TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp. is offering another $1,000 in sales incentives on its new Tundra full-sized pickup truck in the United States, as it faces pricing pressure from domestic rivals.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service turned to the characters of 'Star Wars' for inspiration on

LONDON (Reuters) - You can take mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato out of Kansas, but you can't take the Kansas out of this rising star of world opera.

AP - Residents of the Plains states huddled for cover early Thursday as a major storm system that has killed at least two people moved through the region, bringing heavy snow and tornadoes to some areas.

AP - Witnesses told a congressional panel of their frustration with the long, still-unfinished process of opening a secret Nazi archive with millions of files on concentration camps and their victims.

AP - A region of Japan devastated by a 1995 earthquake donated $200,000 to the New Orleans Museum of Art to help this city's children cope with post-Hurricane Katrina devastation.

AP - Taking a page from auto manufacturers, the Army has rolled out several concept vehicles it hopes will help spawn new technologies for the next generation.

AP - Supreme Court watchers often speculate about aging justices holding off retirement until the election of a president who will pick an ideologically similar replacement.

AP - A woman whose boyfriend is accused of trying to have her killed is testifying on his behalf and says she visits him despite a judge's order barring him from seeing her.

AP - A man has been accused of trying to discourage a last-minute witness from testifying before a grand jury that was investigating the police shooting of a bridegroom on his wedding day.

AP - Fire ravaged the upper floors of a six-story office building, killing three people and injuring at least six others as firefighters used ladder trucks to help survivors escape through windows.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Getting into Harvard University got tougher in 2007 as more students than ever applied to the Ivy League school's undergraduate program, many drawn by an attractive financial aid offer.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sheriff Leo McGuire presides over foreclosure auctions in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the bidding for a home reached $1.2 million last June -- a record for one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.

AP - Construction workers laying sewer pipe found the skeletal remains of a former death row inmate with mob ties at a suburban Chicago site about 50 yards from where the bodies of two other men connected to organized crime were found in 1988.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - More than 100 Africans perished on the slave ship Sally in the voyage from Africa in 1765 -- some hanged themselves or starved to death. Some rebelled and were shot dead or drowned.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presidential adviser by day, rapper by night: Karl Rove rocked the house in his hip-hop debut on an evening of rare levity for an administration under fire.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Michael Phelps demolished his third world record in three days on Thursday to collect his fourth gold medal of the world championships and strengthen his claims to be the greatest swimmer of all time.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge revoked the bail of a former Merrill Lynch stock broker on Thursday, a day after he was arrested for alleged involvement in a $30 million Internet gambling ring.

AP - Feuding spouses who built a wall through their three-story row house because neither would give it up cannot divorce, a jury ruled.

AP - A television reporter who says she was doing an undercover investigation into security at hospital maternity wards was arrested after walking into a nursery with a large bag and asking questions about child abduction security.

AP - Six decades after completing their World War II mission and coming home to a country that discriminated against them because they were black, the Tuskegee Airmen are getting high honors from Congress.

AP - A group of soldiers has been busy testing a series of high-tech military concept vehicles outfitted with remote weapons systems, night-vision capabilities and enough strength to sustain the concussion of a roadside bomb.

AP - A region of Japan devastated by a 1995 earthquake donated $200,000 to the New Orleans Museum of Art for programs to help children cope with the post-Hurricane Katrina devastation.

AP - Construction workers laying sewer pipe found the skeletal remains of a former death row inmate with mob ties at a suburban Chicago site about 50 yards from where the bodies of two other men connected to organized crime were found in 1988.

AP - Chana and Simon Taub can't stand each other. He claims she is a gold-digging liar. She claims he abused her. Things got so nasty during their divorce case that a court-ordered wall was put up in the feuding spouses' Brooklyn house to keep them apart.

AP - In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other's privacy — ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs.

AP - Most people in the Pacific Northwest can hardly wait for the gray winter rains to give way to spring sunshine. But for four teachers from the Portland suburbs, the lengthening days bring only misery, forcing them to stay indoors with the curtains drawn to shield their stinging, sensitive eyes.

AP - Detectives are weighing several theories after the discovery of eight human skeletons in a remote wooded area. The remains might have been abandoned by a shady crematorium or come from an old cemetery. But authorities are most concerned about a possible serial killer.

