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One of the teens charged with beating to death a World War II veteran allegedly claimed he was buying crack cocaine from the 88-year-old and the transaction turned violent — but cops said there is no evidence to support that. The allegation was denounced as bizarre by victim Delbert “Shorty” Belton’s family and even dismissed by the defense lawyer for the other teen accused in the Spokane, Wash., case, which has drawn national attention.

White House communications director Anita Dunn fired back at criticism from TV commentator Glenn Beck on Friday, saying that a Mao Tse-tung quote Beck took issue with was picked up from legendary GOP strategist Lee Atwater. "The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me," Dunn told CNN.

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask. The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called...

A preacher's wife accused of murdering her husband testified Wednesday that she doesn't remember picking up the shotgun or pointing it at her husband, but she said she did not pull the trigger. She heard a "boom" as the shotgun fired, she said. "Something went off," Mary Winkler said, crying on the witness stand. She said she just wanted to talk to her husband, Matthew, when she went into their bedroom, but she was terrified. Her husband was physically and sexually abusive, she said. That day, she said, she just wanted to stop him from being so mean. Her depiction...

ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans — and the world — froze, saddened and angry. Five years later, we stop to remember those we lost and those who have sacrificed in our defense since, and to reflect on what we must learn. History will define us not by the events of that day but by who we choose to become as a result. Regrettably, ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of...

SELMER, Tenn. - Mary Winkler was the quiet, unassuming wife of a small-town, by-the-Bible preacher, seemingly devoted to church and family. But now her husband, Matthew, is dead and she is charged with shooting him in the back with a shotgun. Authorities won't discuss a motive, and church members say they didn't see any indication she was unhappy. But experts say preachers' wives often struggle with depression and isolation, expected to be exemplars of Christian virtue while bearing unique pressures on their private and public lives. Gayle Haggard, author of "A Life Embraced: A Hopeful Guide for the Pastor's Wife,"...

CBS) HARLEM On Tuesday night as David Jordan was escorted out of the 23rd Precinct station house he told reporters he killed Rev. Philip Mann in self defense. "He became agressive when asking to have sex with me," Jordan said. "When I refused he went into his kitchen and grabbed a knife." On Monday afternoon Mann was found dead in a pool of blood inside his Schomburg Plaza apartment in East Harlem. Sources said he was stabbed multiple times in the chest and that building surveillance cameras had captured video of Jordan in the apartment building. Mann was founder and...