AP - A New York judge threw out an indictment against five operators of a Florida pharmacy targeted almost two years ago in an investigation of illegal steroid sales over the Internet and by phone.

AP - Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size — not its strength — will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

AP - Testing prompted by an Associated Press story that revealed trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water supplies has shown that more Americans are affected by the problem than previously thought — at least 46 million.

AP - Jeff Hawn, a software executive who owns a luxury home outside this old mining town, warned his neighbor, rancher Monte Downare, to keep his bison from roaming onto his property or risk having them hunted. Hawn later sued Downare, alleging the buffalo had turned his land into a feedlot.

AP - Familiar rituals of grief marked the seventh anniversary of Sept. 11 on Thursday as thousands paid tribute at the attack sites, the presidential candidates laid flowers at ground zero and children mourned parents they can barely remember.

AP - An all-white jury will judge O.J. Simpson and a co-defendant on kidnapping and robbery charges after defense lawyers lost a contentious courtroom battle to include two African-American women on the panel.

AP - As a gigantic Hurricane Ike steamed through the Gulf of Mexico toward the Texas coast, officials in America's fourth-largest city made a bold decision: Instead of fleeing, residents here would stare down the storm.

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.