AP - The operator of a collapsed Utah mine violated safety protocols by cutting coal pillars that should have been left standing to prevent cave-ins, federal regulators said Thursday.

AP - Dozens of cargo ships, petrochemical tankers and smaller vessels stacked up Thursday near a closed stretch of the Mississippi River, a day after a collision between a barge and tanker spilled more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the nation's busy shipping waterway.

AP - Authorities are investigating whether a veteran state lawmaker possessed child pornography on his office computer, two assemblymen who share an office with him said Thursday.

AP - The grandmother of a missing 2-year-old Orlando girl told an emergency dispatcher that a car driven by the girl's mother smelled like there had been a dead body inside, according to recordings of 911 calls released Thursday.

AP - A former student shot three people Thursday in a computer room at a Phoenix community college, injuring one of them critically, authorities said. The gunman fled but a suspect was arrested nearby.

AP - It started as a bar fight in a college town in upstate New York. Police say a hulking basketball player from Serbia beat a fellow college student to a bloody pulp and fled to his home country, setting off a diplomatic crisis.

AP - It's a political oddity: a TV commercial extolling the public safety record of a sitting mayor, except the spot isn't soliciting votes and the politician's name isn't scheduled to appear on the November ballot.

AP - Business at reopened restaurants was humming, grocery store parking lots were packed and residents of south Texas were venturing out on the newly dry roads again as the remnants of Hurricane Dolly moved well away from the Rio Grande Valley.

AP - Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor said there may be "significant" penalties proposed when federal workplace safety regulators released their findings after investigating a dust explosion that killed 13 workers at a company sugar refinery.

AP - The insurgency that bedeviled U.S. forces for years and killed thousands of Iraqis and Americans has withered to the point where it is "not even much of a challenge any more" to Iraq's future, Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.

AP - The International Olympic Committee has upheld a ban on Iraqi teams at the Beijing Games, saying Thursday the government missed the deadline to address accusations of political interference.