AP - Fort Collins police say Rep. Betsy Markey's office has requested increased patrols around her Colorado home out of fear it might be vandalized because she supported health care legislation.

AP - The term 'flash mob' used to mean online-organized groups having street-corner pillow fights or sidewalk dance-offs, but in Philadelphia they've turned violent, and the reasons are as tough to pin down as where the next one will be.

AP - Nadya Suleman's octuplets have brought her plenty of fame, but apparently not nearly the fortune she expected when she moved into a house her father agreed to buy last year for more than a half-million dollars.

AP - Frank Dryman first escaped hanging, then he just escaped. He wasn't found for four decades until he was discovered running a wedding chapel some 1,300 miles south of the Montana town where he killed a man who had offered him a ride in a blizzard.

AP - When Anchorage had to dispose of thousands of cars and trucks damaged in a powerful 1964 earthquake, it dumped them off a 350-foot bluff near the outskirts of town.

AP - Spring has sprung in northern New England — and that's bad news for maple syrup makers, who say warm weather is stunting sugaring season in some places.

AP - Public radio and TV stations across the country will receive more than $10 million over the next two years to boost local news coverage as newspapers decline.

AP - A medical helicopter crashed in a rainy field in western Tennessee early Thursday, killing three crew members on a return trip from delivering a patient. There were no survivors.

AP - The World Trade Center developer and government agencies that control the site have reached a deal to resolve a 16-month stalemate over rebuilding at ground zero.

AP - A one-time priest who later became an evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist and helped scientifically refute creationism with his research was honored Thursday with one of the world's top religion prizes.

AP - If the interminable backlog of veterans' disability claims has any chance of being eliminated, the system must go paperless.

AP - Coral reefs are dying, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether.

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AP - A former middle-school teacher who stunned police with her unsolicited confession that she'd had an affair with a 14-year-old former student pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of unlawful sex with a minor.

AP - The heir to a well-known Alabama snack food company took steps to make it look like he'd been abducted and murdered before he shot himself in the head, the coroner's office said Thursday.

AP - Montana tribal leaders, fed up with growing gang violence, have invited the Guardian Angels to open its first chapter on an American Indian reservation.

AP - The nation's space agency paid the out-of-this-world price of $66 a person a day for bagels, cookies and juice at a conference, a new report found.

AP - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday condemned vandalism and threats against members of Congress who voted to overhaul the U.S. health care system. Republicans joined in, telling people to calm down and saying they too were being targeted in an increasingly venomous political atmosphere.

AP - A lawsuit filed by the former police chief of the posh St. Louis suburb of Ladue claims he was pressured to pull over blacks and set ticket quotas for out-of-towners, but be lenient with the town's residents, even those who drove drunk.

AP - Hundreds of prime acres are up for grabs in this waterfront city and its neighboring towns, valuable commodity on an island known for prized beaches, lavish homes and natural beauty.

AP - St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village has fought to save lives for more than 160 years, treating everyone from survivors of the Titanic in 1912 to New Yorkers fleeing the terror attack on the World Trade Center.

AP - Federal officials say high-performance homemade planes like the one that killed a beach jogger last week in South Carolina are likely to stall at higher speeds and have been involved in a disproportionately large number of fatal accidents.

AP - A fugitive who fled Montana 38 years ago while on parole for a murder conviction will not contest his return to the state after he was found running an Arizona wedding chapel.

AP - A medical helicopter crashed in stormy weather over western Tennessee early Thursday, killing its crew of three, around the same time another helicopter company had declined to go on a flight in the area because of the weather conditions.

AP - Manes and tails flying, a herd of horses galloped along paved streets of this San Diego suburb, through a parking lot, fields and an Olympic training center for up to two hours before a mustachioed cowboy herded them back to the ranch.

AP - The World Trade Center developer and government agencies that control the site have reached a deal to resolve a 16-month stalemate over rebuilding at ground zero.

AP - Arthur Budzinski says the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He says he asked the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to hear his confession, and instead the priest took him into a closet under the stairs and sexually assaulted him.

AP - Days after Major Bashinsky disappeared from his law office earlier this month, a letter turned up in his abandoned car that angrily accused his prosperous family of mistreating workers at the snack food company it founded.

AP - The news came at a low point in the war in Iraq and seemed to reflect much of what was going wrong: A Marine squad killed 24 people in the town of Haditha in November 2005, including unarmed women and children in their homes.

AP - A new study confirms that Hispanic women generally breast-feed more than white and black women do. But it finds surprising regional differences in U.S. breast-feeding rates.

AP - The Texas Supreme Court is deciding whether to strip away a $5 entrance fee to watch nude dancers.

AP - More than $100,000 is missing after a bag of cash fell from an armored car into an intersection, leading several motorists to stop and grab handfuls of bills, police said Thursday.

AP - A 90-year-old man accused of bludgeoning and suffocating his wife of nearly 68 years leaned on a walker as he made his way into court on a murder charge Thursday, both eyes blackened and his neck bruised.

AP - The World Trade Center developer and government agencies that control the site have reached a tentative deal to resolve a 16-month stalemate over rebuilding at ground zero.

AP - A teenager who allegedly made an announcement earlier this month ordering all black people to leave a southern New Jersey Walmart has been charged in a similar incident at the same store just after Christmas.

AP - An object resembling a pipe bomb was found in a mailbox in front of a small east Texas post office Thursday, the second such incident in three days, authorities said.

AP - Loggers working near the Oregon coast discovered the wreckage of a World War II-era warplane in woods not far from a naval air station decommissioned in 1948, military and police officials said Thursday.

AP - Arizona authorities say they arrested 10 human smugglers and rescued 50 illegal immigrants held in drop houses in Phoenix in two separate incidents this week.