MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Primed for a fight, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum traded fiery accusations about health care, spending earmarks and federal bailouts Wednesday night in the 20th and possibly final debate of the roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination....

2/22/2012 10:51:00 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period....

2/22/2012 9:30:03 PM

BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian gunners pounded an opposition stronghold where the last dispatches from a veteran American-born war correspondent chronicled the suffering of civilians caught in the relentless shelling. An intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist - two of 74 deaths reported Wednesday in Syria....

2/22/2012 9:30:06 PM

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it....

2/22/2012 9:30:16 PM

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- A jury recommended late Wednesday that a former University of Virginia lacrosse player should serve 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend and another year in prison for a grand larceny charge....

2/22/2012 10:21:25 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Twenty Republican presidential debates later, the head-scratching claims kept coming....

2/22/2012 10:25:45 PM

ATTALLA, Ala. (AP) -- At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide....

2/22/2012 9:26:34 PM

EAGLE POINT, Ore. (AP) -- Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana....

2/22/2012 9:26:42 PM

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Simon Cowell is playing it coy about rumors that Fergie, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are being considered for "The X Factor."...

2/22/2012 9:22:53 PM

DALLAS (AP) -- Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million....

2/22/2012 9:22:59 PM