ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young Black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.

Every lawsuit filed or even threatened under a California law aimed at electing more minorities to local offices -- and all of the roughly $4.3 million from settlements so far -- can be traced to just two people: a pair of attorneys who worked together writing the statute, The Associated Press has found.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A suburban swim club accused of discrimination last summer after revoking the memberships of mostly Black and Hispanic children plans to declare bankruptcy, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Officials at a North Carolina school say their students will never again visit a living history plantation after a black tour guide picked three Black students to help re-enact slave life.

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- An Ohio member of the Tuskegee Airmen is donating his Congressional Gold Medal and other mementoes to the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is considering whether sentencing a juvenile to life in prison with no chance of parole is cruel and unusual punishment, particularly if the crime is less serious than homicide...

(NNPA) - With the War on Terror well into its sixth year, America's campaign against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction has, for some, also become an attack on Islam. For many American-born Muslims and followers of Islam serving in the U.S. armed forces, the experience has been doubly burdensome and may have played a role in Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's Nov. 5 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The last time unemployment climbed past 10 percent, "The A-Team" was one of the top 10 TV shows, Michael Jackson was about to release "Thriller" and "The Cosby Show" wouldn't air for another year. Much has changed since the jobless rate hit 10.1 percent in September 1982, including the composition of the nation's labor force ...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- At least four times in the last 21/2 years, Keith Bardwell says he refused to marry interracial couples while serving as a Louisiana justice of the peace. He said from his experience and discussions, he had concluded that blacks and whites do not readily accept offspring of such relationships, so the children end up suffering. His latest rebuff to a bride and groom of different races turned out to be his last.