Fiery charges: Romney, Santorum assail each other
(AP)
AP - Primed for a fight, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum traded fiery accusations about health care, spending earmarks and federal bailouts Wednesday night in the 20th and possibly final debate of the roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Poll: Obama benefitting from improving economy
(AP)
AP - President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period.
Shelling kills 2 Western journalists in Syria
(AP)
AP - Syrian gunners pounded an opposition stronghold where the last dispatches from a veteran American-born war correspondent chronicled the suffering of civilians caught in the relentless shelling. An intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist — two of 74 deaths reported Wednesday in Syria.
AP - The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it.
Jury: 26 years total for former U.Va. lax player
(AP)
AP - A jury recommended late Wednesday that a former University of Virginia lacrosse player should serve 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend and another year in prison for a grand larceny charge.
Police: Girl forced to run 3 hours dies; 2 charged
(AP)
AP - At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide.
Teenage girl dies after inhaling helium at party
(AP)
AP - Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana.
Police say love triangle led to CA murder-suicide
(AP)
AP - A 73-year-old gunman entangled in a love triangle shot and killed the treasurer of a remote-controlled airplane club who police said was having an affair with the estranged wife of the attacker.
AP - Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million.
Reuters - Rivals heaped criticism on surprise front-runner Rick Santorum in a debate among Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday, hoping to stall his surge at a pivotal period in the 2012 campaign.
Reuters - President Barack Obama made an opening offer in what could be a long negotiation with corporate America on Wednesday, putting forward his first detailed plan to cut the corporate tax rate.
Assad forces renew barrage on Syria's Homs
(Reuters)
Reuters - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces rained rockets and bombs down on opposition-held neighborhoods of the city of Homs, reducing buildings to rubble and killing more than 80 people, including two Western journalists.
Fitch downgrades Greece on debt swap plan
(Reuters)
Reuters - Fitch cut Greece's long-term ratings on Wednesday to its lowest rating above a default, becoming the first ratings agency to make the widely expected downgrade after the country announced a bond exchange plan to ease its massive debt burden.
Congress members threatened with biological attack
(Reuters)
Reuters - Several members of the Congress received mail threatening a biological attack and containing a suspicious powder later found to be harmless as law enforcement officials warned on Wednesday that more letters could be on their way.
Judge strikes down law mandating sale of
(Reuters)
Reuters - A federal judge declared on Wednesday that a Washington state rule requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives against their religious beliefs is unconstitutional.
Reuters - Home resales rose to a 1-1/2-year high in January, pushing the supply of properties on the market to the lowest level in almost seven years in a hopeful sign for the housing sector.
Reuters - The U.N. nuclear watchdog ended its latest mission to Iran after talks on Tehran's suspected secret atomic weapons research failed, a setback likely to increase the risk of confrontation with the West.
