WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seat and head restraints in more than 60 percent of newer passenger vehicles on the road fail to offer optimal head and neck protection in rear-end crashes, a leading safety group said on Thursday.

AP - Without immigrants pouring into the nation's big metro areas, places such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston would be shrinking as native-born Americans move farther out.

AP - It's a classic tale lifted from the Coppola canon: Murder and the mob. Family loyalty and betrayal. One man on the run, and a dead man in a car trunk.

AP - Sgt. Dana Kline is so good at recruiting new National Guard soldiers that he's set to make a small fortune — $94,000 in bonuses.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC trio 'The Office,' 'Friday Night Lights' and 'Scrubs,' ABC's 'Ugly Betty' and the late Ed Bradley's investigation of the Duke rape case for CBS '60 Minutes' are among the 2006 winners of the prestigious George Foster Peabody Awards.

AP - For years, ATV-riding, gun-toting sport shooters have flouted gun laws in part of Idaho's high desert by taking pot shots at ground squirrels and other animals.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Army Lt. Col. Donald Robinson is no stranger to bloodshed. As a civilian he served as a trauma surgeon at Cooper Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, a city so violent he says doctors call it the 'Knife and Gun Club.'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. retailers have teamed up with the FBI to support a central database designed to track and share data on organized shoplifting, which costs the industry an estimated $30 billion a year.

AP - City health officials are considering a program to urge circumcision for men at high risk of AIDS, noting studies that the procedure can reduce the chances of getting the disease.

AP - A 14-year-old girl authorities allege was sexually abused by a 30-year-old woman who posed as a teenage boy said she didn't know about the ruse but eventually suspected it.

AP - The judge presiding over the trial of fired astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak asked lawyers on both sides Thursday to limit media contact, and temporarily sealed court documents that were to be released soon.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer people are being murdered on the job in the United States but more are getting killed in work-related traffic accidents, according to government statistics published on Thursday.

AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) - Phil Mickelson made a stumbling start to his Masters title defense by bogeying the par-four opening hole in Thursday's first round.

AP - An FBI agent was wounded in a shootout with three bank robbery suspects Thursday in north central New Jersey, law enforcement officials said.

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities charged a former employee of the national tax-collection agency with fraud on Thursday, accusing him of stealing $330,000 in goods from stores and then returning them for store credit.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington Wizards' All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas will be out for up to three months with a knee injury and will likely miss the rest of the season, the team said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Menu Foods has expanded its recall of dog and cat foods to include products with an earlier production date and 20 more varieties, the company said on Thursday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A single gene makes some poodles purse-sized while allowing a Great Dane to look a pony in the eye, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday in a finding that may shed light on human size differences and diseases.

AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) - Phil Mickelson made a nightmare start to his Masters title defense while Sweden's Henrik Stenson moved into an early share of the lead with Briton Justin Rose in Thursday's opening round.

AP - The North Carolina Senate apologized Thursday for the Legislature's role in promoting slavery and Jim Crow laws that denied basic human rights to the state's black citizens.

AP - Leah Vader and Lynne Huskinson, a lesbian couple who got married in Canada last August, sent a letter recently to their state legislator decrying a Wyoming bill that would deny recognition of same-sex marriages. The lawmaker read the letter on the floor of the Legislature.

AP - A Naval Academy student testified Thursday that a fellow midshipman forced her to have sex three times over several hours in a Washington hotel last year.

AP - In July 1999, when a sitting U.S. president visited an Indian reservation for the first time in 63 years, Geraldine Blue Bird was in the spotlight.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Some of the payments at the center of Conrad Black's criminal fraud trial were reported to U.S. government regulators in a timely fashion and not hidden as prosecutors have suggested, jurors were told on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only one in seven Americans exercises enough and eats enough fruits and vegetables, and men are worse than women, federal health officials said on Thursday.

BOSTON (Reuters) - New Hampshire took a step on Thursday toward rejecting a controversial U.S. identification card that opponents say will cost billions of dollars to administer and present a risk to privacy.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A freak spring storm blanketed parts of Maine in nearly a foot of snow on Thursday, snarling traffic and forcing the governor to declare an emergency after at least 275,000 homes and businesses lost power.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York social worker charged more than $3.5 million in jewelry using a city government account and then had some of the swag mailed to the homeless shelter for mentally-ill men where he worked, prosecutors said on Thursday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Southwest, home to some of the fastest growing cities in the country, could be on a path toward permanent drought caused by greenhouse warming, a new study said.

AP - Moisture from a leaky roof and faulty sprinkler helped salmonella bacteria grow and contaminate peanut butter at its Georgia plant last year, sickening more than 400 people nationwide, ConAgra Foods said Thursday.

AP - A Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist is lending his talents to a crime-fighting television show in an attempt to track down the killer of a young musician who was slain nearly three decades ago.

AP - More than one-third of 18,000 people arrested in a nearly yearlong federal crackdown on illegal immigrants were not the people authorities targeted, according to government figures.

AP - The Live Free or Die state's days of unrestrained driving could be numbered.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy to allow same-sex couples to participate in a popular Fairy Tale Wedding program it runs mainly at its two U.S. resorts and cruise line, a Disney spokesman said on Thursday.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. border police nabbed 30 percent fewer undocumented immigrants crossing from Mexico in the past six months, following ramped up policing on the international line, the U.S. government said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The company at the center of a massive pet food contamination scare expanded its recall on Thursday to include products with earlier production dates and 27 more varieties sold in the United States, Canada and Europe.

AP - Former first lady Betty Ford was recovering Thursday from unspecified surgery, the office of the late President Gerald Ford said.

AP - A Houston city councilman and conservative talk radio host has apologized for saying taxpayers were paying large amounts of welfare to American Indians who were 'whining' about having been 'whipped in a war.'

BOSTON (Reuters) - As foreign students prepare to graduate from U.S. universities this spring, many worry that a record number of applications for U.S. skilled-worker visas may cause them to lose jobs they have already been offered.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - He is a fat, balding, heavy-breathing man with an explosive temper and a reptilian gaze. Starting on Sunday and lasting nine weeks, Americans are going to be on tenterhooks, wondering if he will live or die.

AP - Scholars probing anew into the Cold War's most famous espionage case suggested Thursday that another U.S. diplomat, not Alger Hiss, was the Soviet agent code-named Ales.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Business leaders in the oil-producing city of Houston, historically suspicious of environmental protection efforts, have endorsed California's low emission vehicle standards, a spokeswoman for the business group said Thursday.

AP - A Mexican national accused of causing the crash that killed 'A Christmas Story' director Bob Clark and his son will face deportation proceedings once the charges against him are resolved, officials said Thursday.