U.S. National News

N.J. lawmakers vote to ban death penalty

File picture shows death penalty opponents demonstrating in San Francisco. The New Jersey state assembly voted Thursday to abolish the death penalty, a spokesman said, making it the first US state to outlaw capital punishment in four decades.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Justin Sullivan)
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AFP/Getty Images/File
AP - 1 hour, 29 minutes ago

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey will become the first state in four decades to abolish the death penalty under a measure lawmakers approved Thursday and the governor intends to sign within days.

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  • The United Methodist Church choir sings during the memorial service for Gary Scharf in Curtis, Nebraska, Monday afternoon, Dec. 10, 2007. Scharf was killed in the Omaha mall shooting Dec. 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Beth Gilbert)
    Mother of mall shooter apologizes AP - 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

    OMAHA, Neb. - The mother of the teenage gunman who killed eight people at a busy shopping mall last week apologized Thursday for her son's crime and said she did her best raising him.

  • Reservist convicted of killing Iraqi AP - Thu Dec 13, 3:00 PM ET

    CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine reservist was found guilty Thursday of killing an Iraqi soldier while they stood watch together at a guard post in Fallujah.

  • Anne Gurnee, right, who lost her home in the recent wildfires, gets a hug from mentor Debbie Williams in Jamul, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 6, 2007. Williams lost her own home in El Cajon, Calif. to a wildfire in 2003. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
    Wildfire veterans offer expertise AP - Thu Dec 13, 2:16 PM ET

    JAMUL, Calif. - Just two months ago, these women were strangers, but today Debbie Williams holds Anne Gurnee tightly and comforts her as Gurnee sobs over the ashes of her dream house.

  • Gov. John Lynch walks into a packed room to sign a bill Thursday, May 31, 2007, at the Statehouse in Concord, N.H., that will legalize civil unions for gay couples in New Hampshire beginning in January. Republicans presidential candidates, who decide to run with the issue in hopes of energizing their GOP base, could alienate the state's political independents, who can choose either party's ballot in the Jan. 8 primary, exactly one week after the new civil unions law takes effect. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File)
    Gay-marriage opponents turn in petition AP - Thu Dec 13, 3:44 PM ET

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Sponsors of a proposal to ban gay marriage in Florida said Thursday they have gathered enough signatures to put the measure before voters next year.

  • Woman charged in surrogate mother scam AP - Thu Dec 13, 3:37 PM ET

    COLUMBIA, S.C. - A South Carolina woman accused of promising couples she would be their surrogate mother has been charged with bilking at least six people out of $14,000, police said Thursday.

  • Billboards create digital wanted posters AP - Thu Dec 13, 3:34 PM ET

    MOBILE, Ala. - Between ads for hamburgers and liposuction, the giant digital billboards flashed an image of Oscar Finch's face taken by a surveillance camera. The young man wasn't selling anything. He was running from police.

  • The Rev. Al Sharpton speaks from the podium during a press conference at the Harlem headquarters of his civil rights organization in New York on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007. Sharpton denounced reports of an investigation into his 2004 presidential bid and suggested that federal authorities were retaliating against him for his civil rights advocacy. (AP Photo/Edouard H.R. Gluck)
    Sharpton denounces reports of probe AP - 1 hour, 7 minutes ago

    NEW YORK - The Rev. Al Sharpton angrily denounced federal authorities Thursday for investigating him and his civil rights organization, suggesting that the Justice Department was retaliating against him for his civil rights advocacy.

  • Noriega gets new hearing on extradition AP - Thu Dec 13, 12:57 PM ET

    MIAMI - Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega will get a new hearing on France's request to extradite him on money-laundering charges, a federal judge decided Thursday.

  • Atty: Stepdad didn't kill `Baby Grace' AP - Thu Dec 13, 12:54 PM ET

    HOUSTON - An attorney for the stepfather accused of killing the toddler known as "Baby Grace" said Thursday that his client didn't kill the girl, and blamed her mother for mischaracterizing what happened.

