AP - City and state officials tried to hold them off, but New Orleans residents would have none of it. After Hurricane Gustav brushed by the city, they wanted back in, and now.

AP - Residents moved boats and booked inland hotel rooms while National Guard troops prepared to deploy along the Southeastern coast as Tropical Storm Hanna plowed through the Atlantic on Thursday, with Category 4 Hurricane Ike trailing a few days behind.

AP - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges Thursday in a sex scandal, forcing him out of office after months of defiantly holding onto his job leading the nation's 11th-largest city. He was ordered jailed for four months and fined $1 million.

AP - A woman convicted of murdering her infant daughter by microwaving her was spared the death penalty Wednesday by a jury that couldn't reach a unanimous decision.

AP - Tropical Storm Hanna knocked out power to the southern Bahamas on Wednesday and officials from Nassau to South Carolina warned residents to prepare for possible evacuations as it moves north and grows into a hurricane.

AP - The owner of the radio station that ran ads for a concert where a fire killed 100 people agreed to pay $22 million. A beer distributor that helped promote the show agreed to $16 million.

AP - In a high school classroom, Xavier Chavez is trying to teach a group of restless teenagers about Manifest Destiny — the 19th century belief that the United States was divinely fated to stretch from sea to shining sea.

AP - If Hurricane Katrina was one big lesson in government bungling, Gustav has been an open-book test of whether the politicians learned anything from the disaster.

AP - A somber police motorcade carried a slain deputy's body away from the scene of a bloody rampage Wednesday as investigators tried to determine what set off a shooting and stabbing spree that left six people dead and four wounded.

AP - Organizers called off a boycott of Chicago Public Schools Wednesday, saying they want students to return to class and for Gov. Rod Blagojevich to meet to discuss the state's education funding system.

AP - After months of defiantly holding onto his office, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick appeared ready to give it up as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in a sex-and-misconduct scandal that has embarrassed the nation's 11th-largest city for months.

AP - Coastal residents moved boats and booked inland hotel rooms while National Guard troops prepared to deploy along the Southeastern coast as Tropical Storm Hanna plowed through the Atlantic on a shifting track toward the U.S.