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The U.S. Army has replaced the chaotic reception recruits entering basic training have long received from shouting drill sergeants with a training event designed to create a bond with their teammates and leaders.

A warship from Russia's Pacific Fleet docked in Manila on Tuesday morning in time for a maritime exercise with the Philippine Navy.

The heroic officer who engaged and stopped an armed assailant at Ohio State University has been identified as OSU police officer Alan Horujko.

Two teenagers have been charged with setting a Jack Russell terrier puppy on fire last month in Buffalo. Seventeen-year-old Diondre Brown and 19-year-old Adell Zeigler of Buffalo appeared in City Court Wednesday on charges of felony animal cruelty. Zeigler was denied bail because of a prior conviction. The judge set bail for Brown at $20,000. The 16-week-old puppy was found on fire in a yard on Buffalo's east side on Oct. 29. Named Phoenix by his rescuers, the dog is recovering at an animal hospital with burned ears, an ankle infection, and blistered eyelids.

Egyptian state TV has raised the death toll to 73 after fans of rival soccer teams rushed the field, hurling stones and sticks at each other and sparking a stampede. State TV cited the Health Ministry and says 1,000 other people were injured in Wednesday's melee.

Samantha Garvey is one teenage girl who would rather read something called The Journal of Shellfish Research than Glamour magazine. "What I'm doing is the American dream," she says. The 17-year-old high school senior maintains a 3.9 grade point average at her Brentwood, N.Y., high school, studies Italian and plays the violin. She also has an unusual interest that has recently caught some attention: On Wednesday she was named one of 61 Long Island semifinalists in the national Intel Science Talent Search because of her work studying the effects of predators on ribbed mussels. "I get so excited to tell...

A high school sophomore from New Jersey is challenging Rep. Michele Bachmann to a debate on civics and the U.S. Constitution. In an open letter to to Bachmann, Amy Myers of Cherry Hill, N.J., said, “I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted.”

Police said today that a 17-year-old boy came across a PNC Park usher who was having a heart attack in his car, pulled the man out and onto the ground, went through his pockets and stole his wallet, then drove away in the vehicle, leaving the usher to die in the street.

Corning, N.Y. — A 40-year-old female East High health teacher admitted Wednesday to having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old male student, which allegedly included a Valentine’s Day tryst in a classroom at the high school. Teri K. Decker, of Geneva Street, Elmira, admitted she engaged in an inappropriate relationship with the boy by sending him sexually explicit text messages. She pleaded guilty to a single count of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, in city court Wednesday morning. Corning police allege the relationship also included kissing and groping on multiple occasions, but there was no evidence the...

Does Barack Obama know what he's doing? The question isn't purely rhetorical because Obama's response to the cascade of global crises over the past several weeks has often seemed mystifying. He supported pro-democracy forces in Egypt and nudged out a regime the U.S. had backed for decades, but has been unwilling to do the same in Bahrain or Yemen. In Libya, his Administration was against armed intervention to stop Muammar Gaddafi before Obama was for it. American warplanes carried out the initial wave of strikes on Tripoli, but Obama's aides insist that Washington is merely following the Europeans' lead. U.S....

A woman talking on a cell phone during a movie didn't take kindly to being "shushed" by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn't. In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen -- "Shutter Island" -- the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the "shusher" in the neck with a meat thermometer. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the stabbing occured Saturday during a screening of the Martin Scorsese film. The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim also were injured, according to Whitmore....

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" sold a million copies and became an alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87. Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass. Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A People's History" was — fittingly — a people's best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1...

About one thing, left and right seem to agree these This conventional wisdom about Obama's first year isn't just premature—it's sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency.

EUCLID, OH (WTOL) - The Ohio Coast Guard is looking for two pirates on Lake Erie. A man was in his boat on the lake near Cleveland Monday when he says two people pulled up in boat along side him. They robbed him of all his cash, cell phone, keys --and took his fish. The Coast Guard is still searching for the pirates.

State police say 37-year-old Kelly Ann Walz was mauled to death Sunday night by the 350-pound bear. Police say the Walzes kept the bear inside a cage near their house about 20 miles northeast of Allentown. Officials say Kelly Ann Walz threw a shovelful of dog food to one side of the cage to distract the bear while she cleaned the other side. At some point the bear turned on her and attacked. A neighbor shot and killed the bear.

Norway takes the number one spot in the annual United Nations human development index released Monday but China has made the biggest strides in improving the well-being of its citizens. The index compiled by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) ranks 182 countries based on such criteria as life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Norway, Australia and Iceland took the first three spots while Niger ranks at the very bottom, just below Afghanistan.

A large march against the Group of 20 economic summit ended in the North Side after wrapping several miles from Oakland to Downtown with few problems. "I support the people's rights to assemble," said a man who identified himself as Vermin Supreme, 50, of Baltimore, who wore a red clown nose to stress he is a peaceful marcher as he followed the crowd on Fifth Avenue. "It disarms the police."

Greenpeace is taking credit for taking climbers to the West End and Fort Pitt bridges this morning to unfurl banners stating "Danger — Climate Destruction Ahead. Reduce Co2 Emissions Now." Pittsburgh police and River Rescue crews swarmed the bridges where an estimated 20 protesters assembled. A banner was unfurled from the West End Bridge, but police intervened at the Fort Pitt Bridge to stop a simultaneous attempt there, said Mike Crocker, a Greenpeace activist who said he was the team leader coordinating the event from the North Shore near Jerome Bettis' Grille 36.

In most parts of the world, including the North Pole, Christmas comes but once a year. But in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, the Christmas trees along the downtown streets are lit festively every night of the year - even in July. The nightly ritual of lighting the trees (in this case, metal poles decorated with strings of lights and various other ornaments) serves as an eternal celebration of the Sandinista government's victory over the energy deficit inherited from the previous administration, at least according to Omar Cabezas, the ombudsman for the administration of President Daniel Ortega.

TACOMA, Wash. – Murder charges were filed Thursday against four people accused in the killing of an armored car guard as he carried a money bag out of a Wal-Mart. After the Tuesday afternoon heist, prosecutors say Williams-Irby and Walker went on a shopping spree and spent $175 on a dinner at Red Lobster.