WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About half of U.S. college students binge drink or abuse drugs, and the number who abuse prescription medication such as painkillers is up sharply, a report released on Thursday found.

AP - A possible last-minute witness emerged as the city anxiously watched a grand jury weighing the case of five police officers who unleashed a 50-bullet barrage that killed an unarmed man on his wedding day, authorities said.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Job losses in the U.S. industrial heartland have left states like Michigan and Ohio more vulnerable to mortgage defaults, as home finance costs rise amid often moribund real-estate markets.

AP - An Army staff sergeant will tell a military court Thursday that he did not order members of his squad to kill three Iraqi detainees as his soldiers have testified, but did help them cover up the crime, his attorney said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cristina Soler and her daughter jostle with other adults and families in sub-zero temperatures in a crush outside a theater on 42nd street, but they show no signs of frustration.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Thursday will disclose questionable practices uncovered during a nationwide investigation into the college loan industry, his office said.

AP - Flood warnings were issued across the state Thursday following a day of severe storms, which spawned a small tornado that ripped siding from an office supply store, flattened residential garages and forced some schools to cancel classes because of a power outage.

AP - A man pulled his estranged girlfriend into an elevator in the office building where she worked and set off a homemade bomb, killing them both, authorities and witnesses said.

ALBANY, New York (Reuters) - A prosecutor from New York plans to tell major U.S. professional sports leagues which of their players are tied to his investigation of a suspected ring selling steroids over the Internet.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday that companies specializing in student loans paid kickbacks to universities and their employees for steering business to them.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The search for 12 jurors to decide the fate of former media baron Conrad Black accelerated on Thursday with an early court start aimed at getting the criminal fraud trial under way as planned next week.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Children may lose out over the next decade even as the federal government spends more on domestic programs, because a smaller share will go to education, health care and other benefits, researchers said on Thursday.

AP - A mentally troubled woman accused of drowning her 6-year-old daughter, cutting off her head and throwing the remains off a bridge has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CBS Corp. has reached a deal with YouTube to show highlights, press conferences and other content from the NCAA basketball tournament on the video-sharing site, the broadcaster said on Thursday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Thursday said a broad investigation into student lending practices found that lenders paid kickbacks to colleges and their employees for steering business their way, one of many practices that violate state laws.

AP - A man stabbed his 11-month-old son in the back, threw the boy out the car window with the kitchen knife stuck in his back and then drove away, police said Thursday. His 5-year-old son managed to escape unharmed.

AP - A last-minute witness testified Thursday before a grand jury that is considering whether to charge five police officers who unleashed a 50-bullet barrage that killed an unarmed man on his wedding day.

AP - Friction between rocks and the metal roof-support system of the Sago Mine — not lightning — probably sparked the methane gas explosion that killed 12 men last year, the United Mine Workers argued Thursday.

AP - The attorney for a man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit asked jurors Thursday to help set things right by acquitting him of murder in another case.

AP - Mark Ternent squeezes his bulky frame into the narrow opening of a bear den and shines a flashlight into the eyes of a 200-pound female. Two black bear cubs are suckling, and their mother looks back at Ternent, alert but relaxed. It is early March, and these bears won't come out of hibernation for another six weeks.

AP - A 17-year-old girl who spent weeks looking for her missing dog unwrapped a box left on her doorstep and found the pet's severed head inside, authorities said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are not eating anywhere near enough fruits and vegetables and are putting themselves at risk of heart disease, cancer and other health problems, government researchers reported on Thursday.

AP - A man pulled his estranged girlfriend into an elevator in the office building where she worked and ignited a 2-gallon container of gasoline, killing them both, authorities and witnesses said.

AP - Dozens of searchers scoured a creek for three people missing Thursday after their boat went over a lake spillway, but only pieces of the vessel were found, officials said.

AP - An inmate was convicted Thursday of murdering his cellmate by a jury that viewed gruesome videotape of the killer holding up his victim's entrails as he taunted guards from his bloody cell.

AP - A judge declared a mistrial in the case of a woman accused of murdering a one-time 'Silk Stalkings' actor, saying the jury shouldn't have heard heard evidence about polygraph testing.

