SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- An elite Army Ranger, Mark MacPhail left the service and became a police officer to spare his wife and young children from the base-hopping life of a military career. Troy Davis dropped out of high school in his senior year to help care for his younger siblings, including a sister stricken with multiple sclerosis.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a challenge to election monitoring required under the Voting Rights Act to ensure mostly southern states are no longer disenfranchising black voters and found that discrimination continues in modern-day polling.

MONROE, Mich. (AP) -- Investigators on Wednesday were poring over the blackened remains of a vehicle that exploded on a Michigan street, trying to determine if the blast, which seriously injured the man and two children inside, was caused by a bomb or some sort of mechanical failure.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of young adults without health insurance has dropped significantly, a new survey finds, thanks to a provision of President Barack Obama's health care law allowing them to stay on their parents' plans.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A Pennsylvania school district has decided not to stage a Tony Award-winning musical about a Muslim street poet after community members complained about the timing so soon after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

DUXBURY, Vt. (AP) -- Just as the formal repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy took effect, Navy Lt. Gary Ross and his partner were married before a small group of family and friends.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When it comes to health care savings, President Barack Obama's deficit plan borrows a familiar strategy from corporate America's playbook: cut costs or shift them to others.

President Barack Obama on Thursday bestowed the highest U.S. military honor on Dakota Meyer, a young and humble Marine who defied orders and barreled straight into a ferocious "killing zone" in Afghanistan to save 36 lives at extraordinary risk to himself. 

ATLANTA (AP) -- His legal appeals exhausted, supporters of Troy Davis were making a last-ditch effort Monday to stop his execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer, asking the Georgia pardons board to grant clemency the 42-year-old who insists that he is innocent.

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) -- The man accused of killing his wife and then shooting two church pastors had been sentenced to probation for killing a previous wife years earlier, according to court records.