AP - Federal investigators arrived Thursday at the tracks outside Boston where two commuter trains collided and derailed during rush hour a day earlier, trapping and killing a train operator and injuring more than a dozen passengers.

AP - Bright and early at 8:03 a.m., 14-year-old James Bailey of Scottsboro, Ala., stepped to the microphone and confidently spelled "magenta," and the Scripps National Spelling Bee was under way.

AP - A 30-acre field where corn and soybeans were once grown is now covered with Canada wild rye, big bluestem, Golden Alexander and compass plant — the same grasses and flowers the pioneers saw as they pushed westward across the American prairie in the 1800s.

AP - Opposition surfaced Thursday against Gov. David Paterson's directive to state agencies to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states and countries.

AP - The military is reviewing soldiers' complaints that their standard ammunition isn't powerful enough for the type of fighting required in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's highest-ranking officer said Thursday.

AP - NASA rushed Wednesday to get a special pump on board shuttle Discovery to fix a balky toilet at the international space station, as the launch countdown got under way.

AP - As a young man, David Paterson never looked for dropped change because he didn't want people to see a blind man crawling on the floor for nickels and dimes. He didn't use a white cane, either: it would make him a target in his New York City neighborhood.

AP - Along Utah's Nine Mile Canyon lies what some call the longest art gallery in the world — thousands of prehistoric rock carvings and paintings of bighorn sheep and other wildlife, hunters wielding spears, and warriors engaged in hand-to-hand combat. But now, a dramatic increase in natural gas drilling is proposed on the plateau above the canyon, and preservationists fear trucks will kick up dust that will cover over the images.

AP - A train operator apparently made two key errors in quick succession to cause a derailment that left passengers perched more than 20 feet above the ground and sent several to hospitals, the Chicago Transit Authority said Wednesday.