The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on a New Mexico peanut butter plant that had repeated food safety violations over several years, using a new authority to halt operations at facilities that may be producing unsafe food.

The wife of a shoplifting suspect who died after a fight with security outside a suburban Atlanta Walmart says she thinks store employees used too much force to subdue him.

Astronaut Scott Kelly will become the first U.S. astronaut to spend a year in space. Why? He is volunteering to be a human guinea pig -- to help NASA collect detailed medical and psychological data about the effects of long term spaceflight on a human. He and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2015 and return to Earth in 2016.

Plenty of Republicans are talking about a possible presidential run by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, but Walker insists he's not one of them.

A doctor who performed the world's first successful kidney transplant and won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work has died in Boston. Dr. Joseph E. Murray was 93.

Four police officers in Rhode Island are being investigated for making five boys do push-ups on the side of a street as punishment for damaging a mailbox.

The U.S. Capitol's Christmas tree has arrived.

Cyber Monday appears on track to becoming the biggest online shopping day ever, and web traffic isn't expected to peak for another several hours.

A new report says states can receive more than $9 in federal money for every dollar they spend to cover low-income residents under President Barack Obama's health care law.

The new musical "Kinky Boots" enjoyed a pre-Broadway run at a downtown Chicago theater this fall thanks to a little-known tax break aimed at luring productions to Illinois.

Police say a driver whose truck crashed through an overpass guard rail and dangled above a busy Oregon highway for nearly an hour had six times the legal limit of alcohol in his system.

A judge has rejected the request of a condemned Ohio killer to delay his execution because of his extreme weight.

The Supreme Court is questioning a monopoly on hospital services in southwestern Georgia.

Authorities in north Georgia say a 16-year-old boy is expected to make his first court appearance Monday after he was accused of killing his stepfather with a sword.

Authorities in north Georgia say a 16-year-old boy is expected to make his first court appearance Monday after he was accused of killing his stepfather with a sword.

A clown suffered a fatal collapse in front of spectators at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

If you buy every item mentioned in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" you'll be set back $107,300 this year. That's a 6.1 percent jump from last year.

Republican opposition to the possible nomination of Susan Rice to be secretary of state is showing signs of softening.

Lottery officials say nobody has won the Powerball jackpot and the top prize will now increase to about $425 million for the next drawing, the largest jackpot ever for the game.

ROMULUS, N.Y. (AP) - Authorities say the seemingly accidental death of a New York man crushed by a pickup truck was no mishap: Four years later, his father has been charged with murdering him for insurance money.

This year's Friday results may have been tempered by hundreds of thousands of shoppers hitting sales Thursday evening while still full of Thanksgiving dinner.

Building inspectors assessing homes and businesses in western Massachusetts' largest city after a natural gas explosion says the blast damaged more than 40 buildings.

Authorities say three maintenance workers were seriously injured after a fire broke out at the State Department headquarters in Washington.

President Barack Obama made a quick trip to a Virginia bookstore for some Christmas shopping. Mr. Obama was promoting an effort called "small business Saturday" to encourage shoppers to patronize mom-and-pop businesses.

The pen may not be as mighty as the keyboard these days, but California and a handful of states are not giving up on handwriting entirely.