NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg expects tax revenues to top his forecasts by $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year and another $838 million in the new fiscal year 2008 budget that starts on July 1, a source familiar with the latest financial plan said on Wednesday.

AP - A father who raped his teenage daughter over several years and ordered her to throw two newborns he had fathered down an air shaft was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

AP - Even as the government was investigating whether a Marine officer failed to probe the death of 24 Iraqi civilians, he was being recommended for a Bronze Star medal partly for his actions the day of the killings, his attorney said Wednesday.

AP - Twenty-two people connected to a bustling, multimillion-dollar counterfeit ring that produces several thousand bogus identification documents a year have been arrested, officials said Wednesday.

AP - A senior at Virginia Tech said moral responsibility led her to add a stone for gunman Seung-Hui Cho to a memorial for his 32 shooting victims that was set up at Virginia Tech late last week. The stone was later removed, but was restored by Wednesday morning.

AP - Seven people surrendered to authorities Wednesday after an undercover sex sting operation that involved Miss America.

AP - An airman killed a U.S. servicewoman at a base in Iceland because she was going to testify against him in another case, prosecutors said at the start of his court-martial Wednesday.

AP - The only known survivor of an attack by the 'Railroad Killer' said she intends to spend the rest of her life helping other crime victims.

AP - The smoldering ashes of a quiet farmhouse and the body found inside left investigators with many questions but no certainties — even whether the dead person was the suspect authorities had been pursuing in three shootings of state troopers, one fatally.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China denied on Thursday that grain protein products its companies sold to the United States caused a spate of pet deaths, but it promised to tighten controls and ban a suspect chemical from the food ingredients.

AP - A grand jury indicted three current and former police officers in the shooting death of an elderly Atlanta woman during a drug raid, a judge said Thursday.

AP - A highway pileup killed several people early Thursday on a rainy stretch of the Indiana Toll Road, Indiana State Police said.

AP - An attack at a South Side home early Thursday left two boys dead and a 13-year-old girl with stab wounds, authorities said. A suspect was in custody.

AP - Brendan Dassey could have saved the 25-year-old photographer who showed up at his uncle's junkyard for an assignment, prosecutors said. Instead, the teenager raped her and joined in killing her on Halloween, then burned her body in a barrel.

AP - A grand jury indicted three current and former Atlanta police officers in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a drug raid, according to the document unsealed Thursday.

AP - A highway pileup killed at least eight people Thursday on a rainy stretch of the Indiana Toll Road, State Police said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technology Corp., a start-up seeking to slash the cost of coursing through the cosmos, has been granted a five-year license to launch rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the U.S. Air Force said on Thursday.

AP - New Hampshire lawmakers voted Thursday to authorize civil unions and sent the measure to Gov. John Lynch, who announced last week that he would sign it.

AP - The Bush administration announced a $1 billion plan Thursday to extend housing aid for people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita until March 2009.

AP - The charred body of a man suspected of killing a state trooper and wounding two others was removed Thursday from the smoldering wreckage of a farm house that caught fire as police closed in on him.

AP - Jurors deciding the fate of a once-influential state senator charged with extortion and bribery watched video clips of him stuffing his pockets with $100 bills given to him by an undercover FBI agent.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy on Thursday said that he has written letters to the chief executives of two major student loan firms raising concerns about their collection tactics.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday proposed an updated budget plan that totaled $60.7 billion, counting all funds, and warned that looming shortfalls could prevent him from continuing to give homeowners $400 tax rebates.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the top U.S. nuclear regulator addressed industry leaders in March, he spoke about a problem often neglected in public debates about nuclear energy: the threat of a labor shortage.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technology Corp., a start-up seeking to slash the cost of coursing through the cosmos, has been granted a five-year license to launch rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the U.S. Air Force said on Thursday.

AP - Dr. William Ayres' specialty was child psychiatry, which meant it was perfectly routine for him to be alone and behind closed doors with boys.

AP - One wall at English High School holds old black-and-white photographs of young white men in high starched collars and V-neck varsity sweaters. Another wall is covered with a mural spray-painted in graffiti art, like an inner-city overpass.

AP - Less than two weeks after sexual offense charges were dropped against him and two fellow Duke lacrosse teammates, Reade Seligmann received a medal from the exclusive prep school where he graduated in 2004.

AP - The former director of a whaling museum and an antiques dealer pleaded guilty Thursday to illegally importing hundreds of sperm whale teeth from England and selling them to U.S. merchants.

AP - A citizen filed a complaint against Gov. Jon S. Corzine for failing to wear his seat belt in the highway accident that left the governor critically injured.

AP - Federal and state agents arrested five men during a series of weapons raids in northeast Alabama early Thursday, including one raid that forced the shutdown of a nearby school.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional investigators probing the $85 billion student loan market pushed into new areas on Thursday, raising concerns about loan collection tactics and seeking an inquiry into possible conflicts of interest inside the U.S. Education Department.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday proposed an updated budget plan that totaled $60.7 billion, counting all funds, and warned that looming shortfalls could prevent him from continuing to give homeowners $400 tax rebates.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's dean of admissions has resigned after admitting she 'misrepresented' her academic credentials on her resume, the prestigious school said on Thursday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Defense lawyers at the fraud trial of fallen media baron Conrad Black on Thursday tried to refute testimony from a high-profile board member at Black's former company who claimed directors were misled into approving questionable deals.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives education committee on Thursday asked for an internal inquiry at the U.S. Education Department into possible conflicts of interest among department employees, lenders and others in the student loan market.

AP - The commander of New Mexico's National Guard is demanding an apology from the Army brass after dozens of his soldiers in a mostly Hispanic unit were ordered to strip to their gym shorts and searched for gang tattoos while on duty in Kuwait.

AP - Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Authorities on Thursday confirmed they had found an unexploded bomb outside an abortion clinic in the state's capital.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A project that aims to deliver low-priced laptops with string pulleys to the world's poorest children may have a new market: U.S. schools.

AP - Kelly White and her two children visited the semicircle of memorials on the Virginia Tech campus, leaving 32 pink tulips — one for each victim in last week's massacre. They also placed a tulip on the stone for gunman Seung-Hui Cho.

AP - Federal and state agents arrested six men and seized an arsenal of homemade hand grenades and firearms in raids Thursday, including one that forced the shutdown of a school.

AP - Authorities told residents Thursday to flee about 100 homes near a wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia, as gusty winds threatened to spread the blaze across a four-lane highway.

AP - State police were trying to determine Thursday why a farmhouse caught fire when they closed in on a shooting suspect who had holed up inside, but said they believe troopers acted appropriately.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Alec Baldwin will apologize to his daughter on national television on Friday for calling her a 'thoughtless little pig,' according to excerpts from a pre-taped ABC interview released on Thursday.

AP - Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter and other charges in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid at her home last fall.

AP - A jury Thursday convicted a man of murder for shooting a teenage neighbor who walked on his obsessively maintained lawn.

AP - Colorado has an elaborate plan to ensure state government will function in natural disaster or terror attack. There's just one problem — someone forgot to tell the lawmakers.

AP - Hundreds of residents were told to leave their homes Thursday as one wildfire rekindled and destroyed at least three buildings and another threatened to jump a highway, authorities said.

AP - State air regulators on Thursday approved the nation's most sweeping restriction on emissions of formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical found in kitchen cabinets, shelving, countertops and ready-to-assemble furniture.

AP - The mayor of Mississippi's largest city and two police bodyguards were acquitted Thursday of using sledgehammers and sticks to demolish a duplex he considered a drug house.