NEW YORK Perched on his hind legs, peering over the top rail of his pen, Banana Joe wanted to play at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.

WASHINGTON Mitt Romney and his under-funded opponents are taking advantage of a weeklong lull in the Republican presidential nomination fight - no debate or primary is slated - to raise the money needed to carry out Super Tuesday strategies and compete in states beyond.

NEW YORK The New York Yankees and Pirates have made progress toward a trade that would send much-maligned pitcher A.J. Burnett to Pittsburgh.

DETROIT A mandatory life sentence for a Nigerian who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane is cruel and unfair, a defense attorney said Monday as he asked a judge to declare the punishment unconstitutional.

BISMARCK, N.D. North Dakota's Board of Higher Education voted Monday to sue to try to block a state law requiring the University of North Dakota's athletics teams to be called the Fighting Sioux.

MIAMI Federal authorities say they recovered $4.1 billion in health care fraud judgments last year, a record high which officials on Monday credited to new tools for cracking down on deceitful Medicare claims.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. Whitney Houston was underwater and apparently unconscious when she was pulled from a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub, and she had prescription drugs in her room, authorities said Monday.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's proposed federal budget is more campaign commercial than governing document.

DENVER The father of Colorado's Taxpayers' Bill of Rights was sentenced Monday to 180 days in jail and six years of probation for evading state taxes.

WASHINGTON Highlights of the budget that President Barack Obama sent to Congress on Monday:

WASHINGTON In a Feb. 10 story about the death of longtime Associated Press foreign correspondent Carl Hartman, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Hartman served as chief of the AP bureau in Frankfurt, Germany. Hartman served in the bureau but was not the chief of bureau. The story also reported incorrectly that the AP dates from 1847. The news cooperative began operations in 1846.

LAS VEGAS A victim in the O.J. Simpson armed robbery case said Monday he'll fight misdemeanor shoplifting charges involving incidents at the military exchange at Nellis Air Force Base.

JOHANNESBURG In a Feb. 12 story about a new golf event, the $8.5 million Tournament of Hope, The Associated Press erroneously reported that this was a World Golf Championship event. The tournament is sanctioned by the International Federation of PGA Tours, which separately also sanctions the four WGC events.

PORTLAND, Ore. An official from a Muslim civil rights group says two Libyan-Americans from Oregon who were denied re-entry to the United States from Libya will be returning home, although one man's return has been delayed.

MINNEAPOLIS The board of Minnesota's largest school district prepared to vote Monday night on a replacement for a policy that requires teachers to stay neutral when sexual orientation comes up in class, a stance that has been blamed for fostering bullying.

WASHINGTON Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

California has a big stake in the debate begun Monday with release of the Obama administration's proposed fiscal year 2013 budget, even if the sprawling document has only a short lifespan.

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. A man upset about being thrown out of a restaurant returned to exact revenge by shooting the off-duty Maryland state trooper who was working security there and had told him to leave, a prosecutor said Monday.

HOOPA VALLEY INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. A moderate earthquake struck Northern California's coast Monday afternoon, rattling nerves around the Oregon border but yielding no immediate reports of major injuries or damage, officials said.

ORLANDO, Fla. The parents of a Florida A&M band member who died after being hazed filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the owner and driver of the charter bus where the ritual took place, and revealed new details about what might have happened the night Robert Champion died.

WASHINGTON A federal judge on Monday ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to explain its rationale for trying to shut down a Florida pharmaceutical distribution center.

PHILADELPHIA Philadelphia police say an eighth-grader attacked his science teacher during class and has been arrested.

HARTFORD, Conn. Some state lawmakers are reviving a push to end Connecticut's death penalty, hoping for an easier road this year following the conclusion of two widely publicized trials for a brutal 2007 triple slaying.

DENVER Authorities were investigating a 14-year-old girl's actions before they say she attacked two students with a hammer at Columbine High School in the first assault with a weapon since the deadly shootings there in 1999.

WASHINGTON Two former Bear Stearns executives reached settlements Monday with federal regulators over civil charges they mislead investors about risky mortgage securities when the housing market was collapsing.

SPOKANE, Wash. A body found in a heavily wooded area just north of Spokane on Monday was that of the ex-convict sought in the killings of a woman and her two young sons, whose family had befriended the man and opened their home to him.

