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.

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.