WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Following reports of abuse, the U.S. government on Tuesday temporarily barred college loan firms from accessing a database containing confidential personal information on millions of student borrowers.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hand washing is something most people learned about as children, but a British study finds that health workers are not faithful about washing their hands and few strategies to improve hygiene have worked.

AP - Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities, high schools and middle schools in at least 10 states on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student's shooting rampage killed 33 people.

AP - Rescue crews were working Tuesday to reach two coal miners believed buried beneath 75 feet of rock and dirt from a collapsed wall of an open pit in the western Maryland mountains, an emergency management official said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than half of U.S. workers fail to take all of their vacation days, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The vehicle carrying New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was traveling at 91 mph (146 kph), almost 30 miles over the speed limit, just before it crashed last week, seriously injuring him, state police said on Tuesday.

AP - Venera Carrea wandered helpless in her small home where the brown floodwaters reached 3 feet high on her main floor.

AP - A bell pealed 33 times inside the soaring cathedral at Muhlenberg College, breaking the silence as students mourned the dead in the Virginia Tech massacre hundreds of miles away.

AP - Members of the European Parliament who were behind a critical report on CIA anti-terrorism tactics have been challenging Bush administration and congressional officials with their findings.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Washington summit on Wednesday on how to help troubled subprime mortgage borrowers will end with seven principles to aid borrowers, according to a document prepared for the meeting.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The probe into the student loan industry hit the for-profit education sector for the first time on Tuesday when a company delayed a stock sale to answer an inquiry from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

AP - A preacher's wife accused of murdering her husband said Wednesday that he punched and kicked her, forced her to have sex and refused to grant her a divorce.

AP - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his cousin's insistence that he is innocent of a 1975 murder was enough to convince him to investigate it himself.

AP - Utility crews cut their way through downed trees Wednesday to restore service to thousands of customers still without power since the huge weekend storm battered the East Coast.

AP - Schools and campuses in at least 10 states were locked down or evacuated in the aftermath of a Virginia Tech student's shooting rampage that killed 33 people.

AP - The body of a college student who had been missing since last fall was discovered in a country club swimming pool when a worker removed the pool cover to get it ready for summer, police said.

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - Some of those affected by the Virginia Tech university shootings were quick to direct their anger and grief not just at the gunman who killed 32 people, but also at the two weapons he used.

AP - A preacher's wife accused of murdering her husband testified Wednesday that she doesn't remember picking up the shotgun or pointing it at her husband, but she said she did not pull the trigger. She heard a 'boom' as the shotgun fired, she said.

AP - A soldier with the 101st Airborne Division was killed during a nighttime live-fire exercise at Fort Campbell early Wednesday, the Army said.

AP - A classmate of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel testified Wednesday that he told attorneys before Skakel's 2002 trial about a claim implicating two other men in the 1975 murder that sent Skakel to prison.

AP - The number of criminal suspects going without public defenders is rising despite a judge's threat to start letting people out of jail.

KENNESAW, Georgia (Reuters) - The Virginia Tech killings have set off calls for tighter U.S. gun laws but anyone wanting to know why those demands likely will make little headway should visit Kennesaw, a town where owning a gun is both popular and mandatory.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sumner Redstone, the media mogul who controls both Viacom Inc and CBS Corp, pledged $105 million on Wednesday to fund cancer and burn research at three major U.S. health care centers.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Self-confessed BlackBerry addicts experienced both a sense of panic, and relief, as the mobile e-mail device's network stalled overnight and cut communications for many of its millions of subscribers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson will step down to head the American Red Cross, the Red Cross and the IRS said on Wednesday.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo (Reuters) - U.S. conservative heavyweight James Dobson is tired of being asked his preference in the 2008 White House race but he says two things are for certain.

AP - Wildfires forced more than 1,000 people from their southeastern Georgia homes and threatened the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, one of the nation's best-preserved wetland areas, officials said Wednesday.

