JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Organizers for the Tour of Missouri bicycling race launched a campaign to solicit private donations for the event while Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and his office lessen their involvement....

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- Trevor Booker's stellar career at Clemson ended on a sour note. You can thank "The Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball" for that....

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) -- One-time potential political foes Roy Blunt and Sarah Steelman announced her selection Friday to head a coalition of Missouri business people to advise Blunt's U.S. Senate campaign on what's needed to expand and sustain small businesses and jobs....

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) -- St. Louis County has been awarded a federal grant of more than $7.5 million to help smokers quit the habit and deter young people from taking it up....

JUPITER, Fla. (AP) -- Albert Pujols hit his first home run of the spring, but right-hander Chris Carpenter was pounded for seven runs Friday in the St. Louis Cardinals' 7-6 loss to the Florida Marlins....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One by one, Democratic fence-sitters began choosing sides Friday, and the long, turbulent struggle over landmark health care legislation tilted unmistakably in President Barack Obama's direction....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was a bold response to skyrocketing health insurance premiums. President Barack Obama would give federal authorities the power to block unreasonable rate hikes....

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Friday that the United States and Israel have found a way around the worst disagreement the two allies have faced in years while international diplomats set goals for new U.S.-backed peace talks aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state....

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Seven years after the first bombs in the war to oust Saddam Hussein, Iraqis went about their business Friday with little observance of the anniversary, looking to the future with a mixture of trepidation and hope....

DUBLIN (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI addresses Ireland on Saturday in a letter apologizing for the sex abuse scandal here - a message being watched closely by Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if it also acknowledges decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups....

HEMET, Calif. (AP) -- Police officers in this retirement town in rural Riverside County have been on edge in recent weeks. Someone is trying to kill them....

SEATTLE (AP) -- A Washington man accused of shooting his ex-wife to death during a counseling session at a Federal Way church has been charged with first-degree murder....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California parole officials said Friday they have ordered increased monitoring of all sex offenders after recent high-profile lapses, most notably in the case of a young woman who was held captive for 18 years by a convicted rapist....

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) -- Charges have been dropped or convictions vacated in 185 drug cases in one of the nation's most crime-ridden cities because information gathered in a criminal investigation of five police city officers suggests evidence could have been tainted, a prosecutor announced Friday....

CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) -- A pro-democracy activist jailed for months in Myanmar after trying to visit his sick mother in prison arrived home in the United States on Friday, capping weeks of discussions between the ruling military junta and the U.S. State Department....

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- The wife of former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez ridiculed an attempt to extradite her husband from the United States, suggesting that President Hugo Chavez is attempting to create a spectacle to distract from domestic problems....

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- The retired general who captured legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was summoned Friday by Bolivian authorities investigating an alleged plot against President Evo Morales....

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- A shootout erupted in the streets of a northeastern Mexican city Friday, killing two suspected drug cartel gunmen and wounding a soldier....

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- A top official in Sierra Leone's government said he raced to a town in the country Friday after news reports said at least 200 people had been killed in a mining accident there, only to find out it was a hoax....

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's national debt is the key theme in the country's looming national election - but it's now news organizations, not just the country's government, racking up huge bills to meet the cost of covering the campaign....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the circumstances that led to the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red....

As of Friday, March 19, 2010, at least 939 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count....

The following products are being recalled because they could be contaminated with salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children and others with weakened immune systems:...

Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows:...

GENEVA (AP) -- Operators of the world's largest atom smasher on Friday ramped up their massive machine to three times the energy ever previously achieved, in the run-up to experiments probing the secrets of the universe....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality....

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Fishing nations won a victory over environmentalists Thursday when a U.S.-backed proposal to ban export of the Atlantic bluefin tuna was overwhelmingly rejected at a U.N. wildlife meeting....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The overall number of animals in the Arctic has increased over the past 40 years ago, according to a new international study. But critters who live closest to the North Pole are disappearing....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet....

ATLANTA (AP) -- An unexpected big drop in new U.S. tuberculosis cases is probably because of stepped up screening and treatment of immigrants before they leave their native countries, health officials say....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Agriculture Department has failed to enforce penalties against some who falsely marketed foods as organic, according to an internal department investigation....

CHICAGO (AP) -- The nation's largest association of doctors and the AARP senior citizens' lobby are endorsing President Barack Obama's revised health overhaul legislation....

LONDON (AP) -- In a March 18 story about drug-resistant tuberculosis, The Associated Press reported erroneously that there were no U.S. cases in 2008 of extensively drug-resistant TB. There were four cases in 2008 and no cases in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) -- Federal health advisers said Thursday an electronic heart implant should be approved for a large group of heart-disease patients who currently aren't eligible for the device....

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- A woman gardening wearing only a yellow thong and pink gloves has brought neighborhood complaints and new rules from a housing authority in Colorado....

LONDON (AP) -- It's common to return a library book late - but not by half a century....

NEW YORK (AP) -- An elderly Brooklyn couple say they're tired of hearing the phrase, "Police! Open up!" World War II veteran Walter Martin and his 82-year-old wife, Rose, said police have come looking for criminals at their house about 50 times in the past eight years. It's not clear why....

KENNEWICK, Wash. (AP) -- A burglar who spent about five hours on a store's computer after breaking into the business gave police all the clues they needed to track him down. Investigators said the 17-year-old logged into his MySpace account while at Bella Office Furniture and that made it easy for them to find him. He also spent time looking at pornography and trying to sell stolen items, all while using the business' computer....

BOSTON (AP) -- A man from Maine who struck a match on a U.S. Airways flight to Boston's Logan International Airport is facing some heat - but not over matches. Massachusetts State Police detained 50-year-old Paul Prater of Sanford on Wednesday over an outstanding identity fraud warrant in Canton, Ga. State police spokesman David Procopio said no charges have been brought for the match lighting, which Prater called an accident....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators are seeking public comment on a petition by cable, satellite and phone companies for new government rules that would give them more clout in negotiations with TV broadcasters over programming....

THE ALLEGATIONS: Since late February, at least three lawsuits seeking class-action status have been filed against Yelp, a site that asks people to review businesses. The cases claim that reviews on Yelp are manipulated, depending on which companies pay to advertise on the site and which don't....

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Yelp, one of the most popular Web sites that let people post opinions about restaurants, shops and local services, is being sued by several small businesses that claim they've been pressured to advertise on the site in exchange for getting negative reviews squashed....

NEW YORK (AP) -- Settling a copyright dispute closely watched in the financial news industry, a judge on Thursday ordered a Web site to delay disseminating the stock recommendations of financial services firms long enough so that the firms can alert their clients first....

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Some suburban Philadelphia parents are seeking to halt a potential class-action lawsuit accusing their school district of using cameras in school-issued laptops to spy on students at home....