LEXINGTON, Mo. Authorities are searching a rural property in western Missouri for glass jars containing notes written by children who allegedly were being abused by their relatives.

ARLINGTON, Va. President Barack Obama carried out the traditional Veterans Day role Wednesday, then made a surprise visit to a part of Arlington National Cemetery reserved for troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, walking among the grave sites and talking to mourners.

NEW YORK In a Nov. 9 story about envelopes containing suspicious powder that were mailed in Manhattan, The Associated Press, relying on information from New York City police, erroneously described the recipients. The envelopes were sent to the French, Austrian and Uzbekistan permanent missions to the United Nations, not those nations' consulates.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Jerry Brown hasn't formally announced for his old job, but the signs show he once again has his eye on the California governor's chair.

CHICAGO An officer who has been hailed as a hero in the Fort Hood massacre says the scene was "confusing and chaotic" but she remembers getting shot.

SALT LAKE CITY The Mormon church for the first time has announced its support of gay rights legislation, an endorsement that helped gain unanimous approval for Salt Lake city laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment.

COLUMBIA, S.C. Disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford might not have much political capital these days, but his wife does.

CLEVELAND Homicide detectives investigating the discovery of 11 bodies at a home expanded their search Wednesday to a neighbor's property as a precaution.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. Hundreds of people are lining the streets of Terre Haute, Ind., for a Veterans Day parade serving as a funeral procession for a soldier whose return to the country was marked by a salute from President Barack Obama.

BOSTON The driver of a Boston subway train that stopped just inches short of a woman who had fallen onto the tracks says she expected the worst.

JARRATT, Va. Sniper John Allen Muhammad refused to utter any last words as he was executed, taking to the grave answers about why and how he plotted the killings of 10 people that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks in October 2002.

CHARLESTON, S.C. Republican leaders in a South Carolina county have censured their own U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on a climate bill and other legislation.

EASTON, Conn. The star attraction at New York's Rockefeller Center this Christmas will be a 76-foot Norway spruce from Connecticut.

Chevrolet's sport utility vehicle named for the first day of spring had a rebirth this year, and the resulting 2010 Equinox is the best ever.

2010 Chevrolet Equinox FWD LTZ

LOS ANGELES Carl Ballantine, a comedian, magician and actor who was in the 1960s TV sitcom "McHale's Navy," has died. He was 92.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. A judge has ordered psychological testing for a central Illinois man charged with plotting to blow up a federal courthouse.

ST. LOUIS The American Civil Liberties Union has dropped a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration that claimed a man was wrongly detained the St. Louis airport because he was carrying about $4,700 in cash.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. One worker was killed and another injured Tuesday when a crane tipped over at the construction site of a Kansas City, Mo., performing arts center, police said.

SOMERVILLE, N.J. A New Jersey judge says a quadriplegic blocked from buying a gun to go hunting has the right to bear arms even though he will have to use a wheelchair mount to use the firearm.

BELLEVILLE, Ill. An Illinois man is jailed on $2 million bond after being charged in the shooting deaths of three women at a convenience store in East St. Louis.

PHOENIX All or parts of four prison complexes are among a dozen state properties on a shortened list of facilities being proposed for sale-leaseback refinancing to help balance Arizona's state budget.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and one-time candidate for Homeland Security chief, was freed from jail Tuesday for the holidays to await sentencing on federal crimes.

Former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

NEW YORK A Connecticut businessman was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Tuesday for conspiring with others to corrupt the oil privatization process in Azerbaijan.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. The nine black students who confronted angry white mobs as they integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 took solace each day at the home of Daisy and L.C. Bates.

ST. LOUIS Dozens of American pit bull terriers netted in the largest dogfighting raid in U.S. history are finding homes despite some who predicted aggression or trauma would make them unsuitable as pets.

PUTNEY, Vt. It was a heartwarming story: A 200-year-old general store suffers a fire, the owner can't afford to rebuild it and the town's historical society steps in to buy the building, hoping to make it the commercial and social hub of town once again.

