idol' contestant Antonella Barba said on Friday the racy photographs that made her an Internet sensation were taken for personal use only and released without her consent.

AP - A former escort service owner who has threatened to sell a list of 15,000 phone numbers from her client list to help her defense pleaded not guilty Friday to racketeering.

AP - A 17-year-old who survived being shot four times by an ex-boyfriend who then killed himself had transferred to the school where she was wounded to get away from him, a relative said Friday.

AP - Tests confirmed Friday that two American women hospitalized after they became ill on a trip to Russia were poisoned by thallium, but the women believe it was accidental, their lawyer and the hospital said.

AP - An out-of-control sport utility vehicle went airborne and landed on a car, killing three Chinese college students in the sedan, authorities said Friday.

AP - A few swastika-emblazoned stickers have been left on a mosque and another building in town, prompting a police investigation, officials said.

AP - A new Homeland Security program aims to analyze existing, legally collected computer data, not gather new personal information on U.S. citizens, Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday in defending the program from congressional critics.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brad Delp, the lead singer of the 1970s and '80s rock band Boston was found dead at his home in southern New Hampshire on Friday, local police said.

AP - A state assistant attorney general received a report a year ago that graphically detailed the sexual abuse of inmates at a youth prison but declined to pursue the case because of jurisdictional concerns, according to e-mails obtained Friday by The Associated Press.