WASHINGTON Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed last week by a machete-wielding intruder at his vacation home in the West Indies, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court Monday to overturn California's 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state's elite campuses.

PARIS French cosmetics giant L'Oreal on Monday reported a solid increase in sales and profit for 2011, driven by growth in emerging markets, which the company said would surpass western Europe as its most important region this year.

WASHINGTON The Obama administration said Monday it backs Arab League plans to end ongoing violence in Syria but noted several obstacles to deploying a proposed international peacekeeping force to the country and stopped short of a full endorsement of the idea.

WASHINGTON The White House said Monday legislation in the Senate that would give employers broad leeway to restrict coverage for contraception is "dangerous and wrong."

WASHINGTON Despite criticism of Fannie Mae by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his campaign accepted nearly $280,000 in donations raised by a registered lobbyist who once represented the government mortgage giant and whose clients now include a private equity firm and the drug company Pfizer.

BOSTON A magistrate judge on Monday set a Nov. 5 trial date for James "Whitey" Bulger, rejecting a plea from the reputed gangster's lawyers for more time to prepare.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama for the first time has opened a sizable lead over his most likely Republican opponents, thanks to growing support among independent voters, according to a new Pew Research Center poll.

ORLANDO, Fla. The parents of a Florida A&M band member who died after being hazed filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the owner and driver of the charter bus where the ritual took place, claiming the company's managers told drivers to ignore hazing.

OLYMPIA, Wash. Gov. Chris Gregoire handed gay rights advocates a major victory Monday, signing into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage in Washington state, making it the seventh in the nation to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

WASHINGTON In an abrupt about-face, House GOP leaders announced Monday that they are willing to extend the two percentage point cut in the payroll tax through the end of the year and add the approximately $100 billion cost to the nation's $15 trillion-plus debt.

PHILADELPHIA A retired police captain who was arrested in uniform during an Occupy Wall Street protest last year joined demonstrators on the lawn of Independence Hall on Monday, saying he isn't breaking any law by wearing his old uniform despite the city police commissioner telling him to stop.

WASHINGTON Call it the alter-ego of super-sizing. Researchers infiltrated a fast-food Chinese restaurant and found up to a third of diners jumped at the offer of a half-size of the usual heaping pile of rice or noodles - even when the smaller amount cost the same.

JOPLIN, Mo. One was a busy financial adviser. Another was an insurance agent. A third had recently finished law school and embarked on a legal career.

DES MOINES, Iowa McDonald's Corp. said Monday it will require its U.S. pork suppliers to provide plans by May to phase out crates that tightly confine pregnant sows, a move that one animal rights group predicted would have "a seismic impact" on the industry.

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. A Vermont man pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge that he stole a number of original cards and letters written by poet Robert Frost that were in the drawer of a desk that was donated to the nonprofit agency where he worked and then sold them for more than $25,000 in cash and other goods.

CLEVELAND The defense for a man whose conviction in nine arson deaths was overturned over unreliable jailhouse informants has its own newly found cellblock informant for a possible second trial, creating a competing informant scenario for jurors often skeptical of such testimony.

After a crazy week in which 15 of the Top 25 teams lost, Baylor remains the unanimous No. 1 choice in The Associated Press women's college basketball poll.

WASHINGTON Remember when a billion used to be a lot? Now we talk trillions.

SAN FRANCISCO Google's $12.5 billion bid to buy cellphone maker Motorola Mobility has won approvals from U.S. and European antitrust regulators, moving Google a major step closer to completing the biggest deal in its 13-year history.

STORRS, Conn. University of Connecticut officials will be introducing Warde Manuel as the school's new athletic director.

HARTFORD, Conn. A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected a second bid by Yale University to throw out all the allegations in a lawsuit filed by a South Korean university that claims it lost tens of millions of dollars after Yale damaged its reputation.

MADISON, Wis. Wisconsin elections officials disclosed Monday that a 100-year-old white brick building two miles east of the state Capitol is the previously secret location where petitions seeking the recall of Gov. Scott Walker and five other Republican office holders are being stored, checked and processed.

TRENTON, N.J. In a move that supporters called a civil rights milestone, New Jersey's state Senate on Monday passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages, marking the first time state lawmakers officially endorsed the idea - despite the promise of a veto by Gov. Chris Christie.