BILLINGS, Mont. Dozens of wild bison from Yellowstone National Park would be relocated to a Montana ranch owned by billionaire Ted Turner, under a recommendation made by state and federal officials Tuesday.

TUALATIN, Ore. A woman was killed and two of her co-workers were injured when the woman's estranged husband opened fire Tuesday at a drug-testing laboratory in suburban Portland before turning the gun on himself, police said.

HARTFORD, Conn. Hartford police say a city officer investigating a series of burglaries was shot during an early morning foot chase with a fleeing suspect, who was caught and arrested by other officers.

ATLANTA One of the gorillas at Zoo Atlanta has been under pressure lately. Zoo keepers, along with undergraduate students from Georgia Tech and reseachers from Emory University, got a western lowland gorilla named Ozzie to voluntarily have his blood pressure taken by a machine students designed called the Gorilla Tough Cuff. Zoo officials say it's the first time a gorilla has ever voluntarily had its blood pressure taken in any zoo in the world.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. Sanitation workers sorted through 10 tons of trash to recover a wedding ring accidentally thrown away by a New Jersey couple.

Wet weather was forecast to persist in the South as Tropical Storm Ida continues tacking northeastward up the East Coast on Wednesday.

TUNBRIDGE, Vt. Three years ago, Rose Loving got the visit every GI's family fears.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll on President Obama and the direction of the country was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media from Nov. 5-9. It is based on landline and cell phone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,006 adults. Interviews were conducted with 806 respondents on landline telephones and 200 on cell phones.

Peter Francis Storer

SEATTLE The 37-year-old son of Washington state's lieutenant governor has been released from a Seattle hospital, while the man accused of shooting him remains in critical condition.

SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco supervisors have overturned the mayor's veto of a controversial ordinance involving how the city deals with illegal immigrant minors facing felony charges.

HILLSBORO, Ore. A pregnant woman was repeatedly beaten with a collapsible police baton before a "cutting instrument" was used to slice open her abdomen and remove her fetus, a detective testified Tuesday.

RICHMOND, Calif. A man who was arrested but later released in connection with the rape of a 16-year-old girl outside a high school homecoming dance in California says he didn't take part in the attack, but was trying to help the girl.

PORTLAND, Ore. More than 400 students escaped a three-alarm fire that heavily damaged a southeast Portland elementary school.

PINE PLAINS, N.Y. Upset by the treatment of U.S. military personnel, a 42-year-old father of an Army veteran sneaked a disassembled shotgun into a middle school just after classes began Tuesday, put it together in a bathroom, then held the principal hostage for more than two hours before surrendering without firing a shot, police said.

WICHITA, Kan. An anti-abortion activist says he's the one who killed a Kansas abortion provider - and did it because it was necessary to save lives. But one of his attorneys says there's no such thing as a "necessity defense" in state law, and that is not the strategy the defense team plans to present at his trial.

TAMPA, Fla. A Marine reservist accused of attacking a Greek Orthodox priest with a tire iron after apparently calling him a terrorist was actually defending himself after being sexually attacked by the cleric, his defense attorney said Tuesday.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. An Aurora man convicted in the disappearance and presumed death of his daughter was sentenced Tuesday to 114 years behind bars.

TAMPA, Fla. The driver and the child in her lap survived when a pickup truck slammed into a 1,500-gallon aquarium at Tampa International Airport. The tropical fish were not so lucky. Airport officials said 36-year-old Yamile Campuzano-Martine lost control of her truck and drove into the saltwater tank outside the American Airlines baggage claim Monday night. Airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan said the driver had an unrestrained 6-year-old boy in her lap.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. No criminal charges will be brought against a veteran marine safety officer who was piloting a boat that struck and killed a junior lifeguard near the Huntington Beach Pier in Southern California.

As of Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, at least 836 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Tuesday at 10 a.m. EST.

As of Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, at least 4,362 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.