AP - A Roman Catholic priest pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges he beat and sexually assaulted a female soloist at a parish office, and his attorneys said they intend to show that the woman and their client had a romantic relationship.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's criminal cases in the Hewlett-Packard scandal concluded with a whimper but the investigation helped to wipe out similar spying elsewhere, the official who led the probe said on Thursday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - State regulators are zeroing on subprime lenders, with several specifically targeting New Century Financial Corp. -- the biggest name associated with the crisis that has roiled markets and poses a threat to the economy.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Mississippi homeowner seeking an insurance settlement of more than $5.3 million after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his Gulf Coast home settled on Thursday for an undisclosed sum.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Jewish businessman was on his way on Thursday to becoming the first Iranian-born mayor of Beverly Hills and one of the highest-ranking elected Iranian officials in the United States.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chicago area's mass transit agencies face a serious financial shortfall, according to Illinois Auditor General William Holland, who added fuel on Thursday to the agencies' argument that a big funding boost was needed.

AP - A 6-year-old boy who vanished a week ago while playing near his trailer-park home was found slain Thursday, and police said they would probably charge a registered sex offender and three other neighbors with murder.

AP - A man who sexually assaulted a University of Virginia student in 1984 and apologized to her two decades later as part of the Alcoholics Anonymous program was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday.

AP - Investigators on Thursday tried to determine what led a man to put on a fake beard, shoot a pizzeria employee and lead police on a running gun battle through the crowded streets of Greenwich Village.

AP - The bodies of two boaters missing after a boating accident were found Thursday in a spillway below Clinton Lake, and searchers still were looking for an 8-year-old boy, state officials said.

AP - The miners union on Thursday blamed last year's deadly Sago Mine explosion on friction between rocks and a metal roof-support system, rather than lightning.

AP - An Army staff sergeant said Thursday he did not order members of his squad to kill three Iraqi detainees as his soldiers have testified.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Unlike many borrowers who took out subprime loans, Andy Sobel had good credit, a decent job and modest savings, but he needed to stretch to buy a home in the white-hot San Diego housing market in 2004.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Damage to a Florida launch pad from a fuel leak during a preflight rocket test will delay next month's flight of a U.S. government missile-warning satellite and possibly other key military spacecraft, the Air Force said on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two elderly women dubbed the Black Widows were ordered to stand trial on Thursday on charges of befriending two homeless men and murdering them in hit-and-run crashes to collect $2.8 million in life insurance.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. said on Thursday it was putting pictures of ordinary consumers who eat at the hamburger chain on its packaging, tapping into a media and Internet trend focused on real people.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. state regulators are zeroing on subprime lenders, with several specifically targeting New Century Financial Corp. -- the biggest name associated with the crisis that has roiled markets and poses a threat to the economy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This has been the world's warmest winter since record-keeping began more than a century ago, the U.S. government agency that tracks weather reported on Thursday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time magazine hits newsstands on Friday with a new look to attract the Web generation as it bets that ink on glossy pages can satisfy readers in a way that the Internet cannot.

AP - A man stabbed his 11-month-old son in the back, threw the boy out the car window with the kitchen knife stuck in his back and then drove away, police said Thursday.

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The main U.S. mining union on Thursday blamed the Sago mine's owner and regulators for the January 2006 disaster that killed 12 coal miners in a report the mine owner dismissed as 'political grandstanding.'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Department of Corrections discriminates against Muslim prison guards by refusing to accommodate religious practices or beliefs into its uniform requirements, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Arizona murderer who has fought for years to allow his execution to go forward can waive his right to appeals that might save his life, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. children may lose out over the next decade even as the federal government spends more on domestic programs, because a smaller share will go to education, health care and other benefits, researchers said on Thursday.

AP - Two people who claim their political views got them kicked out of a hall where President Bush was about to speak filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against three White House officials.

AP - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori took the highly unusual step Thursday of invalidating the election of a bishop in the tradition-minded Diocese of South Carolina, which has rejected her authority because of her liberal theological outlook.

AP - An intern with the National Archives stole about 165 Civil War documents — including the War Department's announcement of President Lincoln's death — and sold most of them on eBay, prosecutors charged Thursday.