AP - Citing a lack of federal leadership, the nation's Western governors want to draft a national energy policy they hope will influence the next presidential administration. -- read full article
AP - Tiffany was 12 when her mother died. That was the same year she ran away from her sister's house, lived on the streets for six weeks and met the man who two days later became her pimp.
AP - Weary crews battling wildfires across northern and central California are going to get help from the National Guard, the first time the state's troops have been called to ground-based firefighting duty since 1977.
AP - A former death row inmate was freed from a Nashville prison on Wednesday for the first time in nearly 23 years after an anonymous donor paid his bail. -- read full article
AP - Investigators have spent two days digging at a property in northeast Georgia in search of clues advocates hope could lead to finding living suspects in the unsolved lynchings of four people in 1946.
AP - Police in the 1970s urged citizens to "drop a dime" in a pay phone to report crimes anonymously. Now in an increasing number of cities, tipsters are being invited to use their thumbs to identify criminals using text messages. -- read full article
AP - The high school where the principal claimed girls formed a pact to get pregnant is one of the few in Massachusetts with a day care center, leading some to wonder whether that sent a message that teen motherhood is OK.
AP - Police in Nicholas T. Sheley's town came to know him well as his crimes progressed from marijuana possession to domestic battery, then to resisting a peace officer and aggravated battery.
AP - A fugitive hedge-fund swindler who faked suicide on a Hudson River bridge and went on the run to avoid a prison sentence surrendered Wednesday in Massachusetts, the U.S. attorney's office said.
AP - A softball player accused of fatally punching a rival team member after a recreational league game spent more than four years in prison for battering a man with a golf club, according to state records. -- read full article
AP - Nearly all the major automakers reported steep sales declines for June, but for General Motors at least there was consolation: Toyota, its leading international competition, had it worse.
AP - The nation's busiest airport dueled with gun rights advocates Tuesday over whether a new Georgia state law allows visitors to carry firearms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
AP - The head of the foundation building the Sept. 11 memorial told supporters Tuesday it's "essential" to open the memorial by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, disputing a report that the project couldn't be finished on time.