AP - Prosecutors on Thursday charged the stepbrother of a severely malnourished Wisconsin teen with repeatedly sexually assaulting her beginning around her 10th birthday, in the same year she claims her father and stepmother began confining her to the basement.

AP - Defiantly declaring "a day of victory," a Nigerian man was given a mandatory life sentence Thursday for trying to blow up a packed jetliner with a bomb sewn into his underwear. People aboard the flight testified that the failed attack had disturbed their sleep and travels for more than two years.

AP - Top U.S. intelligence officials pointed to al-Qaida in Iraq on Thursday as the likely culprit behind recent bombings in Syria, the deadliest attacks against the Syrian government in the 11-month uprising.

AP - Shackled in handcuffs and flanked by three U.S. Marshals, Dorothee Burkhart scanned a Los Angeles courtroom looking for her son.

AP - President Barack Obama is pushing his economic message in Ohio, brandishing his presidential megaphone in a politically important state to make certain his appeal to the middle class is heard amid the boisterous start of the Republican campaign for the White House.

AP - Mitt Romney eked out a minuscule 8-vote victory over Rick Santorum in Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses, the state party chairman said early Wednesday, ringing down the curtain on an improbable first act in the campaign to pick a challenger to President Barack Obama in the fall.