GRAPEVINE, Texas — As protesters made one last stand, the Boy Scouts of America’s leadership began a conference Wednesday that was expected to culminate in a long-anticipated vote on whether to allow openly gay Scouts — a decision that, either way, could deeply affect the organization’s membership and funding. Scouting leaders from around the country [...]

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Chechen immigrant was shot to death by authorities early Wednesday after he turned violent while being questioned about his ties to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, officials said. Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, was gunned down at his Orlando townhouse during a meeting with an FBI [...]

WASHINGTON — A key House committee chairman on Wednesday sharply criticized a wide-ranging immigration bill just passed by a Senate committee, underscoring the difficulties ahead as the politically volatile measure moves forward in a divided Congress. Separately, a bipartisan House group that has been working behind the scenes to craft its own immigration measure encountered [...]

WASHINGTON — At the center of a political storm, an Internal Revenue Service supervisor whose agents targeted conservative groups swore Wednesday she did nothing wrong, broke no laws and never lied to Congress. Then she refused to answer lawmakers’ further questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. In one of the most [...]

WASHINGTON — Members of a House panel angry over the growing epidemic of sexual assaults in the military took a key step toward tackling the problem by passing legislation Wednesday that would strip commanding officers of their longstanding authority to unilaterally change or dismiss court-martial convictions in rape and assault cases. Lawmakers believe the revision [...]

UNION CITY — An elementary school teacher in Northern California has been formally charged with dozens of counts of inappropriately touching several of his students. Michael William Howey, 47, of Alameda, did not enter a plea during his arraignment Monday in an Alameda County courtroom on 17 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a [...]

SAN FRANCISCO — Family and friends are searching for a man who went missing after completing the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. Dozens of people combed the area around Ocean Beach on Tuesday in search of 27-year-old Beau Rasmussen, of Oakland. Rasmussen is believed to have gone for a swim off the beach [...]

SAN FRANCISCO — A man was rescued by a sailing crew after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday in one of the rare cases of someone actually surviving the 220-foot plunge. Scott Walecka told the Santa Cruz Sentinel he was taking his 38-foot vessel to San Francisco around 2 p.m. when his daughter [...]

SACRAMENTO — California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has agreed to expand the way her office presents campaign finance data online after initially rejecting the request from a coalition of good-government groups, research organizations and newspapers, her spokeswoman said Tuesday. The Secretary of State’s Office will make California’s entire campaign finance and lobbying database, known [...]

SAN FRANCISCO — A political Web site that says it was the target of FBI surveillance has filed a lawsuit in San Francisco seeking documents connected with the alleged probe. Antiwar.com filed the federal lawsuit in San Francisco on Tuesday, saying the FBI has refused to turn over documents requested under the Freedom of Information [...]

ATLANTA — President Barack Obama, in a soaring commencement address on work, sacrifice and opportunity, on Sunday told graduates of historically black Morehouse College to seize the power of their example as black men graduating from college and use it to improve people’s lives. The president said his success was due to “the special obligation [...]

SAN FRANCISCO — When Liz DeRouen needs any kind of health care services, from diabetes counseling to a dental cleaning, she checks into a government-funded clinic in Northern California’s wine country that covers all her medical needs. Her care and the medical services for her children and grandchildren are paid for as part of the [...]

DES MOINES, Iowa — When Marine Sgt. Ross Gundlach served as a dog handler in Afghanistan, he told the yellow lab who was his constant companion that he’d look her up when he returned home. “I promised her if we made it out of alive, I’d do whatever it took to find her,” Gundlach said. On Friday, [...]

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday ordered the military to recertify all 25,000 people involved in programs designed to prevent and respond to sexual assault, an acknowledgement that assaults have escalated beyond the Pentagon’s control. He said this step, which also applies to the military’s approximately 19,000 recruiters and must be completed by [...]

NEW ORLEANS — Two brothers with a history of drug arrests and suspected ties to a neighborhood gang each face 20 counts of attempted second-degree murder in a shooting spree that brought a sudden bloody end to a neighborhood Mother’s Day parade. The arrests by city police and U.S. marshals came less than four days [...]

CINCINNATI — An Ohio man was found guilty Thursday of fatally shooting a man who authorities say identified his assailant by blinking his eyes while paralyzed and hooked up to a ventilator. A jury convicted Ricardo Woods, 35, of murder and felonious assault for the death of David Chandler who was shot Oct. 28, 2010, [...]

GRANBURY, Texas — Habitat for Humanity spent years in a North Texas suburb, helping build many of the 110 homes in the low-income area. But its work was largely undone during an outbreak of 12 tornadoes Wednesday night that killed six people and injured dozens. On Thursday, authorities combed through debris in Granbury, while residents [...]

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown is asking University of California officials to identify why graduation rates vary between campuses. The Democratic governor grilled UC Provost Aimee Dorr about the university system’s graduation rates during a Tuesday meeting of the Board of Regents. Dorr said overall rates and the number of years it takes to get [...]

SACRAMENTO — Democrat Norma Torres handily won a state Senate seat in a Southern California special election after outspending her opponent in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. With all precincts reporting, the state Assemblywoman from Pomona got 59.4 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, according to figures on the secretary of state’s website. Her Republican [...]

LAKEWOOD — About 20 homes were evacuated and a man was arrested after authorities serving a warrant found suspicious canisters inside a tunnel beneath a Los Angeles County house. The arrest was made on Tuesday after deputies tried to serve an arrest warrant in Lakewood and the man inside the home hid in a crawl [...]

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest budget proposes a $17 billion bump for California’s K-12 schools over the next four years, a dramatic turn-around from the teacher layoffs and program cuts that became common during the recession. He also wants to reshape the financial decision-making process by giving local districts more authority to spend state [...]

LOS ANGELES — NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope is broken, potentially jeopardizing the search for other worlds where life could exist outside our solar system. If engineers can’t find a fix, the failure could mean an end to the $600 million mission’s search, although the space agency wasn’t ready to call it quits Wednesday. The telescope [...]

SACRAMENTO — The new $6.3 billion eastern portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge still “has a fighting chance” to open this year, despite concerns over structural issues, officials overseeing its construction said Tuesday. Citing myriad problems that have dogged the span’s construction, state lawmakers grilled the officials overseeing the project about the decision to [...]

SACRAMENTO — Despite surging state tax revenue, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday announced a spending plan for the coming fiscal year that is $1.2 billion lower than he projected in January. Actions by the federal government are at least partly responsible. The forecast for growth of personal income is lower because the federal government did [...]

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — With other accusers stepping forward, a former yeshiva teacher changed pleas Monday in the middle of his trial, admitting he sexually abused a boy he met while working as a camp counselor. Rabbi Yoself Kolko, 36, shifted uncomfortably on the stand as he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated [...]

CLEVELAND — The Ohio attorney general says the man accused of imprisoning three women in a Cleveland house for about a decade isn’t linked to other crimes through a national database. Attorney General Mike DeWine says no matches came up when Ariel Castro’s DNA was compared to samples in the database on Monday. DeWine also [...]