AP - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is going on the offensive against news organizations and bloggers she says are perpetuating malicious gossip about her and her children. But political observers say the former Republican vice presidential candidate can't have it both ways: trotting out the children to showcase her family values, then trying to shield them from scrutiny.

AP - A fire at a major hospital sent smoke pouring through an emergency room Wednesday, injuring at least six firefighters and forcing 600 patients to be moved across the sprawling complex.

AP - More than ever, politics and money are on the minds of new college students. The latest installment of a giant annual survey of college freshmen shows political engagement at a 40-year high, and more students than ever planning to take jobs on the side and settling for second-choice schools.

AP - A day after the nation inaugurated its first black president, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell announced that he asked a bistate agency to kick in $3.5 million for a memorial on the spot where the nation's first leader lived with slaves.

AP - A day after the nation inaugurated its first black president, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell announced that he asked a bistate agency to kick in $3.5 million for a memorial on the spot where the nation's first leader lived with slaves.

AP - Experts and activists concerned about the way evolution is taught in Texas' public schools made their case before the state's board of education.

AP - Allegations that two young assistants groped, spanked and spat on several nursing home residents suffering from dementia have shaken members of this southern Minnesota community, including the lead prosecutor in the case.

AP - Bryan Flournoy sits in a downtown church, sipping coffee and taking inventory of his life: He's 33 and homeless. He's a stranger in Atlanta, where a bus dropped him off from California last month. He needs a place to live, and he needs it yesterday.

AP - Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says the state Senate impeachment trial is unfair and denies him the right to due process.

AP - Six people who claim they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to an Indiana investment adviser before he tried to fake his death in a Florida plane crash will tell their stories in court.

AP - U.S. defense officials say the military intercepted and searched an Iranian-owned ship that officials feared was carrying arms to Hamas. It's unclear whether those suspicions were founded.

AP - Federal authorities say more time is needed to recover an engine that broke off a US Airways plane that splashed down in the Hudson River.

AP - A graduate student from China was decapitated with a kitchen knife in a campus cafe at Virginia Tech by another graduate student who knew her, police said Thursday.

AP - Authorities say a van struck at least five children on a sidewalk in New York City's Chinatown neighborhood, killing two of them.

AP - Authorities say a pilot is dead but a passenger has survived a helicopter crash in southern North Carolina.

AP - An Indiana financial adviser accused of trying to fake his death in a plane crash had been improperly moving money from accounts and forging signatures for several years, investors testified at a hearing Thursday.

AP - Kentucky and West Virginia — where people traditionally smoke the most — have the highest death rates from smoking, a new federal study has found.

AP - Tens of thousands of abortion opponents rallied Thursday on the National Mall to mark the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade amid concerns they could face political setbacks under the new president.

AP - A delivery van hit a group of children walking from a library back to their daycare cener in the city's busy Chinatown district Thursday, killing two and seriously injuring a third, authorities said.

AP - Marilu Vargas digs through bargain meats at a Mexican grocery store, trying to slash the budget for her family of seven while considering how much she can spare for relatives back home in Mexico.

AP - Authorities at a North Carolina college say a huge snowball fight got out of control, forcing campus police to use pepper spray on some students to contain the rowdy crowd.

AP - Prosecutors would recommend a prison term of four-and-a-half to five years if the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller agrees to plead guilty to kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, they said Thursday.

AP - Tens of thousands of abortion opponents rallied Thursday on the National Mall to mark the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade amid concerns they could face political setbacks under the new president.

AP - Maryland authorities are checking the identity of a man captured about six miles from a state prison to see if he's a fugitive who escaped over the weekend.

AP - A Kentucky high school football coach was charged Thursday with reckless homicide in the death of a player who collapsed at practice as temperatures soared.

AP - A neo-Nazi group has joined the state's 'Adopt-A-Highway' volunteer litter pickup program, taking advantage of a free speech court fight won four years ago by the Ku Klux Klan.

AP - A confession by Portland's first openly gay mayor that he lied about having sex with a teenager is dividing this famously progressive city, as well as its gay community.

AP - A delivery van hit a group of children walking from a library back to their day care center in the city's busy Chinatown district Thursday, killing two and seriously injuring a third, authorities said.

AP - A driver rammed his SUV into the front door of an abortion clinic on Thursday, the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, police said. No one was injured.

AP - Maryland authorities have recaptured a convicted killer who escaped five days ago from a state prison.

AP - An unoccupied delivery van mistakenly left in reverse jumped a curb and barreled into a group of children returning to their day care center after a trip to the library Thursday, killing two of them and seriously injuring a third, police said.

AP - Alone and in a new country, graduate student Xin Yang reached out to other Chinese students at Virginia Tech when she arrived two weeks ago, trying to establish her life on campus.

AP - A Maryland teenager plans to plead guilty to bludgeoning his mother to death after an argument over his grades at a prestigious private school, attorneys for both sides said Thursday.

AP - Nashville voters cast ballots Thursday on a proposal that would make it the largest U.S. city to require all government business be done in English.

AP - An attorney for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (bluh-GOY'-uh-vich) tells The Associated Press he could file a lawsuit within days in an attempt to stop the governor's impending impeachment trial.

AP - Two condemned killers were put to death Thursday evening in Oklahoma and Texas, becoming the nation's third and fourth executions of the year.

AP - A woman who marketed 'gothic kittens' with ear, neck and tail piercings over the Internet has been charged with animal cruelty and conspiracy.

AP - A prosecutor said Thursday that an auto mechanic was 'a man bent on destruction' who ignited a wildfire that killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters in 2006.