ATLANTA (AP) — Teachers spent nights huddled in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers. Those and other confessions are contained in a new state report that reveals how far […]

NEW YORK (AP) — The mother of "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts has died. Jeffrey W. Schneider, senior vice president of ABC News, said 88-year-old Lucimarian Roberts died Thursday night. ABC's Facebook page said Robins traveled "home to Mississippi just in time to see her." The death came on the same day Roberts said […]

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The University of Iowa rejected the suspect in the Colorado movie theater shooting rampage from a graduate neuroscience program last year after he visited campus for an interview and left the program director bluntly warning colleagues: "Do NOT offer admission under any circumstances." James Holmes applied to the Iowa program […]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Dozens of Harvard University students are being investigated for cheating after school officials discovered they may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam. Harvard officials declined to release the name of the class, the students' names or the exact number being investigated, citing privacy laws. The undergraduate class had […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Laying out the first plans for his party's presidential ticket, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts Wednesday night when he attacked President Barack Obama's policies on Medicare, the economic stimulus and the budget deficit. Sen. Rob Portman, a former U.S. trade representative, glossed over his own problems when […]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Seven years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers was desperately trying to plug breaches in the city's broken and busted levee system. Since those catastrophic days, the Army Corps has worked at breakneck speed — and at a cost of billions of dollars — to install new floodgates, pumps, floodwalls and […]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Isaac hovered over Louisiana for a third day Thursday, shedding more than a foot of additional rain that forced authorities to hurriedly evacuate areas ahead of the storm and rescue hundreds of people who could not escape as the rapidly rising waters swallowed entire neighborhoods. The huge spiral weather system weakened […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A new judge has been assigned to oversee the case of George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with killing Trayvon Martin. Debra S. Nelson, a 13-year judicial veteran, was assigned to Zimmerman's case Thursday. A day earlier, an appeals court granted his attorney's request for Judge Kenneth Lester to […]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Isaac's whistling winds lashed this city and the storm dumped nearly a foot of rain on its desolate streets, but the system of levee pumps, walls and gates appeared to withstand one of the stiffest challenges yet. To the north and south, though, people had to be evacuated or rescued as […]

DENVER (AP) — Nearly a third of people whose citizenship and right to vote were questioned by Colorado's secretary of state are actually U.S. citizens, election officials said Wednesday, prompting Democrats to question the motives behind the effort to clean up voting rolls as a tightly contested presidential election approaches. Earlier this month, Republican Secretary […]

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A tough Texas law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls discriminates against low-income blacks and Hispanics, a federal court ruled Thursday, wiping out for the November election a measure championed by conservatives and setting up a potential U.S. Supreme Court showdown. In Washington, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A three-judge panel in Florida has ruled that a former neighborhood watch leader charged in the fatal shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin should be granted a new judge in his case. Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that Judge Kenneth Lester should enter a motion to disqualify himself in […]