A senior spokesman for the Afghan Taliban has said the group is ready to free the only known American prisoner of war from the conflict in Afghanistan in exchange for five senior operatives held at Guantanamo Bay, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Hailey, Idaho has been held captive since 2009 after going missing from his base in Afghanistan. His whereabou...

A 32-year-old Pennsylvania man with Down syndrome was so severely neglected by his family that his body was covered in scabies and he weighed just 69 pounds when he died, police said in charging his mother and two sisters with murder. Robert Gensiak had open sores down to the bone at the time of his death March 20. He was taken to the hospital a day earlier because he was only semi-responsive and ...

President Barack Obama says he wants to reduce the number of deployed U.S. nuclear weapons by a third, but even if the Russians agree to do the same, it could be a decade or longer before the 500 or so U.S. warheads under discussion are actually destroyed.A massive backlog at the Texas Pantex plant where nukes are dismantled means warheads removed from submarines and land-based missiles as a resul...

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 ...