As 1,400 Boy Scouts of America delegates gathered Thursday to vote on a proposal to end the organization’s longstanding ban on gays, activists on both sides of the contentious issue ramped up the pressure.A group opposed to allowing gay Scouts posted a call to prayer on its Facebook page – a sign of how large religion looms over the vote.“Would you join us in a time of solemn prayer for our countr...

Tamerlan Tsarnaev landed on America's terrorist watch list in 2011. Tamerlan's younger brother, Dzhokhar, now charged in the Boston Marathon bombing case, seems not to have made the list.Ultimately, Tamerlan's inclusion on the watch list did not lead investigators to detect the April 15 bomb plot that killed three and wounded at least 260 – prompting inevitable questions about why not, and whether...

Authorities continued their recovery efforts Thursday for a Minnesota child who remained missing after a gravel slide swept several children on a school fossil-hunting trip into a pit, killing one.The fourth-graders from a St. Louis Park elementary school were hiking in Lilydale Regional Park on Wednesday when a steep slope soaked by rain gave way, authorities have said. Two trapped children were ...

Cleveland’s most camera-ready hero may now also be its best fed.More than a dozen Ohio restaurants and at least one in Pennsylvania have pledged free burgers for life to Charles Ramsey, the Big Mac-munching man who was credited with helping a woman escape from the home where she had been held captive, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.Ramsey mentioned in numerous interviews earlier this month tha...

Pat Hall had one request for volunteers scouring the rubble of her ripped apart home in a rural corner of Oklahoma City: find the necklace that her son, who died quickly from cancer, gave her before his death.She got her wish. Brian Foster, an Air Force Master Sgt. volunteering with his local church, plucked the necklace with a gold nugget out of a pile of debris where Hall thought it might be.“Th...