WASHINGTON (AP)– The U.S. needs major changes to its financial system so consumers are better protected, banks fortified and the economy safeguarded from sliding into another Depression, President Barack Obama said Saturday.

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. -- Two bank robbers whose lives ended in a deadly shootout on St. Patrick's Day were college students from the upscale Nashville suburb of Brentwood whom friends described on a Facebook tribute page as creative and funny.

NEW YORK -- It's the financial equivalent of a high medal count at the Olympics or a seat on the U.N. Security Council -- a triple-A credit rating, the seal of approval that lets investors know a country's bonds are safe.

WASHINGTON – Thousands are protesting in the nation's capital on the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, carrying signs reading "Indict Bush Now" and flag-draped cardboard coffins.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court ruled Friday that Anna Nicole Smith's estate will get none of the more than $300 million the late Playboy model claimed a Texas billionaire to whom she was briefly married meant to leave her after he died.

WASHINGTON -- One by one, House Democratic fence-sitters began choosing sides Friday, and the long, turbulent struggle over landmark health care legislation tilted unmistakably in President Barack Obama's direction.

Alan Zibel, AP Real Estate Writer

HONG KONG (AP)– Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she would "many times over liberate" Iraq again, but she regretted the Bush administration failed to work closer with Iraqis to rebuild the war-torn country.

WASHINGTON – High-income families would be hit with a tax increase on wages and a new levy on investments under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul bill.

LOS ANGELES -- Fess Parker, a baby-boomer idol in the 1950s who launched a craze for coonskin caps as television's Davy Crockett, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 85.

SEATTLE – School districts have imposed all sorts of drastic cuts to save money during the down economy, canceling field trips and making parents pay for everything from tissues to sports transportation.

HEMET, Calif. – Police in this picturesque city in rural Riverside County have been on edge in recent weeks. Someone is trying to kill them.

WASHINGTON -- Historic health care change in the balance, Democrats plowed fresh billions into insurance subsidies for consumers on Thursday and added a $250 rebate for seniors facing high prescription drugs, last-minute sweeteners to sweeping $940 billion legislation headed for a climactic weekend vote.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has said he wants to focus laser-like on the public's top concern: jobs. But the ongoing effort to remake the nation's health care system keeps getting in the way.

WASHINGTON -- Freshman Rep. Steve Driehaus is getting it from all sides on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

WASHINGTON – Slowly but steadily, support is building behind President Barack Obama's health care legislation in the House, the result of intense lobbying and politically targeted changes aimed at reassuring waverers and winning over critics.

WASHINGTON – From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

PORTLAND, Ore. – The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years.

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP)—Defending champion Rafael Nadal defeated Tomas Berdych 6-4, 7-6 (4) Thursday night to reach the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open in his first tournament since returning from a six-week injury layoff.

WASHINGTON – House Democrats are on track for a Sunday vote on sweeping health care legislation that will expand coverage to millions of uninsured while also reducing the federal deficit, leaders said Thursday.

WASHINGTON – Goodnight, John-Boy: Driven partly by job losses, more multigenerational families are choosing to live together as "boomerang kids" flock home and people help care for grandchildren or aging parents.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday urged Congress not to scale back the Fed's regulatory authority over banks. He said the Fed needs the information it gleans from its bank oversight to set interest rates and gauge the health of the banking system.

WASHINGTON -- The $75 million heist at a pharmaceutical warehouse in Connecticut this week was just the most audacious example of a growing phenomenon: Thieves are stealing large quantities of prescription drugs for resale on the black market.

DALLAS – A man fired from a Texas auto dealership used an Internet service to remotely disable ignitions and set off car horns of more than 100 vehicles sold at his old workplace, police said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The government is announcing a recall of some 1.2 million high chairs, saying they pose a fall hazard to children.

WASHINGTON – The growing front in the war on terrorism may be no farther than Main Street. The terror cases that have emerged in the past week have one common characteristic: The suspects are all Americans.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea executed a former senior official last week as punishment for the country's botched currency reform, a news report said Thursday.

HARTFORD, Conn. – In a Hollywood-style heist, thieves cut a hole in the roof of a warehouse, rappelled inside and scored one of the biggest hauls of its kind — not diamonds, gold bullion or Old World art, but about $75 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's sweeping health care legislation won precious support from a longtime liberal holdout in the House on Wednesday and from a retired Catholic bishop and nuns representing dozens of religious orders -- gaining fresh traction ahead of a climactic weekend vote.

WASHINGTON – Banks weren't the only ones giving big bonuses in the boom years before the worst financial crisis in generations. The government also was handing out millions of dollars to bank regulators, rewarding "superior" work even as an avalanche of risky mortgages helped create the meltdown.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday took to the Fox News Channel, derided by his White House as a wing of the Republican Party, to sell his embattled health care overhaul in an interview punctuated with interruptions from the host and chiding from the guest.

HONOLULU – Birthers beware: Hawaii may start ignoring your repeated requests for proof that President Barack Obama was born here.

DUBLIN – Much of the world is turning green Wednesday for St. Patrick's Day, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness.

WASHINGTON – Companies that hire unemployed workers get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill headed for likely Senate passage Wednesday.

JERUSALEM -- Hundreds of Palestinians in east Jerusalem set tires and garbage bins ablaze Tuesday and hurled rocks at Israeli riot police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. The heaviest clashes in months broke out as an American envoy abruptly canceled a visit, deepening a U.S.-Israeli diplomatic feud.

LOS ANGELES -- The record-breaking deal in which Michael Jackson's estate will get up to $250 million in the next seven years probably isn't a huge gamble for the company that will pay the money out, Sony Music Entertainment.

WASHINGTON – Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve on Tuesday repeated its pledge to hold interest rates at record lows to foster the economic recovery and ease high unemployment.

LAGOS, Nigeria – Attackers killed 12 people Wednesday morning in a small Christian village in central Nigeria, officials said, cutting out most of the victims' tongues in the latest violence in a region where religious fighting already has killed hundreds this year.

FORT JACKSON, S.C. -- New soldiers are grunting through the kind of stretches and twists found in "ab blaster" classes at suburban gyms as the Army revamps its basic training regimen for the first time in three decades.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Thieves scaled a wall at a pharmaceutical warehouse over the weekend, cut a hole in the roof and rappelled inside to steal about $70 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs, authorities said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON -- With time and tempers short, everyone's playing hardball in the drive to pass -- or stop -- President Barack Obama's massive health care legislation by the weekend.

ISLAMABAD – A Pakistani court charged five young Americans on Wednesday with planning terrorist attacks in the South Asian country and conspiring to wage war against nations allied with Pakistan, their defense lawyer said.

WASHINGTON – Democratic congressional leaders showed signs of progress Monday in winning anti-abortion Democrats whose votes are pivotal to President Barack Obama's fiercely contested remake of the health care system.

WASHINGTON-- A new Democratic Senate bill to tame the financial markets would give the government new powers to break up firms that threaten the economy, force the industry to pay for its failures and create an independent consumer watchdog within the Federal Reserve.

WASHINGTON – The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

SAN DIEGO – Toyota Motor Corp. was quiet last week when James Sikes told reporters how the gas pedal got stuck on his 2008 Prius, leading him on a wild ride on a Southern California freeway.

WASHINGTON – Debate is heating up within the Federal Reserve over how and when to signal that the days of record-low interest rates are numbered.

NEW YORK – New HIV infections are increasing among homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes who don't seek help because of laws that criminalize these practices, the head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday.

WASHINGTON – In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.