News-Nation

JUNEAU, Alaska The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state of Alaska on behalf of a transgender woman, alleging that it denied her a driver's license listing her gender as female unless she provided proof that she'd undergone a sex change operation.

NAGS HEAD, N.C. A college-bound Illinois teen reported missing on a coastal vacation had hoped to join the military, according to relatives who were grieving Monday even though police hadn't confirmed a body found in a car trunk was hers.

ATLANTA U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday he has been in contact with the department's independent investigative arm about test cheating scandals in schools, including a widespread one in Atlanta.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. A Filipino servant testified Monday that she feared the United Arab Emirates naval officer who brought her to the United States where he withheld wages, took her passport and told her not to speak with outsiders while working for him in Rhode Island.

TULSA, Okla. Since an election was held three weeks ago for chief of one of the nation's largest American Indian tribes, the incumbent and challenger have each been declared the winner - twice.

Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven't read and using fake signatures more than eight months after big banks and mortgage companies promised to stop the illegal practices that led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures.

LOS ANGELES A man accused of breaching airport security when he used an expired boarding pass to get a free ride on a Los Angeles-bound flight from New York pleaded not guilty Monday to a stowaway charge.

JERUSALEM The Israeli parliament sanctioned an Arab lawmaker on Monday for taking part in an international flotilla that tried to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, expelling her from parliamentary activities for two weeks.

DENVER A Colorado woman accused of groping a female Transportation Security Administration agent in Phoenix is getting some support from people unhappy about airport security procedures.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. The 20-year-old son of former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is accused of driving under the influence and drug possession.

WASHINGTON Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko is urging his agency to decide within 90 days how to proceed with safety changes intended to improve the U.S. nuclear industry's response to catastrophic events such as the tsunami that crippled a nuclear plant in Japan.

CLEVELAND The prosecution rested its case Monday in the trial of a man charged with killing 11 women and dumping their remains around his house and yard, showing jurors a video of him telling police he could not identify the victims.

PHILADELPHIA Cardinal Justin Rigali is expected to step down Tuesday after eight tumultuous years leading the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

MADISON, Wis. More than half of emerging nonprofit news sites produce content with a clear ideological bent, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

HORIZON CITY, Texas With much of the nation in the grip of a broiling heat wave, few people are hit as hard as the poor. And few places are poorer than the ramshackle communities along the Texas-Mexico border.

SALT LAKE CITY Three college students were hospitalized in serious condition Monday after they were burned while dropping homemade gasoline bombs into one of Utah's thousands of abandoned mine shafts.

SAN DIEGO A veteran police detective and her 18-year-old daughter were stabbed to death Monday, and her son was arrested on suspicion of murder after he was found sitting next to the teenager's nude body on the sidewalk outside their home, authorities said.

SANTA ANA, Calif. U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez has married a retired Army colonel during a private ceremony in Southern California.

FERRISBURGH, Vt. Erik Andrus considers himself a beer and bread man, but he's had limited success growing high quality grains on his sometimes soggy swath of Vermont farmland. This spring, in an effort to turn a liability into an asset, he switched focus and began experimenting with rice.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. California's two largest public pension funds posted their highest investment returns since before the recession, with each reporting returns of more than 20 percent for the fiscal year ended June 30, the investment teams announced Monday.