AP - On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched Wednesday as another storm threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt, and officials made preliminary plans to evacuate people, pets and hospitals in an attempt to avoid a Katrina-style chaos.

AP - When a computer system that distributes flight plans nationwide came rolling to a halt this week because of a software glitch, so did airplanes on tarmacs from Orlando to Chicago. The ensuing delays drove home just how easily an apparently isolated problem can trigger network-wide disarray in the country's aging air traffic control system.

AP - A longtime sex offender was sentenced to death Wednesday for the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a 9-year-old northern Idaho boy after federal jurors who watched video of some of the brutality deliberated just three hours.

AP - Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.

AP - A federal jury on Wednesday began deliberating whether a former Marine squad leader committed manslaughter in Iraq, marking the first time in which civilians will decide whether the actions of a military service member during combat were criminal.

AP - Linda Sohus was a towering blonde fantasy buff who liked to paint unicorns. Her husband, Jonathan, was a diminutive computer programmer working at a NASA lab who shared his wife's passion for science fiction.

AP - Four jail inmates who authorities say helped eight others make a brazen escape were charged Wednesday, as officials kept up the search for the five prisoners who remain on the loose, including a convicted murderer.

AP - Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures.

AP - More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

AP - A judge on Wednesday granted temporary guardianship to the husband of a woman on a feeding tube in a case similar to the lengthy legal dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive.

AP - With a band of traditional Korean drummers, a Latin dance group and a martial arts exhibition, city officials broke ground Wednesday on a small urban pocket park at the site where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago.

AP - Barack Obama, claiming a prize never held by a black American, swept to the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday as thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered his improbable triumph.

AP - A measure that would decriminalize minor marijuana-possession cases is on the ballot in Massachusetts largely because of one man: billionaire financier and liberal activist George Soros.

AP - Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

AP - Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m.

AP - New satellite measurements show that crucial sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has plummeted to its second lowest level on record.

AP - Six mausoleums for the unclaimed dead of Hurricane Katrina stand on what was vacant land just five weeks ago, as New Orleans — in what could be a testament to its determination — scrambles to complete a memorial by Friday's third anniversary of the storm.

AP - Government data painted a bleak economic picture for Michigan, where the auto industry's downward plunge has rippled across the state.

AP - Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick come from the same powerful Democratic political machine, yet they have had a strained relationship for years.

AP - The air was still thick with the smell of smoke when fire crews allowed Christopher Lee and his wife to return to their charred neighborhood and collect their belongings — or what was left of them.