Struggling student loan debtors are being tricked into paying up to $1,600 in fees to private firms offering "debt relief" that they could get for free, according to a report issued Wednesday by the National Consumer Law Center.Student loan debt relief ads began crowding their way onto media in recent months. Consumers deep in credit card debt have heard the pitch for years, in seemingly incessant...

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina — North Carolina's governor, hoping to resume executions in his state, on Wednesday signed the repeal of a law that has allowed death row inmates to seek a reduced sentence if they could prove racial bias affected their punishmentThe Racial Justice Act, the only law of its kind in the United States, had led to four inmates getting their sentences changed to life in pr...

A prosecutor says a Boston man found dead in an industrial park about a mile from New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez's home was a homicide victim.Bristol District Attorney Samuel Sutter's office said Wednesday the state medical examiner has identified 27-year-old Odin Lloyd and ruled he was a homicide victim.Lloyd's family says he had connections to Hernandez but hasn't elaborated...

A father and son who ran a prostitution ring in New York were acquitted of sex-trafficking charges Wednesday after three out of the five prostitutes who worked for them testified in their defense.Vincent George Sr. and his son, Vincent George Jr., were convicted on charges of money laundering by Judge Ruth Pickholtz.New York District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said, “The goal of this prosecution...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday said members of his anti-secrecy website have been in contact with lawyers of alleged National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and are helping him seek asylum in Iceland.Speaking to reporters during a conference call on the one-year anniversary of his own asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Assange said his group has a “common cause” with ...

Three male Naval Academy midshipmen have been charged with allegedly sexually assaulting a female midshipman last year and with making a false official statement.The woman told investigators that she was assaulted by the men — all Academy football players at the time — at an off-campus party in April 2012. On Wednesday, the academy announced the accused men were charged with making a false officia...

Los Angeles' school system, the second largest in the United States, is ordering iPads for all its students, handing Apple a major success in its quest to make the tablet computer a replacement for textbooks. The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday approved the purchase of $30 million worth of iPads as the first part of a multi-year commitment. It found that the iPad was the least expensive ...

Nine 7-Eleven store owners and managers who authorities say ran a “modern-day plantation system,” employing dozens of immigrant workers at New York and Virginia convenience stores, were just one thread in a vast human trafficking and forced labor web that stretches around the world and into American homes.Investigators filed indictments earlier this week against the eight men and one woman who wer...

George Zimmerman's parents were in a Florida courtroom Wednesday to "visibly advocate" for the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with murdering Trayvon Martin, the family said in a statement.Robert and Gladys Zimmerman did not previously attend jury selection because they have received death threats and have been taking care of an elderly relative with Alzheimer's, their older son, Rober...

Two upstate New York men, one of them said to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, plotted to build a truck-mounted, industrial-strength X-ray weapon to kill “enemies of Israel” by poisoning them with radiation, federal authorities said Wednesday.One of them boasted that he could build a “Hiroshima light switch” and that “everything with respiration would be dead by morning,” authorities said.Investig...