The Federal Aviation Administration is close to wrapping up a two-year investigation of safety violations at American Airlines that could result in one of the largest fines in the agency's history, according to government and industry officials familiar with the investigation.

Sanofi-Aventis reported a 10 percent increase in fourth quarter net profit Wednesday as strong sales of its swine flu vaccine drove full year earnings above expectations.

Prius owners in Japan are rushing to dealers Wednesday, a day after Toyota's president announced a global recall. Instead of screwdrivers and wrenches, what the mechanic is using to tackle the fix is a small laptop-like device that rewrites programming for the brakes.

If history and the political lineup are any guides, President Barack Obama's latest effort to cut subsidies for wealthy farmers likely will fare no better than his first try _ or his predecessor's attempt.

China's export growth accelerated in January and imports rose, adding to signs a recovery in global and Chinese demand is on track.

Americans backed off from holiday spending in January, but retail sales rose for a third month in a row compared with a year earlier, largely because of gas price hikes, according to figures released Wednesday by a key data service.

Asian stock markets mostly rose Wednesday after Europe and Wall Street gained on hopes a government debt crisis in Europe can be quarantined to smaller economies.

Baidu Inc., which operates China's most popular Internet search engine, said its quarterly earnings jumped 48 percent, beating expectations on strong revenue growth.

Oil prices dropped to near $73 a barrel Wednesday in Asia after a report showing unexpected growth in U.S. crude inventories cast more doubt on the recovery in the world's biggest economy.

Honda Motor Co. is adding 437,000 vehicles to its 15-month old global recall for faulty airbags in the latest quality problem to hit a Japanese automaker.

Entertainment  (top)

Ellen DeGeneres hit the right notes with "American Idol" viewers.

Jay Leno ushered out one of television's biggest flops without sentiment on Tuesday, the final night of a prime-time experiment doomed by bad ratings and bad vibes.

Phil Harris, the fishing boat captain whose adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on the television show "Deadliest Catch", has died, the Discovery Channel said Tuesday night. He was 53.

The Discovery Channel says the captain of the "Deadliest Catch" fishing vessel Cornelia Marie has died.

After rap star Lil Wayne spent months bidding farewell to his fans and his freedom, what loomed for him Tuesday was a dental chair, not a house of detention.

Tom Cruise is starring in another impossible mission.

There's no bloody glove this time, no smoking gun, no faded music icon showing up in court wearing a wig that made it look like he plugged his finger into an electrical socket.

Anne Rice is giving the video book a try.

Jamie Foxx wanted to entertain a group of musically inclined high school students with a few bars from his Grammy winning hit, "Blame It."

Jay Leno has a message for David Letterman: Thanks.

Headlines  (top)

Plows that have been rolling around the clock for days in the nation's capital, Philadelphia and Baltimore won't be heading for the garage any time soon as a second major storm in a week moved into the snowbound region Wednesday.

The jokes about Barack Obama's close relationship with his teleprompter have been constant since he became president.

The tale seems dubious: that a rice vendor survived 27 days trapped under the rubble of a flea market following Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Honda Motor Co. is adding 437,000 vehicles to its 15-month old global recall for faulty airbags in the latest quality problem to hit a Japanese automaker.

Americans backed off from holiday spending in January, but retail sales rose for a third month in a row compared with a year earlier, largely because of gas price hikes, according to figures released Wednesday by a key data service.

During an Iranian government meeting late last month, a top adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought a proposal to expand the political voice of a group more known for its street muscle: the civilian militia corps called the Basij.

Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

The Federal Aviation Administration is close to wrapping up a two-year investigation of safety violations at American Airlines that could result in one of the largest fines in the agency's history, according to government and industry officials familiar with the investigation.

Ellen DeGeneres (dih-JEN'-ur-us) hit the right notes with "American Idol" viewers.

Carmelo Anthony scored 19 points in his return from an ankle injury and the Denver Nuggets had their biggest win of the season, routing the Dallas Mavericks 127-91 on Tuesday night.

Health  (top)

Don't say "mental retardation" _ the new term is "intellectual disability." No more diagnoses of Asperger's syndrome _ call it a mild version of autism instead. And while "behavioral addictions" will be new to doctors' dictionaries, "Internet addiction" didn't make the cut.

Gallbladder surgery is usually a very safe operation, but a powerful congressman's death is a reminder of the known risks.

A woman's chance of having a child with autism increase substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study analyzing more than 5 million births found.

High rates of the most effective type of malaria-fighting drugs sold in three African countries are poor quality _ including nearly half the pills sampled in Senegal _ raising fears of increased drug resistance that could wipe out the last weapon left to battle a disease that kills 1 million people each year, according to a U.S. report released Monday.

