OKLAHOMA CITY - With crews still trying to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses that were blacked out during a winter storm last weekend, residents braced for a second wintry blast that was expected to blanket the region in snow on Saturday.
POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. - It took less than 30 seconds for the Silver Bridge to tumble into the Ohio River, killing 46 people and leaving towns on either side stunned and bereft. Stephen Darst, who saw it happen 40 years ago Saturday, has relived that half-minute countless times.
PHOENIX - A man accused of being the Phoenix Baseline Killer was sentenced to 438 years in prison Friday for the sexual assaults of two sisters. Mark Goudeau still faces trial for the slayings of eight women and a man in 2005-2006, and faces a possible death sentence if he is convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.
DENVER - A gunman who killed four people in two shootings did not send hate mail to a Christian missionary training center where some of the victims were shot, authorities said Friday, backing off from their earlier statements.
LARGO, Fla. - A teacher drowning in debt fatally shot his ex-wife and her roommate Friday, and police found two dead children at his house, authorities said. The body of an apparent suicide victim was found later in his van.
LONG BEACH, Calif. - An early morning fire Friday roared through a garage that had been converted into living space, killing two young sisters and critically injuring a third.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Knoxville's district attorney was found dead in his pasture in 1992, his breastbone and some of his ribs broken, a hoofprint on the chest of his overalls. Investigators concluded he had been knocked down and trampled to death by his cattle.
McLEAN, Va. - The courthouse files look like the Christmas list of a high-society fashion maven with a purse fetish: mink coats, jewelry, Faberge eggs, a Mercedes Benz and more than 100 handbags and wallets with designer names like Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton.
SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah Supreme Court on Friday upheld a judge's order that the woman accused of aiding in the 2002 kidnapping of teenager Elizabeth Smart be forcibly medicated for mental illness.
TOPEKA, Kan. - The state attorney general announced his resignation Friday, days after acknowledging an extramarital affair with a former employee who accused him of sexual harassment and professional misconduct.
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine reservist who killed an Iraqi soldier was sentenced Friday to a bad-conduct discharge but will serve no more time behind bars, a Camp Pendleton spokeswoman said.
CHICAGO - A United Airlines flight from Shanghai, China, was evacuated Friday on an O'Hare International Airport runway minutes after a pilot reported smoke in the cabin shortly before the plane's scheduled arrival, a United spokeswoman said.
COLUMBIA, S.C. - A passenger handcuffed after a car chase with police early Friday tried to save a sheriff's deputy who had suffered a fatal heart attack moments after arresting him, authorities said.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - One operation went awry after an experienced brain surgeon insisted to a nurse he knew what side of the head to operate on — but got it wrong.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A judge declared a mistrial Friday in the case of a former Harvard graduate student accused of stabbing a teenager to death during a fight.
TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey on Friday became the first state to require flu shots for preschoolers, saying their developing immune systems and likelihood of spreading germs make them as vulnerable to complications as the elderly.
CLIFTON, N.J. - A lawyer for one of seven state troopers accused of sexual assault while they were off duty said Friday that the activity was consensual, calling the woman's allegations "absurd."
SAN FRANCISCO - A Boeing subsidiary accused of helping the CIA secretly fly terrorism suspects to be tortured in overseas prisons openly acknowledged its role in the "extraordinary rendition" program, a former employee of the smaller company said in court papers Friday.
VALLEY CITY, N.D. - A former jailer convicted last month of killing a college student pleaded guilty Friday to sexually assaulting female inmates last year at the jail where he worked.
OMAHA, Neb. - A teenager who lived with the suicidal gunman who fatally shot eight people in a mall told police afterward that he had seen writings in which the suspect described killing himself in public, according to a court document filed Friday.
SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah Supreme Court on Friday upheld a judge's order that the woman accused of aiding in the 2002 kidnapping of teenager Elizabeth Smart be forcibly medicated for mental illness.