  • Security is increased at Mojave high school in Las Vegas, Nev. on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007 after six young people were shot Tuesday afternoon at a nearby bus stop. Tight security greeted Mojave students Wednesday as police searched for the gunmen in an attack that officials believe stemmed from a fight about a girl. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)
    1 suspect arrested in bus stop shooting AP - Thu Dec 13, 1:28 PM ET

    LAS VEGAS - An 18-year-old man was arrested in a shooting at a school bus stop that wounded six young people, police said, and authorities were searching Thursday for a second suspect.

  • Peterson says wife fired gun, not him AP - Thu Dec 13, 12:59 PM ET

    BOLINGBROOK, Ill. - Former police officer Drew Peterson acknowledged that a gun did go off in his home a few months before his wife disappeared but says it was his wife who pulled the trigger.

  • The housing barracks, built by the U.S. Army engineer corps, at the internment center where Japanese Americans are relocated in Amache, Colo., are shown on June 21, 1943. The National Park Service is asking Japanese-Americans ordered into internment camps during World War II how it can preserve what is left of the camps and the stories they hold. (AP Photo)
    Preserving a painful chapter of WWII AP - Thu Dec 13, 7:14 AM ET

    GRANADA, Colo. - Bob Fuchigami was 12 years old when he and his family were told to leave their 20-acre farm in northern California. The peach trees that his immigrant parents had planted were about to yield their first big crop.

  • Protesters declare victory as they block equipment from entering a portion of the B.W. Cooper housing development in New Orleans Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007. Demolition of the units had been planned a decade before Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans in 2005, scattering public housing residents and damaging most public housing. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
    N.O. housing demolition protests gear up AP - 1 hour, 1 minute ago

    NEW ORLEANS - In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing.

  • Senate OKs fuel economy boost AP - 50 minutes ago

    WASHINGTON - The Senate passed a trimmed-back energy bill Thursday that would bring higher-gas mileage cars and SUVs into showrooms in the coming decade and fill their tanks with ethanol.

  • Audrey Serrano of Fitchburg, Mass., poses for a portrait with a variety of anti-viral medications in her home in Fitchburg in this file photo taken Friday, Jan. 2, 2004. Serrano had been taking the drugs since getting an HIV-positive diagnosis in 1994, but the diagnosis was reversed in September 2003. Testimony began Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2007, in a lawsuit where Serrano is suing the doctors and clinics who treated her. (AP Photo/Julia Cheng, File)
    Woman misdiagnosed with HIV gets $2.5 M AP - Thu Dec 13, 7:18 AM ET

    BOSTON - A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages to a woman who received HIV treatments for almost nine years before discovering she never actually had the virus that causes AIDS.

Crimes and Trials News

  • This photo released by the US Department of Justice shows Lyglenson Lemorin. A US judge declared a mistrial Thursday in a case against six alleged homegrown terrorists, while Lemorin was acquitted of charges of plotting with Al-Qaeda to bring down the US government.(AFP/HO/File)
    Mistrial in Miami homegrown 'terrorists' case; one cleared AFP - 2 hours, 2 minutes ago

    MIAMI (AFP) - A US judge declared a mistrial Thursday in a case against six alleged homegrown terrorists, while a seventh defendant was acquitted of charges of plotting with Al-Qaeda to bring down the US government.

  • Joel DeFabio, attorney for Lyglenson Lemorin, smiles as he talks to reporters as he leaves federal court in Miami, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007. Lemorin was acquitted of plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and wage war against the U.S., and a mistrial was declared for the remaining six after the federal jury deadlocked on them. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
    Jurors deadlock on 6 of 7 in Sears plot AP - 1 hour, 41 minutes ago

    MIAMI - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted Thursday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.

  • Mistrials for 6 in Miami terrorism-conspiracy case Reuters - Thu Dec 13, 3:45 PM ET

    MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. judge declared mistrials on Thursday for six men accused of plotting to wage war against the United States and blow up Chicago's Sears Tower after a jury found one defendant not guilty but could not decide on verdicts against the others.

  • Conn. kidnap suspect can't stand trial AP - Thu Dec 13, 2:04 PM ET

    HARTFORD, Conn. - A man charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting a teenage runaway is not competent to stand trial, a judge said Thursday.

  • 3 more won't testify in Posada case AP - Thu Dec 13, 1:46 PM ET

    EL PASO, Texas - Three more associates of anti-Castro Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles have pleaded guilty to charges of refusing to testify before a federal grand jury, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Thursday.