AP - Supporters of the two American journalists on trial in North Korea have held vigils in Southern California and elsewhere to plead for clemency.

AP - Continued bans on U.S. pork imports by China, Russia and more than a dozen other counties have baffled government and industry officials, leading some to speculate that the issue is more about market share than health concerns.

AP - Iowa and New Hampshire traditionally offer presidential candidates vastly different political landscapes when they seek their party nominations. Yet legalizing gay marriage, as both states have now done, is unlikely to have much impact in 2012 because of party dynamics and the different emphasis voters place on social issues.

AP - Get lost in the woods and a cell phone in your pocket can help camping buddies find you. Drive into a ditch and GPS in your car lets emergency crews pinpoint the crash site. But when a transcontinental flight is above the middle of the ocean, no one on the ground can see exactly where it is — in the air, or worse, in the water.

AP - The burned-out house next to Shomari Raby's home is an eyesore, but it's the drug addicts who linger outside and get high inside that cause her to walk past quickly on her way to and from school.

AP - President Barack Obama says extremists have exploited tensions among Muslims.

AP - The U.S. Marine Corps is wooing public school districts across the country, expanding a network of military academies that has grown steadily despite criticism that it's a recruiting ploy.

AP - Text of President Barack Obama's speech at Cairo University, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.

AP - A man who police say arranged on Craigslist for his wife to be raped by another man was in jail on $200,000 bond Thursday as investigators probed computer and telephone records for the attacker's identity.

AP - Graduates at one eastern Pennsylvania high school donned caps and gowns and marched in their graduation ceremony, but didn't get their diplomas because of a grade-changing scheme.

AP - A city police officer mistakenly killed by friendly fire was remembered Thursday as a consummate cop and loving father, a contentious and driven young man who dreamed of joining the department his whole life.

AP - Florida deep-sea explorers who raised an estimated $500 million treasure from the 200-year-old wreck of a Spanish galleon should give all the loot back to Spain, a federal magistrate judge said.

AP - A Virginia death row inmate whose case led to the national ban on executing the mentally retarded will spend life in prison.

AP - Authorities say a woman who was repeatedly asked to fold up her baby's stroller on a New Orleans city bus refused, then poured milk on the driver before stabbing her in the chest.

AP - Nathan Kline wrapped a white monogrammed scarf around his neck and placed a bulletproof prayer book in his left shirt pocket. He'd followed the same routine for all of his previous bombing runs over Europe, but the teenager from Allentown, Pa., knew there was nothing routine about this mission.

AP - A Muslim convert accused of fatally shooting an Army private and wounding another had previously been arrested on a weapons charge in Tennessee, but that charge eventually was dropped.

AP - Philadelphia's police commissioner said Thursday he will not pursue criminal charges against a group of angry neighbors who beat a man sought for questioning in the rape of an 11-year-old girl.

AP - An Indiana money manager plans to plead guilty to crashing an airplane near a Florida Panhandle neighborhood in a botched attempt to fake his own death and escape financial problems and a crumbling marriage, according to court documents filed Thursday.

AP - A jury has convicted a 24-year-old man of armed kidnapping with a firearm in the abduction of a teenage boy from his bus stop in southwest Florida two years ago.

AP - All college applications are equal. But some are more equal than others.

AP - A Kentucky pastor is inviting people to bring their guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second Amendment.

AP - A gang member fresh out of prison works the door of a Providence nightclub. Officers in San Diego arrest a bouncer accused of beating and bloodying a drunken patron. In New York City, a parolee hired to protect clubgoers sexually assaults and kills one.

AP - Black bears are multiplying and on the move across North America, snooping around cities where they've been a rarity, becoming roadkill and leading states to start or expand hunting seasons.

AP - The man charged in the slaying of late-term abortion provider George Tiller said Thursday he's 'being treated as a criminal' even though he hasn't been convicted of anything.

AP - A Cornell University researcher was found dead in a New York state park from massive cuts to her throat and her husband was hospitalized under guard after a police chase, state police said Thursday.

AP - When the National Zoo tried to set up a pair of rare white-naped cranes, the date went sour and the lovebirds fought.

AP - Jessie Pullins is certain J.J. recognized him when the door to his dog cage swung open, reuniting them for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck nearly four years ago.

AP - A judge has ruled that a former transit police officer should stand trial on murder charges in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man on a train platform in Oakland, Calif.

AP - It was tough enough to get New Hampshire's lawmakers and governor to approve gay marriage, but Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson says there's an even tougher job ahead: getting churches to fully embrace gay marriage and gay people.

AP - South Carolina is selling money to make money.

AP - Top brass at the Army Corps of Engineers say the estimated price of a major project to build three floodgates and a 1.8-mile storm surge barrier to protect New Orleans from hurricanes is now $1.8 billion.

AP - Murder charges were dropped at the prosecution's request Thursday in the dragging death of a black man in east Texas, and the two white men who had been accused of killing him were released from jail.

AP - A former Georgia Tech student charged with plotting to help terrorist groups turned the closing arguments in his federal trial on Thursday into a bewildering lesson on Islamic principles amid stunned courtroom observers.

AP - An environmental group plans to sue the federal government to force a decision on additional protections for Arctic seals.

AP - Federal fisheries regulators on Thursday released a court-ordered plan to help struggling chinook salmon that includes opening California dams and restricting pumping, which would reduce the amount of water available to farms and urban areas.