AP - Birthers beware: Hawaii may start ignoring your repeated requests for proof that President Barack Obama was born here.

AP - A 23-year-old woman allegedly attacked by a registered sex offender at the same park where he is accused of killing a San Diego teenager two months later said Tuesday that she believed he was going to rape her.

AP - Spurred by budget crises, California and Michigan together reduced their prison populations by more than 7,500 last year, contributing to what a new report says is the first nationwide decline in the number of state inmates since 1972.

AP - The bus had been on the interstate about an hour when the spring breakers and other travelers headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border heard a noise and then felt the bus flip around before toppling on its side in a grassy median.

AP - Some children lugged sandbags that weighed more than they did. Determined teens showed up just after dawn with groups of friends, ready and willing to shovel. New groups of kids arrived by the busloads, all ready to join the race to protect their city from the rising Red River.

AP - The father of a boy who vanished along with his mother last weekend has arrived in Washington to look for them.

AP - Detroit Public Schools are considering closing 45 schools in the next five years because students are leaving the district.

AP - Cornell University, an Ivy League school known for its spectacular gorges and haunted by a reputation for suicides, took the extraordinary step of posting lookouts on bridges and going door-to-door to check on students after three undergrads plunged to their deaths in the past month.

AP - A broken drive shaft likely caused a Mexico-bound bus to veer wildly on a Texas highway before flipping over, killing two passengers and injuring 40 others on board, investigators said Wednesday.

AP - The emergency financial manager for Detroit public schools says 44 schools and a support building will close in June as the district addresses budget issues and declining enrollment.

AP - Investigators from Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration inspected a wrecked 2005 Prius in a suburb of New York City on Wednesday to see if its event data recorder or the car would point to a problem with braking or acceleration.

AP - First lady Michelle Obama says her fight against childhood obesity isn't about appearance but about whether kids have enough energy to be productive at school.

AP - Some children lugged sandbags that weighed more than they did. Determined teens showed up just after dawn with groups of friends, ready and willing to shovel. New groups of kids arrived by the busloads, all ready to join the race to protect their city from the rising Red River.

AP - A federal judge refused Wednesday to postpone the June start of ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich's corruption trial, brushing aside defense attorneys' claims that they won't have enough time to prepare.

AP - New York Gov. David Paterson broke his silence Wednesday, saying that he didn't try to persuade a woman to drop a domestic violence complaint against a top aide and that his appointee to the U.S. Senate threw him 'under the bus.'

AP - A series of children's textbooks on Islam contains misleading and inflammatory rhetoric about the religion, inaccurately portraying its followers as inherently violent and deserving of suspicion, according to a Muslim civil liberties group.

AP - The emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools says more than a quarter of the district's schools will close in June as it struggles with budget issues and declining enrollment.

AP - Authorities are trying to determine if an heir to one of Alabama's best-known companies was killed or took his own life.

AP - Authorities in Washington state called off ground and water searches for the woman who abandoned a van on a remote Puget Sound beach over the weekend and disappeared with her 8-year-old son.

AP - Workers at a Nevada research lab were checking on a primate room when they came across a ghastly sight: Thirty dead monkeys were essentially cooked alive after someone left the heater on. Two others were near death and had to be euthanized.

AP - Customers at a Walmart store in southern New Jersey are expressing dismay after hearing that someone used the public address system to order 'all black people' to leave.

AP - A wheelchair company and its technicians are to blame for the death of a disability advocate who died after his wheelchair malfunctioned during routine repairs, pinning his legs under a tabletop and causing him to suffer seizures, according to a lawsuit brought by the man's family.

AP - Nearly two years ago, North Carolina's groundbreaking innocence panel received the evidence it needed to free a man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted of murdering a prostitute.

AP - A Toyota spokesman says a Prius that crashed into a stone wall in the New York suburbs is yielding data on engine speed and pedal position.

AP - A Minnesota man has been arrested in Chicago and charged with selling his wife's sexual services on Craigslist.

AP - The $75 million heist at a pharmaceutical warehouse in Connecticut this week was just the most audacious example of a growing phenomenon: Thieves are stealing large quantities of prescription drugs for resale on the black market.

AP - Schoolchildren, parents and hundreds of residents have spent days packing and stacking sandbags to protect their cities against the rising Red River. The National Guard is in place, keeping watch over the water. Dike builders are finishing last-minute work.

AP - Workers at a Nevada research lab were checking on a primate room when they came across a ghastly sight: Thirty dead monkeys were essentially cooked alive after someone left the heater on. Two others were near death and had to be euthanized.

AP - A convicted embezzler who snagged a $9.1 million business tax credit from the state of Michigan and appeared on stage with Gov. Jennifer Granholm has been arrested on a parole violation.

AP - The Episcopal Church has approved the election of a lesbian assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles, making her the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican global fellowship, diocese officials said Wednesday.

AP - The Department of Veterans Affairs was fined $227,500 after incorrect radiation doses were given to 97 veterans with prostate cancer at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, a federal agency announced Wednesday.

AP - Tennessee's head Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Levy was arrested in Mississippi and charged with felony marijuana possession after investigators found a package of pot with his name on it and more of the drug at his hotel room, authorities said Wednesday.

AP - A federal jury on Wednesday rejected allegations that New Orleans police unlawfully arrested two men who were videotaping them along a Carnival parade route in 2007.

AP - Authorities in Washington state on Wednesday resumed their search for a woman who appears to have abandoned a van on a remote Puget Sound beach over the weekend and disappeared with her 8-year-old son.

AP - The U.S. Marine Corps' investigation of the February death of an Indiana Marine in Afghanistan concludes that he was fatally shot when an Afghan security contractor fired shots at a group of Marines.

AP - An angry letter and a bag of Golden Flake chips were taped inside Major Bashinsky's abandoned car when it was found near downtown Birmingham.

AP - Two bank robbery suspects, including one dressed in a green leprechaun costume, were shot dead after a St. Patrick's Day chase and shootout with police in Tennessee, authorities said.

AP - Country singer Justin Moore knows his fans can get rowdy — maybe sometimes to a fault.

AP - A California Highway Patrol report released Wednesday says an officer responding to a report of a runaway Toyota Prius arrived to find a Border Patrol agent near the driver with lights flashing.

AP - Goodnight, John-Boy: Driven partly by job losses, more multigenerational families are choosing to live together as 'boomerang kids' flock home and people help care for grandchildren or aging parents.

AP - A convicted sex offender charged with murdering a California teenager lived near a preschool for at least 16 months before parole agents forced him to move, according to state corrections records released Wednesday.

AP - Police in Washington state say a man who accompanied his wife to a church for a counseling session shot the woman several times at the church, killing her.

AP - Prosecutors say a member of a polygamist group whose sprawling West Texas ranch was raided in 2008 has been found guilty of sexual assault of a child.

AP - Singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, known for his influential work with bands the Box Tops and Big Star, died Wednesday. He was 59.