GRAPEVINE, Texas -- The Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to end its controversial policy banning gay kids and teens from joining one of the nation's most popular youth organizations, ditching membership guidelines that had roiled the group in recent years.Over 61 percent of Scouting's National Council of 1,400 delegates from across the country voted to lift the ban, BSA officials said. The fin...

Jurors in the high-profile Jodi Arias trial on Thursday failed to reach an agreement over whether she should receive the death penalty for killing her ex-boyfriend.Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens called for a retrial in the penalty phase after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The new jury will be impaneled on July 18, unless the prosecutor decides to no longer see...

The father of the man who was  killed by FBI agents — after allegedly admitting he and Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev committed a triple homicide in 2011 — claims that his son is innocent and federal investigators made up their case against him.Investigators say Ibragim Todashev told them on Wednesday that he and Tsarnaev killed three people in a Boston suburb two years ago in what sourc...

By Elizabeth Chuck, Jamie Novogrod, and Tom Winter, NBC NewsThe defense team for George Zimmerman, the man charged with second-degree murder in the Florida shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, has released a trove of texts and photos from Martin's cell phone — but it's not clear whether they'll be admissible in trial.The newly released evidence, posted to a website run by Zimmerman's...