RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel says dissolvable tobacco products could reduce health risks compared with smoking cigarettes but also have the potential to increase the number of tobacco users. Dissolvable tobacco is finely milled tobacco pressed into shapes like tablets that slowly dissolve in a user’s mouth. Despite its […]

SYDNEY (AP) — Mountaineer Lincoln Hall, who was rescued a day after being given up for dead near the summit of Everest in 2006, died Wednesday of cancer in Australia. He was 56. Hall reached the peak of the world’s highest mountain but became gravely ill from oxygen deprivation during the descent. His guides helped […]

ATHENS, Ohio ( AP) — Crews are expected to use jackhammers to remove a large boulder that fell from a southeast Ohio hillside, crushing a car and damaging a home and three other vehicles. The Athens Messenger reports the boulder that fell Wednesday is estimated at about 100 tons and 25 feet in diameter. No […]

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Volkswagen will add 800 new jobs at its Chattanooga, Tenn., plant to boost production of the Passat sedan. The new jobs will increase the plant’s work force to more to 3,500 by the end of the year, the German company said today. The additional workers will be used to bolster the […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment aid fell to a four-year low last week, bolstering the view that the job market is strengthening. The Labor Department said today that weekly applications dropped 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000. That’s the lowest level since March 2008, just months into the Great Recession. […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Rush Limbaugh’s opponents are starting a radio campaign against him today, seizing upon the radio star’s attack of a Georgetown law student as a “slut” to make a long-term effort aimed at weakening his business. The liberal Media Matters for America is using a past campaign against Glenn Beck as a […]

TOULOUSE, France (AP) — An Islamic extremist who boasted of killing seven people to strike back at France died today after jumping from his window, gun in hand, in a fierce shootout with police, a French minister said. Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the suspect, who claimed links to al-Qaida, jumped out after police entered […]

NEW YORK (AP) — The parents of a black teenager shot to death by a Hispanic neighborhood watch captain in Florida told demonstrators in New York they will keep fighting to get justice for their son. “My son did not deserve to die,” Tracy Martin said Wednesday after thanking the hundreds of people who participated […]

WASHINGTON ( AP) — The Republican establishment started to coalesce around Mitt Romney in earnest on Wednesday, with Jeb Bush and other leading Republicans pressuring Rick Santorum to leave the race after a thumping in the Illinois primary. But, on what should have been a triumphant day, Romney found himself having to defend his conservative […]