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NEW YORK – The airport shuttle driver accused of plotting a bombing in New York had contacts with Al Qaeda that went nearly all the way to the top, to an Usama bin Laden confidant believed to be the terrorist group’s leader in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated …

HAVERSTRAW, N.Y. – A ground search of wooded, mountainous terrain was under way after several witnesses said they saw a plume of smoke coming from a small plane around Harriman State Park in Haverstraw. Jim Peters of the Federal Aviation Administration says some sort of aircraft went off the radar …

NEWARK, N.J. – A northern New Jersey councilman has become the 45th person charged and the sixth to plead guilty in the state’s largest corruption sweep. Jersey City Councilman Philip Kenny pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit extortion for accepting $5,000 from a government informant posing as a developer …

Better diagnosis and treatment over the last 30 years have considerably reduced the risk of dying from a highly fatal type of aneurysm, Dutch scientists reported on Thursday. Techniques such as CT and MRI scans are now widely used in the developing world to detect aneurysms but it was not …

Young adults who regularly feast on takeaway, or takeout, food tend to have less healthy diets and larger waistlines than their peers, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among the more than 2,800 Australian adults they surveyed, those who ordered takeout at least twice a week were less likely …

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A miniature train that derailed and injured 22 people at the Louisville Zoo underwent daily inspections and passed a state examination in January, safety officials said Tuesday. The zoo reopened at its normal time Tuesday morning while state investigators in charge of amusement rides worked to figure …

Alcohol-related deaths, binge-drinking and drunk driving have all been on the rise on college campuses over the past decade, a U.S. government study finds. The number of drinking-related accidental deaths among 18- to 24-year- old college students rose from 1,440 per 100,000 in 1998 to 1,825 per 100,000 in 2005, …

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A radical Islamic group in Somalia has threatened to seize weapons and ammunition the U.S. has supplied to the nation’s embattled government. But Uganda, a key U.S. ally in the region, praised the arms shipment. Both were responding to an announcement by U.S. officials last week that …

PORTLAND, Ore. – More than 400 students escaped a three-alarm fire that heavily damaged a southeast Portland elementary school. Portland Fire Bureau spokeswoman Kim Kosmas says the school’s 17 teachers also made it out safely late Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire at Marysville Elementary School has not been …

Police in the small Georgia town of Aragon are stepping up the search for Amber Graham, a 14-year-old ninth grader who vanished eight days ago. U.S. Marshals and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation will be joining what has been a low-key search for the last seven days as concern for …