Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican senator is defending the practice of collecting millions of telephone records in the ongoing war on terror.

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GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America's National Council has voted to ease a long-standing ban and allow openly gay boys to be accepted as Scouts.

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MOORE, Okla. (AP) — The state medical examiner's office has revised the death toll from a tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb to 24 people, including seven children.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Is the tea party getting its groove back? Shouts of vindication from around the country suggest the movement's leaders certainly think so.

They say the IRS acknowledgement that it had targeted their groups for extra scrutiny — a claim that tea party activists had made for years — is helping pump new energy into the coalition.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The Dow Jones industrial average is punching through another milestone: its first close above 15,000.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing will not be tried as an enemy combatant in a military tribunal.

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CORINTH, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man accused of mailing letters with suspected ricin described uncovering a conspiracy to trade human body parts on the black market and sometimes performed as an Elvis Presley impersonator.

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West, TX, Police say up to 15 people have been killed in a fertilizer plant explosions.  More than 160 are reported to be injured.  Rescue workers are still searching the rubble of dozens of leveled homes.  Several firefighters are missing as well.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says a letter containing ricin or another poison was sent to the office of Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

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Boston (AP) — Federal authorities say the person or persons responsible for yesterday's attack on the Boston Marathon likely used ordinary pressure cookers packed with shrapnel such as nails, metal shards or ball bearings. And the devices were left on the ground in bags or backpacks made of nylon.

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