AP - Three homeless men mistakenly arrested last year on charges of sleeping too close to a pile of feces have settled a lawsuit against the city for $45,000.

AP - Police surrounded a house two blocks from an elementary school Thursday after residents said a mountain lion may have taken shelter under the home, but trappers found no evidence of the animal.

AP - Chana and Simon Taub can't stand each other.

AP - The leader of New Orleans' effort to recover from Hurricane Katrina unveiled a $1.1 billion plan Thursday aimed at jump-starting the sluggish revitalization work.

AP - Feuding spouses who built a wall through their three-story row house because neither would give it up cannot divorce, a jury ruled.

AP - Two young women charged with stealing nearly $11,000 in a bank heist went on a shopping spree, ate a meal and even gave money to the homeless afterward, a police detective testified Thursday, as the judge lowered the bond for one suspect.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Off-price retailer TJX Cos Inc. said that information from about 45.7 million credit and debit cards was stolen in a computer data security breach over an 18-month period.

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton said on Thursday media coverage of politicians had grown harsher and warned that this could have a detrimental effect on future leaders as the 2008 election draws near.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As April Fools' Day looms, the curator of the Museum of Hoaxes has a word of caution for those who want to believe the unbelievable -- a good hoax is hard to find.

AP - A human smuggling ring responsible for arranging transportation for thousands of illegal immigrants has been broken up with the indictments of 14 people who worked in travel agencies, officials announced Thursday.

AP - The searing memories of the Sept. 11 attacks are making it difficult for dozens of potential jurors to set aside their opinions in the terrorist support case against alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla.

AP - A once-powerful New Jersey lawmaker was indicted Thursday on corruption charges tied to a state medical school job that a federal monitor said paid him $35,000 a year to do little more than read the newspaper.

AP - President Bush saluted the Tuskegee airmen on Thursday, six decades after they completed their World War II mission and returned home to a country that discriminated against them because they were black.

OSLO (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won praise on Thursday from a man with the power to change lives -- the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee -- after a speech urging more action to fight global warming.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For three decades, U.S. inspectors visited 250 meat processing plants as rarely as once every two weeks despite federal law requiring daily inspection, Agriculture Department officials admitted to lawmakers on Thursday.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A smuggling ring that Arizona police say flew thousands of illegal immigrants across the United States from the Phoenix area has been broken up with 16 people indicted, authorities said on Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Traffic jams are back in Silicon Valley, start-up funding is at five-year highs but middle-class families living in the prosperous region south of San Francisco face mounting economic challenges, a study released on Thursday finds.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized rules directing 20 U.S. states to slash levels of tiny particles spewed by power plants, cars and other sources by 2010.

AP - President Bush and Congress awarded the Tuskegee Airmen one of the nation's highest honors Thursday for fighting to defend their country even as they faced bigotry at home.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans officials unveiled a $1.06 billion plan on Thursday to rebuild their city, saying they could no longer wait for federal aid 19 months after Hurricane Katrina.

AP - A cousin of a 72-year-old gay man whose death became a national focus for gay rights advocates said Thursday she rejects a medical examiner's finding that he died of natural causes.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop star Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have reached a settlement in their divorce, People magazine said on Thursday on its Web site.

AP - Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

AP - A death-row inmate who had vowed not to go willingly to the death chamber set a fire in his cell Thursday, but when the time came, walked to his death without a fight. Roy Lee Pippin, 51, was executed by lethal injection for the deaths of two Florida men gunned down in a dispute about missing drug money. From the gurney, he blamed the jury, the trial judge and the prosecutor, and said that he was innocent.

AP - A judge on Thursday ordered a couple and their three teenage children to stand trial on charges that they held a woman captive for months and beat her for not doing chores or for no reason at all.

AP - A former state senator and three other people were charged with corruption Thursday in a highly politicized case that a federal prosecutor told Congress he believes led to his firing.

AP - An engineer accused of conspiring to send information on U.S. naval technology to China had repeated contact with a Chinese government official who was seeking information about the space shuttle from a Boeing engineer, according to FBI testimony Thursday.

AP - A man who spent 11 years in prison for a carjacking he didn't commit was freed Thursday after DNA analysis exonerated him.