KABUL, Afghanistan — A former Afghan president who heads a new peace council said Thursday that he's convinced the Taliban are ready to negotiate peace.

NEW YORK (AP) — A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to keep Democrats on the defensive, Republican-allied groups are planning a $50 million advertising drive in a number of House races in an extraordinary surge of spending in the final days of the midterm election campaign.

ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. Hispanics outlive whites by more than two years and Blacks by more than seven, according to the government's first calculation of Hispanic life expectancy.

HICKORY, N.C. — Police indicated Tuesday they believe someone killed a 10-year-old North Carolina girl whose bone cancer left her with a prosthetic leg and hearing aids, saying they were shifting from a missing person search to a homicide investigation.

ALBANY, N.Y. — The tea party movement was born in anger over the recession and the Obama administration's bailouts, and built largely on a platform of lower taxes and smaller government. But some of its candidates are getting tripped up on social issues.

NEW YORK — Google is investing in an extensive network of deepwater transmission lines worth billions for future wind farms off the East Coast, the company said Tuesday.

ATLANTA (AP) -- How Georgia Democrats fare in next month's election could depend on whether black voters show up to the polls.

STOCKHOLM (AP) - Two Americans and a British-Cypriot economist won the 2010 Nobel economics prize Monday for developing a theory that helps explain why many people can remain unemployed despite a large number of job vacancies.

It Gets Better: That's the message in a video campaign to prevent suicide among gay and lesbian teens. Jason Derulo, Ellen and Portland Mayor Sam Adams join dozens of lesser known adults in encouraging bullied youth to 'hang in there'.