WASHINGTON ( AP) — Wholesale prices moved up slightly last month, held back by cheaper energy and food costs. The Labor Department said today that the producer price index, which tracks price changes before they reach the consumer, rose 0.1 percent. Wholesale prices fell by the same amount in December. In the past 12 months, […]

BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi investigation panel says the country’s Sunni vice president and his employees were behind years of deadly attacks on security officials and Shiite pilgrims. Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council spokesman Abdul- Sattar Bayrkdar did not offer any evidence today to back up the panel’s findings. Vice President Tariq al- Hashemi has denied […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell to the lowest point in almost four years last week, the latest signal that the job market is steadily improving. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the Labor Department said today. It was the fourth drop in five […]

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The stocky man showed up in a basketball uniform for a game at Century High School in North Dakota. Players and coaches assumed he was a fan who had come with another team, so nobody objected when he began to pitch in around the bench. “He helped lay out uniforms, got […]

DUBLIN (AP) — Irish character actor David Kelly, who played Grandpa Joe in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and motorcycled naked in “ Waking Ned Devine,” has died. He was 82. His family and friends said Kelly died Sunday in Dublin after an acting career on stage, film, TV and radio that spanned a half-century. […]

NEW YORK Character singer Charles Anthony, who set the record for most appearances at the Metropolitan Opera — 2,928 — during a career that spanned from 1954 to 2010, died Wednesday. He was 82. Anthony, a tenor, died at his home in Tampa, Fla., from kidney failure following a long illness, Met spokesman Peter Clark […]

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Gov. Chris Christie has strongly defended his decision to have flags flown at half-staff Saturday for singer Whitney Houston. The Republican governor says he rejects complaints that Houston “forfeited the good things that she did” because of her struggles with substance abuse. “What I would say to everybody is there but […]

NEW YORK They won’t be there in person, but singer Whitney Houston’s millions of fans worldwide will be able to share in her homecoming service Saturday as they watch her private funeral on the Internet. It will provide a much-needed connection for fans who have lacked a formal place to eulogize Houston, one of the […]

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Smiling and saluting, new leader Kim Jong Un reviewed a parade of thousands of soldiers today who vowed to protect him with their lives as North Korea commemorated the 70th birthday of his late father, Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un, wearing a dark Mao- style suit and a solemn […]