AP - A newspaper report Thursday said tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states. Election officials lined up to defend their registration procedures and said they had done nothing wrong.

AP - The fatal shooting of a store employee and gun battle with police in a Knoxville shopping mall began as a complaint over a clothing purchase, authorities said Thursday.

AP - A man found dead this week after a gasoline-fueled blaze at his Kentucky house shot and killed his wife and daughter before turning the gun on himself, police said Thursday.

AP - A tortoise, a hare, a mouse and a half-dozen mussels are some of the creatures that a conservation group hopes to save through a "Western Ark" project aimed at petitioning the government for federal protection.

AP - For centuries, hospitality to weary travelers has been part of the Uighur culture. The Uighur land in what is now the far western province of China carried merchants traversing the famed Silk Road.

AP - With the economy in a slide and the credit markets seized up, states are slashing budgets, eliminating jobs, putting major construction projects on hold and nervously waiting to see whether their shriveled pension funds recover.

AP - A World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes is costing U.S. airlines billions of dollars in wasted fuel while an upgrade to a satellite-based system has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade.

AP - Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday secured a fellow billionaire's once-wavering support to change the city's term-limits law, even as other obstacles formed to the politician's attempt to extend his tenure.

AP - A customer opened fire in a crowded shopping mall Wednesday afternoon, killing a clothing store employee before he was shot and wounded by police officers, authorities said. Witnesses said the gunfire sent people "stampeding" for cover.

AP - William "Wild Bill" Cutolo was a feared mobster who vanished nearly a decade ago during a bloody struggle for control of the Colombo crime family. It had been widely believed that after rival gangsters killed him, his body was dumped off the side of a boat in the Atlantic Ocean.

AP - In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.