The federal government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash instead of down the drain, but they can end up in the water anyway, a study from Maine suggests.

China declared a new food-safety campaign Wednesday after contaminated milk products from an earlier scandal showed up repackaged in several places around the country, exposing weaknesses in the country's promise to stop such problems from happening again.

If the U.S. swine flu epidemic isn't over, it certainly looks as if it's on its last legs. While federal health officials are not ready to declare the threat has passed and the outbreak has run its course, they did report Friday that for the fourth week in a row, no states had widespread flu activity. U.S. cases have been declining since late October.

The death of the father of Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was ruled a homicide Tuesday when an autopsy showed he died of a heart rhythm problem after a fight with his son in which he suffered a neck injury so severe it damaged his windpipe.

A Massachusetts company has agreed to pay a $200,000 penalty to settle allegations it violated U.S. law when it imported Thomas and Friends, Curious George and Winnie the Pooh toys with high levels of lead.

Expectant mothers are getting a new tool to help keep themselves and their babies healthy: pregnancy tips sent directly to their cell phones.

Hitech  (top)

Micron Technology says it plans to buy fellow memory chip maker Numonyx in an all-stock transaction the companies value at $1.27 billion.

Google Inc. opened a new social hub in its e-mail service on Tuesday, leaving little doubt that the Internet search leader is girding for a face-off with Facebook.

RealNetworks Inc. and MTV Networks said Tuesday that they plan to spin off Rhapsody America LLC, their digital music service joint venture, into an independent company.

As part of an ongoing effort to improve its user experience, Internet company AOL Inc. is letting users of its AIM instant-messaging service chat with friends on Facebook.

Online payments service PayPal says its suspension of certain transactions in India could last months.

The head of Warner Music Group expressed hope on Tuesday that the recent "fracas" over the price of e-books would help give content creators such as his company more pricing power over device makers.

Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp lost $1 billion in the fourth quarter because it wrote down the value of its search business, but the results beat expectations and offered the latest indication that the online advertising market is improving.

A disappointing outlook from Electronic Arts Inc. sent shares of the video game publisher sharply lower Monday, a sign that significant cost-cuts and layoffs have not ended the company's slump.

Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks.

Hoping to boost revenue, MySpace Music has begun experimenting with audio advertisements that users must hear if they want to listen to music for free online.

International  (top)

Fourteen-month-old Abigail Charlot survived Haiti's cataclysmic earthquake but not its miserable aftermath. Brought into the capital's General Hospital with fever and diarrhea, little Abigail literally dried up.

Just a few weeks ago, the two officers were lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop, elevated to become key players in a drive to overhaul one of Mexico's most notorious police forces.

The tale seems dubious: that a rice vendor survived 27 days trapped under the rubble of a flea market following Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Prius owners in Japan are rushing to dealers Wednesday, a day after Toyota's president announced a global recall. Instead of screwdrivers and wrenches, what the mechanic is using to tackle the fix is a small laptop-like device that rewrites programming for the brakes.

U.S. and Afghan forces pushed Tuesday to the edge of the southern Afghan town of Marjah, poised to seize the major Taliban supply and drug-smuggling stronghold in hopes of building public support by providing aid and services once the insurgents are gone.

A Myanmar court ordered a U.S. citizen Wednesday to serve three years in prison for entering the military-ruled country with forged documents and undeclared foreign currency.

Government supporters hurled stones at opposition activists protesting the arrest of their defeated presidential candidate in Sri Lanka's capital Wednesday, in scattered street battles that prompted volleys of tear gas from police.

An alleged Islamist militant being tried on charges of harboring terrorists behind deadly twin hotel bombings in the Indonesian capital claimed Wednesday that he had helped craft a plot to assassinate the president.

Iranian nuclear technicians set dozens of centrifuges spinning Tuesday to begin enriching uranium stocks to a significantly higher level, prompting President Barack Obama to warn of a "significant regime of sanctions."

A senior U.N. envoy pressed ahead Wednesday with international efforts to get North Korea back into nuclear disarmament talks, during the world body's first high-level visit to the reclusive state in nearly six years.

Olympics  (top)

A clattering helicopter and a rumbling truck dumped more snow on Cypress Mountain, the warm weather-plagued venue where the first Winter Olympic event is just four days away.

The Vancouver Olympics are shaping up to be Lindsey Vonn's shining moment, the apex of a career that began years ago when her father introduced her to skiing. He saw enough talent in his daughter to move the whole family to Colorado.

