Nation News

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford may be keeping his office, but he is losing his marriage. Read More

A Florida mother charged with killing her 2-year-old daughter sobbed in court Friday as a prosecutor speculated that the toddler was methodically drugged and suffocated with tape. Read More

Authorities on Friday said a machine pistol used by a street hustler shot dead in a Times Square gunfight was purchased in October at a Virginia gun shop whose business card was found in the aspiring rapper's pocket, and they were looking for the woman who bought the gun. Read More

It's been the year of the gun in Tennessee. In a flurry of legislative action, handgun owners won the right to take their weapons onto sports fields and playgrounds and, at least briefly, into bars. Read More

On a rare visit to his childhood home, Eddie Williams is 16 again, peering down a shotgun barrel as he crouches in the kitchen doorway. The intruder then swivels and shoots, and Williams sees his mother, a pastor's widow, tumble face down on the yellow linoleum floor. Read More

An Arizona man facing prison time for lying to authorities in a terrorism-funding investigation could have been a big help to authorities because of his past involvement with a Muslim charity that aided Hamas, an FBI agent testified Friday. Read More

Authorities in Virginia are saying a man's wife has been found in a suitcase at the couple's apartment after he told police he had killed her. Read More

The U.S. government's move this fall to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Friday, handing the embattled group a legal victory. Read More

The Missile Defense Agency says a planned test of a ground-based missile defense system in Hawaii was aborted because the target missile failed. Read More

Investigators are blaming a faulty valve for a propane-fueled blaze at a closed Nebraska manufacturing plant that forced thousands of evacuations. Read More

It's still unclear who will represent one of two people charged with kidnapping and raping Jaycee Dugard. Read More

About 30 detectives hunted down leads Friday in the search for a mother of two who vanished last weekend in what police are calling a suspicious disappearance. Read More

A senior military official said Friday that a new lead prosecutor has been appointed in the Fort Hood shooting case, a man who secured the death penalty in a similar case four years ago. Read More

More than 100 people who spent the night in snowbound cars and trucks on a closed stretch of New York State Thruway were guided off the highway Friday, but travel remained treacherous in the southwest corner of the state and into Pennsylvania. Read More

As of Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, at least 858 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EST. Read More

As of Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, at least 4,369 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Read More

Ten days of testimony in a federal court competency hearing shed new light on the man charged in the abduction of Elizabeth Smart but also raised some persistent questions about his mental state. Read More

Immigration agents arrested 280 people in California in their biggest push yet to round up suspected illegal immigrants with criminal records in local communities, authorities said Friday. Read More

A 98-year-old woman was indicted Friday on a second-degree murder charge that alleges she strangled her 100-year-old nursing home roommate after making the victim's life "a living hell" because she thought the woman was "taking over the room." Read More

A slack cable triggered a chain of events that ended with a fatal helicopter crash during rescue exercises off Hawaii last year, the Coast Guard said Friday. Read More