AP - Jurors deliberated a full day Tuesday without reaching a verdict in the case of three lawyers charged with defrauding clients in a $200 million diet drug settlement.

AP - U.S. consumers are the gloomiest they've been since the tail end of the last prolonged recession. Inflation, sinking home values and soaring gas prices have pushed confidence to the lowest level since 1992. Consumers' view of the economic future has never been lower, raising worries that already weak consumer spending could deteriorate further.

AP - A 16-year-old girl is a key witness in the state's effort to pursue criminal charges against members of her polygamist sect, even though she denies investigators' claims that she was abused.

AP - Substantially improving the accuracy of hurricane intensity predictions could take years and tens of millions of dollars, the National Hurricane Center's director said Tuesday.

AP - Bill Jakob arrived in this small town with an offer to help police curb the community's methamphetamine problem. He had a badge and a gun and told officials he had previously worked as an anti-drug agent in Illinois. He even drove a fully equipped Ford Crown Victoria, which he said was for undercover work.

AP - Fire crews joined aircraft from neighboring states Tuesday to battle hundreds of lightning-caused wildfires across Northern California.

AP - One of the girls who became pregnant at Gloucester High School this year denied Tuesday there was any pact among them to have children, saying instead they decided to help each other make the best of their situations.

AP - An East Texas newspaper acknowledged Tuesday that a reporter covering a trial of a child sex club dated the prosecutor until five months ago, an allegation the defense team is using to seek a change of venue.

AP - In one of the biggest conservation deals in U.S. history, the nation's largest producer of cane sugar reached a tentative agreement Tuesday to get out of the business and sell its nearly 300 square miles in the Everglades to the state of Florida for $1.75 billion.

AP - The weakest spot left along the swollen Mississippi River may be the Pin Oak levee, a barrier so tenuous that soil slides down its slope.