AP - An off-duty police officer shot and wounded two men who had assaulted him in the crowded Angel Stadium parking lot after Wednesday night's Colorado Rockies-Los Angeles Angels game, authorities said.

AP - It should have been clear when state Democratic senators resorted to flicking off the chamber lights to try to thwart a shocking Republican power grab that this wouldn't be the brightest moment in New York politics.

AP - A white supremacist blogger is due in a New Jersey court on charges he threatened to assault or murder three Chicago-based federal judges.

AP - When a fatal tornado ripped through the rural Iowa town Ed Thomas called home, the local football icon became the driving force behind rebuilding. As a trusted and active church member, he encouraged the tiny community to have faith.

AP - The former chief of staff for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he was completely surprised by his friend's confession to having an affair and the next few days will be key to show whether his apology is sincere.

AP - For more than 130 years, ferrymen have jammed poles into the James River's gravelly shallows to push the Hatton Ferry slowly across to other side.

AP - Police say a California man donning a bustier and watching porn on a computer in an apartment complex gym was arrested after officers found drugs in his backpack.

AP - Metro is reopening all the stations along its red line during the morning and evening rush hours after a crash earlier this week killed nine people.

AP - Inmates carrying sawed-off shotguns once patrolled the grounds of Arkansas state prisons, keeping other prisoners in line with fear and intimidation. The few guards kept order with 5-foot-long leather straps and a device that sent an electric charge through an offender's toe and genitals.

AP - Commuter rail tracks in the nation's capital are studded with devices that detect passing trains and tell them when to stop or slow down. But those devices on the stretch of track near where nine people were killed in a train crash didn't pass tests by investigators.

AP - A 37-year-old man was charged Thursday with murdering four people, including a 3-year-old girl whose lifeless body was found lying in the front yard of a Kansas City home.

AP - Two employees who found $40,000 in cash at a Florida car dealership have made their boss proud: Instead of keeping the money, they turned it in.

AP - The Washington-area mass transit system will inspect every stretch of its tracks as federal investigators work to determine whether problems found with a signaling system in one area could have contributed to this week's crash that killed nine people.

AP - Six bronze stars punctuate the smooth granite walls of the copper-domed State House. Each marks a scar left by the cannons of invading Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's bombardment of the capital in the final months of the Civil War.

AP - Retired exterminator Ed Brown and his dentist wife Elaine holed up on a mountaintop in their turreted concrete castle, protected by an arsenal of homemade bombs, booby traps, semiautomatic assault-type rifles and a cache of 60,000 rounds of ammunition — all aimed at federal agents.

AP - For the 35th anniversary of his 'A Prairie Home Companion,' humorist Garrison Keillor will be in 'Lake Wobegon' when he reads the news from Lake Wobegon.

AP - Security videos obtained by The Associated Press show Gov. Mark Sanford wheeling a small suitcase though a South Carolina airport the day he dropped off the map to see his mistress in Argentina.

AP - The government declared an end to a shortage of a childhood vaccine that protects against bacterial meningitis, pneumonia and other serious infections.

AP - Upset that General Motors was planning to 'wind down' the dealership where they had loyally bought their Chevys for years, schoolteacher Marie Kohr and her husband, Kevin, went to GM with a message: 'You are killing America.'

AP - In the years after Mark Becker graduated from high school, friends say he drifted from the community where he played football for the town's beloved coach.

AP - Jenny Sanford did not stand by her man.

AP - Investigators say a signaling system failed to detect a stopped commuter train during tests of the track where a deadly crash occurred this week in Washington, D.C.

AP - South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he will reimburse the state for an economic development trip he took to Argentina last year during which he met with his mistress.

AP - Just two weeks after the federal government revived plans to build the FutureGen power plant in eastern Illinois, two of the experimental coal plant's financial backers said Thursday they are withdrawing.

AP - Leslie Schuler once pleaded with a judge for visitation with the 7-year-old son he'd never known, so he could 'become the child's father, not just a paycheck once a week.'

AP - An investigation into a nanny charged with molesting a 10-year-old boy in Vermont is broadening after police discovered he may have looked for nanny and summer camp jobs in 12 other states.

AP - A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hustler Magazine didn't have the right to publish decades-old nude photographs of the wife of wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed the woman and his young son before committing suicide two years ago.

AP - The earthen dikes supporting a huge coal ash landfill at a Tennessee power plant were 'on the verge of failure' long before they collapsed and sent tons of toxic muck into a river and lakeside community, an engineering consultant said Thursday.

AP - The signaling system for the Washington-area transit system failed to detect a test train stopped in the same place as one that was struck during a deadly crash this week, federal investigators said Thursday.

AP - A person with knowledge of the situation says Michael Jackson has died in Los Angeles. The person, who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity, says the King of Pop died at age 50 in a Los Angeles hospital.

AP - Over Michael Jackson's chart-topping music career, his health has commanded as much publicity as his hit songs.

AP - It was a where-were-you moment in a digital age: Michael Jackson's death was not learned from a fatherly TV news anchor. Instead, the news first spread online.

AP - A record-shattering vinyl album and its moonwalking maestro. A paper poster of a golden-haired beauty in a one-piece swimsuit that was gossamer and clingy in all the right places.

AP - Michael Jackson didn't want to be just a superstar. Like the Beatles, he wanted to be the biggest, the king. He wanted to topple the reigning man with the crown, Elvis.