AP - At least one person was killed and several others seriously injured late Tuesday night in a fire at an old, three-story hotel in Reno's downtown casino district, a fire spokesman said.

AP - Through a window outside the Texas death chamber, Curtis Smith watched the man who killed his nephew die.

AP - The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex.

AP - A man originally charged with killing seven people more than a decade ago was sentenced Friday to 245 years in prison for three of the slayings and the rape of a teenage girl.

AP - A plan to fingerprint elementary school students when they buy lunch has some parents worrying that Big Brother has come to the cafeteria.

DUBLIN, Georgia (Reuters) - Retired school teacher Martha Bobbitt thinks President George W. Bush is a good Christian with the right values. If he's gone wrong in Iraq, it won't change her vote.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission late on Monday upheld findings that profanity aired on Billboard Music Awards television broadcasts violated decency standards, but backed down in two other cases involving expletives on air.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Democrats won a majority of U.S. governors' offices for the first time since 1994, taking seats from Republicans in six states and scoring a potential advantage in 2008 presidential battlegrounds.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Conservative talk radio hosts licked their collective wounds as they took to the airwaves after Republicans lost control of Congress, arguing the party should use the defeat to return to right-wing principles.

HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Three Vietnamese-born U.S. citizens were sentenced on Friday to 15 months imprisonment on charges of plotting violence against the Communist-run Vietnam government.

AP - Heavy snow blanketed parts of Iowa and Minnesota on Friday, closing and delaying some schools.

AP - An Afghan-Iraqi war memorial that has drawn criticism for its design and its timing was unveiled Saturday before a crowd of veterans and slain troops' relatives.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - If U.S. hospitals implemented some simple, timesaving strategies, heart attacks patients could get quicker treatment and would be more likely to survive, according to a study released on Monday.

AP - Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Flu vaccine drives can prevent potentially deadly influenza outbreaks in nursing homes but only if both residents and staff are immunized, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Books about Iraq and the September 11 attacks lost out to stories set in the Great Plains region of the United States on Wednesday at the National Book Awards, one of the top U.S. literary prizes.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Queuing for fun and profit, hundreds braved driving rain in long lines in New York on Thursday, hoping to score a PlayStation 3, when U.S. sales of Sony Corp.'s new video game machine begin at midnight.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Frozen foods company Birds Eye Foods said on Friday it is recalling 3 million packages of frozen cooked squash because of potential ammonia contamination.

AP - An armed patient was fatally shot Saturday after he opened the door to his hospital room at the end of a 4 1/2 hour standoff and pointed his gun at police, who opened fire, authorities said.

AP - George Russell Weller's daughter has told a judge that her 89-year-old father is 'dying before our eyes' and should receive probation for killing 10 people and wounding 73 when his car roared through an outdoor farmers market three years ago.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Democrats who soon will control the legislative agenda in the U.S. Congress rejected on Monday a colleague's call for reinstatement of the U.S. military draft.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop diva Mariah Carey, whose commercial success has not translated into awards show acclaim, was snubbed at the American Music Awards on Tuesday, despite scoring three nominations.

AP - A Marine accused of killing his newborn son after his wife died of childbirth complications was charged Wednesday, four days after the 3-month-old's death.

AP - An apparent family dispute turned deadly when a gunman burst into a Thanksgiving Day gathering and opened fire, killing three people, police said.

AP - Authorities have identified the second of four women whose bodies were found dumped behind a string of seedy motels earlier this week.

AP - A 5-year-old girl injured in a house fire that killed her grandfather, a former state legislator, and his mother-in-law died Saturday, hospital officials said.

AP - A jury that has heard four weeks of sometimes emotionally wrenching testimony from survivors of the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt will soon get the case — without hearing directly from the defendant himself.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Wireless said on Tuesday it would deliver selected video clips from YouTube to cell phones starting in December in a bid to increase subscriptions to its mobile media service.

AP - A former Stanislaus County pastor was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border on suspicion of murder for allegedly causing a car accident that killed an 85-year-old man in a scheme to inherit his trust fund.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Private insurers in the Medicare insurance program were paid 12.4 percent more by the government than the health care provided would have cost under traditional Medicare, a report released on Thursday said.