With a series of storm fronts rolling in off the Pacific, Vancouver Games men's Alpine race officials pushed up the start of the first downhill training session on Wednesday in a bid to ensure this weekend's opening race starts on schedule.

Vancouver's state-of-the-art doping lab already has tested more than 200 blood and urine samples from Olympic athletes, and there have been no positives.

Like most of the entire country, Vancouver organizers are waiting for the moment when Canada finally wins its first Olympic gold medal on home soil.

IOC president Jacques Rogge believes the Vancouver Olympics will leave a legacy as a "blueprint" for future games.

IOC president Jacques Rogge offered rave reviews of the athletes' village Tuesday after looking at the place he'll call home for part of the Vancouver Olympics.

The Australian Olympic Committee has won its appeal to allow its two-women boblsed team to compete at the Vancouver Games.

Angela Ruggiero is fond of saying hockey is just her first career, and the defenseman always thought she would be on to her next big thing after Vancouver.

What Sven Kramer wants, Sven Kramer gets. What the Dutch speedskater wants is an Olympic gold medal.

Politics  (top)

The jokes about Barack Obama's close relationship with his teleprompter have been constant since he became president.

Signaling he'd meet critics part way on health care, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he's willing to sign a bill even if it doesn't deliver everything he pursued through a year of grinding effort at risk of going down as a dismal failure.

For a decade, war widows in matching yellow suit jackets and hats quietly and persistently have knocked on Capitol Hill doors seeking an end to the "widows' tax," a government policy that deprives them of benefits from their husbands' military service.

First lady Michelle Obama isn't the first national leader to try to get America's kids off the couch. President Dwight D. Eisenhower tried more than 50 years ago, and it's been a losing battle since.

The Federal Aviation Administration is close to wrapping up a two-year investigation of safety violations at American Airlines that could result in one of the largest fines in the agency's history, according to government and industry officials familiar with the investigation.

Partisanship is reaching new heights in Washington, even as President Barack Obama makes almost daily pleas to get along. He's scheduled a bipartisan health care summit, and just Tuesday he hosted GOP leaders at the White House for the first time in two months.

Gallbladder surgery is usually a very safe operation, but a powerful congressman's death is a reminder of the known risks.

Crediting civil rights-era protest songs and their spiritual predecessors for his election, President Barack Obama on Tuesday sat in the East Room of his White House and listened to an all-star lineup of performers pay tribute to the music that he said fueled freedom marches and civil disobedience.

Democratic former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is urging President Barack Obama to fire Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, another former Virginia governor.

Senate Democrats circulated a jobs bill Tuesday that's light on new initiatives on boosting hiring and heavy with provisions sought by lobbyists for business groups, doctors and the satellite broadcasting industry.

Religion  (top)

The largest state Baptist group in the nation wants Christ's message of hope heard in every home in Texas _ about 9 million of them _ by Easter.

A national Muslim group and an atheist organization are condemning comments by Mayor R. Rex Parris that the city is "growing a Christian community."

Science  (top)

Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

India again successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable missile Sunday that can hit targets across much of Asia and the Middle East, a defense ministry press release said.

The federal government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash instead of down the drain, but they can end up in the water anyway, a study from Maine suggests.

Activists vowing to stop the killing of whales exchanged water-cannon fire with a Japanese whaling fleet they are tailing in the Antarctic Ocean, as sea confrontations that have led to collisions and a sunken vessel continue.

Two American-born pandas arrived in their new China home Friday, bringing a welcome dose of cuddly to the countries' currently strained relations.

This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century.

Some dinosaurs had russet-colored feathers, and one jazzy specimen had a Mohawk crest and stripes, researchers say in the first reports to confidently assign colors to dinosaurs.

Sports  (top)

LeBron James scored 32 points to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to their 12th straight win Tuesday night, a 104-97 victory over the New Jersey Nets.

Rutgers suspended Hall of Fame women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer on Tuesday for one game for misusing practice players.

Anaheim Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf says he is optimistic he'll return from his sprained left ankle in time to play for Canada in the Olympics.

Carmelo Anthony scored 19 points in his return from an ankle injury and the Denver Nuggets had their biggest win of the season, routing the Dallas Mavericks 127-91 on Tuesday night.

A clattering helicopter and a rumbling truck dumped more snow on Cypress Mountain, the warm weather-plagued venue where the first Winter Olympic event is just four days away.

With a series of storm fronts rolling in off the Pacific, Vancouver Games men's Alpine race officials pushed up the start of the first downhill training session on Wednesday in a bid to ensure this weekend's opening race starts on schedule.