AP - A nearly all-female jury began deliberations Wednesday on a life or death sentence for a woman convicted of kidnapping an acquaintance and hacking up her body with a chain saw.

AP - A University of Colorado student was arrested after making comments that classmates deemed sympathetic toward the gunman blamed for killing 32 students and himself at Virginia Tech, authorities said.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Eight buildings at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis were evacuated after a bomb threat, the school said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Wall Street Journal has named Marcus Brauchli as its new managing editor, succeeding Paul Steiger next month, a Journal spokesman said on Wednesday.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Connecticut authorities on Wednesday threatened to sue makers of a canned energy drink called Cocaine, saying it 'dangerously glamorizes drug use.'

AP - A former executive at a U.S.-funded anti-Castro TV station who pleaded guilty to accepting more than $100,000 in kickbacks was sentenced Wednesday to two years and three months in prison, prosecutors said.

AP - Cell phone text messages. Loudspeakers on towers. Cameras that detect suspicious activity.

AP - An irate judge halted the prosecution of 42 criminal defendants Wednesday, saying the city's underfunded public defender's office isn't providing adequate representation.

AP - It was an ominous tale — an erratic driver in a red pickup racing wildly along the nation's busiest toll road sends the governor's sport utility vehicle careening into a guard rail.

AP - Crews moved thousands of tons of rock Wednesday in a bid to find two men trapped under at least 40 feet of rubble at a surface coal mine.

AP - Seven buildings at the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus were evacuated Wednesday after a professor discovered a bomb threat.

AP - Victims of clergy sexual abuse and parishes that will foot part of the bill to pay them have voted to approve a $48 million settlement, setting the stage for the Spokane Catholic Diocese to emerge from bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A series of bomb threats and other security alerts rattled U.S. schools and universities on Wednesday as nerves remained frayed from the massacre of 32 people by a disturbed, brooding student at Virginia Tech.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Canadian lawyer who advised Conrad Black recounted in taped testimony on Wednesday maneuvers by the former media baron and his associates about how to characterize payments at the heart of their fraud trial.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Housing construction in New York City has hit a more than 30-year high, in a resurgence that has topped that of other big and old U.S. cities, New York's comptroller said in a study released on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two studies published on Wednesday further link hormone replacement therapy with cancer, suggesting -- but not yet proving -- that HRT causes breast and ovarian cancer.

AP - The mood in the basketball arena was defeated, funereal. Nikki Giovanni seemed an unlikely source of strength for a Virginia Tech campus reeling from the depravity of one of its own.

AP - A teenager shot and killed himself Wednesday shortly after pointing a handgun at two other students in a high school parking lot, police said.

AP - Eight buildings at the University of Minnesota's campus were evacuated Wednesday after a professor discovered a bomb threat.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's electricity grid, said on Wednesday the FBI arrested a person suspected of shutting down ISO computer systems and threatening the agency's headquarters.

AP - A young whale that swam aimlessly for two days in a small bay off an industrial section of Brooklyn beached itself at an oil depot dock Wednesday and died suddenly.

AP - An FBI informant testified Wednesday that an influential former state senator at the center of a public corruption investigation threatened to kill him after growing suspicious of him.

AP - A Missouri man acquired whips, handcuffs, dog chains and a girl's tank top with 'Princess' printed on it in a plot to kidnap, rape and kill two girls and kill 12 others, police said Wednesday.

AP - The Rev. Ted Haggard moved Wednesday from his longtime home in Colorado Springs to Phoenix, where the disgraced minister will join the same church that helped fallen televangelist Jim Bakker.

AP - Eight buildings at the University of Minnesota were evacuated Wednesday after a professor discovered a bomb threat.

AP - A swift wildfire destroyed 14 houses Wednesday in southeastern Georgia, where more than 1,000 people had been forced from their homes earlier in the week, officials said. No injuries were reported.

AP - A first-grader searching his jacket pocket for money found a bag of crack cocaine worth $8,900, authorities said Wednesday.

AP - News organizations asked a judge Wednesday to unseal court papers in the criminal case against polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.