Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the American soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two villages last year, is expected to plead guilty Wednesday to avoid the death penalty. He is also expected speak in a military courtroom about the slayings.

Just ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Chinese presidents, a Chinese-American scientist was allowed to leave China after being kept there for five years over a business dispute. It all happened so fast, Hu Zhicheng's wife couldn't get to the airport in time to meet him when he finally arrived back in America.

Gordon Gee, rehired by Ohio State University in 2007 to great fanfare, boldly declared, "This is Ohio State's time."

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's journey from a childhood so poor his family couldn't afford his bar mitzvah to his life as a multimillionaire businessman who served for decades in the Senate was remembered Wednesday at a funeral in New York City packed with dignitaries.

A four-story building being demolished collapsed Wednesday on the edge of downtown, and the fire commissioner said as many as eight to 10 people were believed trapped in the rubble.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the American soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two villages last year, is expected to plead guilty Wednesday to avoid the death penalty. He is also expected speak in a military courtroom about the slayings.

The American soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two villages last year pleaded guilty Wednesday to avoid the death penalty.

The company that developed a genetically modified test strain of wheat that emerged to the surprise of an Oregon farmer says it has tested the parent wheat stock and found it clean.

Susan Rice aggressively spearheaded President Barack Obama's foreign policy as his top diplomat at the United Nations, promoting democracy in the Middle East and tougher sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

The National Transportation Safety Board says a track inspection found problems two days before a train derailed in Connecticut and injured more than 70 people.

Officials at the last hospital still closed because of Superstorm Sandy are no longer predicting when they will be able to reopen.

The commission that is planning a memorial to honor President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington plans to unveil a series of quotations that may be inscribed in the monument.

A Detroit police officer is defending his decision not to arrest a murder suspect on the street a few hours before another attempt to catch the man led to the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl.

A woman from a wealthy New York suburb is accused of growing and attempting to sell nearly 3,000 marijuana plants from a city warehouse.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's court-martial over the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified documents has been all about secrecy and security, and his trial has taken on a cloak and dagger feel, too.

The American soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two slumbering villages last year is expected to recount the horrific slaughter in a military courtroom Wednesday when he pleads guilty to avoid the death penalty.

Emergency crews are at the scene of a building collapse in Philadelphia, and the fire commissioner says as many as eight to 10 people were believed trapped in the rubble.

WHAT HAPPENED: The Army says Staff Sgt. Robert Bales slipped away from his southern Afghanistan outpost in March 2012 and attacked mud-walled compounds in two villages nearby, killing 16 people, including women and children. Bales, an Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., had been drinking contraband alcohol, snorting Valium that was provided to him by another soldier, and had been taking steroids before the attack, his lawyers have said.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's nearly three decades in office and the causes he championed were being remembered at a funeral at a New York synagogue Wednesday that began with a Hebrew blessing while his wife and children stood near his flag-draped casket.

She was the youngest Charles Manson follower convicted in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders _ a girl of 19 who seemed the one most likely to win parole one day