AP - John Lennon's killer was denied parole for a fifth time Tuesday by a board that said he remains a threat to the public. Mark David Chapman will remain in New York's Attica Correctional Facility for at least two more years for gunning down the former Beatle nearly three decades ago on a Manhattan sidewalk.

AP - Average scores on the ACT college entrance exam dipped slightly for the high school class of 2008 as the number of students taking the exam jumped by 9 percent compared to last year.

AP - If there is a place where heaven and hell meet, it's here. Twenty years ago this summer, a series of wildfires burned 36 percent of America's first national park, scorching huge swaths of pristine forest and killing scores of wild animals.

AP - Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that's been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

AP - Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote a letter to a federal appeals court complaining about a museum exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree.

AP - A flight attendant suing the wife of megachurch evangelist Joel Osteen over a preflight confrontation testified Tuesday that she felt compelled to keep an irate Victoria Osteen away from the cockpit door.

AP - Blaming a faulty memory, the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller has repeatedly denied allegations of an alias-filled past and any link to a Southern California couple who disappeared 23 years ago.

AP - It's not that police officers here mind a little extra help. They just fear that the decision to begin using state troopers to help fight violent crime has more to do with politics.

AP - California Chief Justice Ronald George has spent more than half his life cultivating an image of a cautious jurist and earning a reputation as a politically skilled court administrator.

AP - The enemy hides among civilians on the urban battlefield, walking the same dusty streets and in the same crowded markets where Cpl. Derrick Terrell found himself during a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

AP - Former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday.

AP - An 8-year-old Florida boy and his father were mauled by a black bear that pounced on the boy in a creek without provocation in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, authorities said Tuesday.