AP - A sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enroll in Arizona schools has pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges, two stemming from the charade he pulled for two years, and will go to prison for more than 70 years, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

AP - A judge who asked lawyers and prospective jurors to put in 10-hour days to get a jury for the O.J. Simpson kidnapping-robbery case suggested a panel to judge the former football star could be seated late Thursday or early Friday.

AP - Authorities said the man accused of a shooting rampage that left six people dead in northwest Washington stole the guns used in the attacks as well as a pickup truck involved in a high-speed chase.

AP - A fire injured 16 people at an apartment building for the elderly and disabled early Thursday, forcing firefighters to use a ladder truck to rescue some residents from upper floors, officials said.

AP - Reputed Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale should be released from prison immediately because of his declining health and recent acquittal in the 1964 abduction and slayings of two black teenagers, his attorneys argue in a new court filing.

AP - Authorities in the Houston area and along the Southeast Texas Gulf Coast ordered hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate Thursday as Hurricane Ike lumbered toward the coast and threatened to grow even stronger.

AP - The nation paused Thursday morning to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with heartfelt remembrances at the World Trade Center site, the dedication of a memorial at the Pentagon and a planned visit to ground zero by the presidential candidates.

AP - The biggest search this year for Steve Fossett has ground to a halt with team members leaving a rugged mountain area without finding any sign of the aviator-adventurer who has been missing for a year.

AP - With easy primary victories behind them, Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken, wasted no time Wednesday working to firm up the messages that will carry them through the general election.

AP - A teenager was arrested for investigation of four counts of murder Wednesday in the killings of a woman and three girls whose bodies were found in a burning house, authorities said.

AP - The frail and elderly were put aboard buses Wednesday and authorities warned 1 million others to flee inland as Hurricane Ike steamed toward a swath of the Texas coast that includes the nation's largest concentration of refineries and chemical plants.

AP - Searching for an economic boost and home to perhaps the most compelling story of 9/11, rural Somerset County is trying to pull off a balancing act: Remembering the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 in a way that encourages development and job growth without devolving into tackiness and disrespect.

AP - The nation's top domestic security official said Wednesday aviation remains vulnerable to terrorist attack seven years after 9/11.