AP - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate and haunted bearer of the Camelot torch after two of his brothers fell to assassins' bullets, has died after battling a brain tumor. He was 77.

AP - A concrete-and-aluminum awning collapsed Tuesday outside a north Texas gym, killing a teenage girl and injuring another as they jogged past, authorities said.

AP - Shelia Phillips doesn't see the New Orleans that Mayor Ray Nagin talks about, the one on its way to having just as many people and a more diverse economy than it did before Hurricane Katrina. How could she?

AP - Craby Joe's was once a joint where denizens of nearby Skid Row slouched on barstools over dirty linoleum getting salsed on $2.50 mugs of Miller High Life.

AP - In the quiet of a Capitol elevator, one of Edward M. Kennedy's fellow lawmakers asked whether he had plans for a family Thanksgiving away from the nation's capital. No, the Massachusetts senator said with a shake of his head, and mentioned something about visiting his brothers' gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery.

AP - Counselors will be available for students at a Texas high school after one girl died and another was injured when an awning fell on the teenagers.

AP - An Oklahoma district attorney is to meet with pastors in a town where a preacher was brutally killed inside her own church.

AP - Nell Shepherd was past her century mark when she competed in her first beauty pageant with a walker and lively stories that made judges tear up with laughter. She reveled in the shows, so much that she insisted she be buried with her sparkling tiara.

AP - South Carolina's lieutenant governor will ask embattled Gov. Mark Sanford to resign at a news conference Wednesday, a spokesman said.

AP - A Fraser fir from West Virginia will be the Christmas tree displayed inside the White House this year.

AP - A Florida appeals court is being urged to affirm a judge's ruling that the state's strict ban on adoptions by gay people is unconstitutional.

AP - Tropical Storm Danny has formed in the open Atlantic off the Bahamas, and forecasters say it could get stronger as it moves toward the U.S.

AP - A 16-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to raping and beating a mother and her young son says the woman begged 'don't kill me' during the attack.

AP - Hundreds of photographs line the walls of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. For the moment, one in particular has captivated a visitor from New Hampshire.

AP - An Oklahoma district attorney has warned pastors to take security precautions in a town where a preacher was brutally killed inside her own church.

AP - South Carolina's lieutenant governor called on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign Wednesday, promising to put aside his own political ambitions if that convinces fellow Republicans wary of elevating him to urge Sanford to step down.

AP - An experimental procedure that someday may enable women to avoid passing certain genetic diseases on to their children has gained an early success, with the birth of four healthy monkeys, scientists report.

AP - In the Depression-era days of Gypsy Rose Lee, burlesque dancing was about as naughty, and as nude, as it got in public. The emphasis was on the tease more than the strip, until Playboy and harder-core pornography came along in the 1950s.

AP - A makeshift memorial of flowers, pictures, teddy bears and messages grew inside a north Texas high school Wednesday, after one teenager died and another was injured when a downtown storefront awning fell on them.

AP - Gov. Jon Corzine and New Jersey federal legislators joined an angry chorus of opposition Wednesday to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's expected stay in the state, where 38 victims of the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, lived before their deaths in 1988.

AP - A 750-acre wildfire northeast of Los Angeles fouled the air breathed by millions of Southern Californians on Wednesday, but the flames were burning away from suburbs on the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and no homes had been lost.

AP - Louisville coach Rick Pitino says a sex scandal involving a woman accused of trying to extort him has been 'pure hell' for his family and that he's had enough.

AP - A 17-year-old boy accused of detonating two pipe bombs at a Northern California high school while armed with a chain saw, sword and explosives was charged Wednesday with attempting to murder two faculty members.

AP - A Muslim woman on Wednesday sued a Michigan judge for telling her to remove her headscarf in his courtroom, claiming he violated her First Amendment right to practice her religion.

AP - A grand jury in Dallas has indicted a couple accused of keeping the woman's three young children starving in a hotel bathroom for at least nine months.

AP - A Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty in federal court to buying more than $2 million of contraband cigarettes.

AP - More than a dozen candidates, including the lieutenant governor, two state lawmakers and an openly gay Iraq war veteran, are running to fill an open congressional seat in a special election in Northern California next week.

AP - Soldiers recovering in special Army medical units have faced inconsistent discipline because the military hasn't adopted standards for how they and their commanders should act, according to a military review.

AP - President Barack Obama marked Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death Wednesday by declaring his fellow Democrat 'one of the single most effective senators' in U.S. history, praise that was hardly a shock to the partisan senses.

AP - For the first time in nearly half a century, Massachusetts voters will be handed ballots for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Edward Kennedy without his name on them.

AP - U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack promised California farmers Wednesday he'll press for solutions to the water crisis hitting the state's San Joaquin Valley, one of the most prolific farm regions in the world.

AP - Phil Saviano and Susan Pavlak led separate lives in different states, both fighting for people who — like them — had been abused by clergy years ago.

AP - A Louisiana man was convicted Wednesday of gunning down five teenagers in a grisly crime that prompted the governor to bring National Guard troops back to New Orleans to help curb violence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

AP - Consumers and businesses went on a big-ticket spending spree in July, sending home, car and equipment sales soaring by the largest amount in years.

AP - NASA will test the powerful first stage of its new Ares moon rocket Thursday, a milestone in a program that has already spent $7 billion for a rocket that astronauts may never use.

AP - Gov. Jon Corzine and New Jersey federal legislators joined an angry chorus of opposition Wednesday to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's expected stay in the state, where 38 victims of the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, lived before their deaths in 1988.

AP - The first of four defendants to be tried in the carjacking, rape and murder of a young Tennessee couple was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday by the same jury that convicted him of murder.

AP - A judge says it's unconstitutional to require the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can't keep the state safe without God's help.

AP - A filmmaking couple devised an intricate system of bribes to Thai officials in order to land lucrative projects such as the Bangkok International Film Festival, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday during opening statements of their trial.