The Vancouver Olympics are shaping up to be Lindsey Vonn's shining moment, the apex of a career that began years ago when her father introduced her to skiing. He saw enough talent in his daughter to move the whole family to Colorado.

With the NASCAR season revving up at Daytona International Speedway this week, companies still have a chance to associate themselves with the sport's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The NHL is sending more teams across the pond.

Marian Gaborik limped off the ice during practice Tuesday after the New York Rangers' leading scorer was cut on the right knee by the skate of goalie Henrik Lundqvist in a collision.

Strange  (top)

A man accidentally shot himself in the leg shortly after leaving a Jupiter gun store. Police said the unidentified man went to Chuck's Guns and Ammo Monday afternoon, looking for batteries for the laser sight on a small handgun. When the man was back in his car, the gun accidentally fired, hitting him in the leg.

A Roanoke man claims sheriff's deputies beat him in the city jail because of his burping. Thomas Scott Vandegrift made the allegations in a federal lawsuit filed last week against several deputies, the city, the sheriff's office and the sheriff. According to the lawsuit, the deputies were annoyed by Vandegrift's burping, which was caused by acid reflux.

An 11-year-old boy faces assault and weapon charges for trying to stab a classmate with a pencil over a math problem. Police in New Hartford, 80 miles west of Albany, said the boy was mad because a classmate kept trying to help him in math class on Monday. When the would-be helper wouldn't back off, police said the boy lashed out with a sharp pencil and inflicted a scratch treated by the school nurse.

Los Angeles County prosecutors are looking into a complaint that the mayor of Carson cuts off public speakers at City Council meetings if he doesn't like what they're saying. David Demerjian of the district attorney's office said the complaint claims that Mayor Jim Dear hits the mute button on speakers before the three-minute time limit is up.

Authorities say a drunken man stole an ambulance from a Wisconsin ski area with the patient and paramedics still inside. The Dane County Sheriff's Department says emergency responders were treating a patient in the back of the ambulance at the Tyrol Basin Ski and Snowboard Area in Mount Horeb on Monday night. They say a 24-year-old Illinois man got into the vehicle and drove it around the parking lot.

A bandit who likes to steal makeup from a well known drug store chain has returned after a six month absence. Chandler police said the "Blue Basket Bandit" attempted a theft Monday at a Walgreens store. Over the past two years, police said the thief has stolen approximately $10,000 worth of cosmetic merchandise from Walgreens stores around Chandler and neighboring cities.

A smelly problem is piling at trails around Jackson where people go hiking and cross-country skiing with their dogs. How big is this problem? Bridger-Teton National Forest officials say they recently counted 173 piles of dog waste around just one trailhead.

New Zealanders who for decades have endured jokes about being outnumbered 20-to-1 by sheep have a new farm animal majority to worry about: cows.

New Castle County Police said a man pointed a gun at a neighbor who was shoveling snow on Saturday at the Hampton Walk Apartments. A man told police a neighbor came outside while he was shoveling, pointed a gun and threatened to shoot him if he didn't stop shoveling snow onto his car.

Today-in-history  (top)

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 10, the 41st day of 2010. There are 324 days left in the year.

Us  (top)

Plows that have been rolling around the clock for days in the nation's capital, Philadelphia and Baltimore won't be heading for the garage any time soon as a second major storm in a week moved into the snowbound region Wednesday.

New York Gov. David Paterson, defying calls from even fellow Democrats to drop out of the race for a full term, said Tuesday that he would leave only if the voters turned him out through the ballot box, or he's carried out "in a box."

The latest Pacific storm that brought heavy rain, hail and snow to Southern California is heading east, but the mudslide threat is not over for communities below wildfire-scarred mountains.

If history and the political lineup are any guides, President Barack Obama's latest effort to cut subsidies for wealthy farmers likely will fare no better than his first try _ or his predecessor's attempt.

Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

In his push to move stalled health care reform, President Barack Obama is appealing to American pocketbooks by calling one health insurer's major rate hike in California a harbinger of rising premiums.

When Ronald "Loony" Barron urged a young graffiti tagger to put away his paint cans, he was doing what he viewed as his mission _ steering kids away from crime _ but he paid for it with his life.

The New York Senate voted Tuesday night to expel a senator convicted of a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his girlfriend, a resolution the lawmaker assailed as an injustice to the people who elected him.

Target Corp. said Tuesday it was pulling its Valentine's Day "Message Bears" from store shelves after California's attorney general raised concerns that the toys have illegal levels of lead.

The family of Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan insisted Tuesday that they do "not blame anyone" for her father's death and criticized a medical examiner's finding that Daniel Kerrigan died of a heart rhythm problem after a fight with his son.