WASHINGTON – At a time when President Barack Obama is trying to rally his political base, his administration is fighting to temporarily preserve the ban on gays serving openly in the military, even though his core supporters want it ended now.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve is prepared to take further steps to rejuvenate the economy by buying Treasury bonds but is wrestling with how big the program should be, Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday.

LARAMIE, Wyo. – A $4 rubber bracelet meant to raise breast cancer awareness has done that and more: Students nationwide are wearing the "I (heart) boobies" wristbands, and running afoul of school administrators.

HICKORY, N.C. — Investigators drained a pond and used a dog to sniff through piles of mulch and tree-trimming equipment searching for the remains of a 10-year-old as neighbors and friends who had feared for her safety used a vigil to encourage people to report child abuse.

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.