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The number of English-language sites sympathetic to al-Qaida has risen from about 30 seven years ago to more than 200 recently ... In contrast, Arabic-language radical sites have dropped to around 50, down from 1,000 seven years ago ... ~~ DONNA ABU-NASR, LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writers RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Increasing numbers of English-language Web sites are spreading al-Qaida's message to Muslims in the West. They translate writings and sermons once largely out of reach of English readers and often feature charismatic ...

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MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer ATLANTA (AP) — Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to the medication Tamiflu, health officials said Friday. The cases reported at Duke University Medical Center over six weeks make up the biggest cluster seen so far in the U.S. Tamiflu — made by Switzerland's Roche Group — is one of two flu medicines that help against swine flu, and health officials have been closely watching ...

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David and Rhonda Hill were married for 25 years. Though they divorced, David said he still loved her. He said the couple split because Rhonda Hill gambled too much and that's why it was so tough to learn she died when her tour bus rolled on the way home from a casino. ... More from WCCO-TV Associated Press story about accident: Minnesota tour bus crashes returning from Iowa casino; 2 fatalities, 21 injured From another article about Rhonda Hill Rhonda Rae Lien was born ...

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An 18-year-old is in police custody after he warmed up a bottle for a crying baby inside the house he was allegedly robbing. Indianapolis police arrested Robert Coleman at Arlington High School on Tuesday after receiving a tip from a television viewer saw surveillance video on a newscast. Detectives say two suspects forced their way into a home on Friday morning and began ransacking the house. Police say that when a baby started crying, one of them warmed a ...

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MERCER, Pa. (AP) - A western Pennsylvania woman has been ordered to stand trial on charges she passed a drug-filled balloon to a state prison inmate while kissing him. State police say guards at the State Correctional Institution-Mercer became suspicious when inmate Otis McKinzie appeared to swallow something after a prolonged kiss with a visitor on Oct. 19. When McKinzie wouldn't tell guards what he swallowed, they put him in a cell where they could monitor his bathroom visits and found a ...

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CHRIS JENKINS AP Sports Writer GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - Aaron Kampman says the Green Bay training staff won't need to keep a sharp eye on him when he returns to the field for Sunday's game against the San Francisco 49ers. If he learned anything after playing through a concussion, it's that a cautious approach is the best one to head injuries. "The great thing about the medical staff here is they're always going to err on the side of making sure the player ...

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MICHAEL MAROT AP Sports Writer INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - When Dallas Clark looks at the evolution of tight ends, he thinks of John Mackey. The Hall of Famer made it chic for the big guys to catch passes and run down field when it was more popular for them to be blockers or outlet receivers. Now, four decades later, Clark is carving out his own niche in a very different NFL. Tight ends are now expected to catch more passes than throw blocks, and like Mackey, ...

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Tammy Eggum of Hayward, who was driving in the other direction at the time of the crash, told the Austin Daily Herald that the bus briefly went airborne before landing on its side.  "It was like the movie 'Speed.'" ~~ JEFF BAENEN Associated Press Writer MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A tour bus driver suffered a ruptured aneurysm before a crash on a southern Minnesota interstate that killed two people and injured 21 others, the bus company's owner said Thursday. Driver Ed Erickson suffered the aneurysm in ...

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DURANGO, Colo. (AP) - A person in a chicken costume ruffled the feathers of Durango's city council as its members discussed rules for backyard fowl. At a council meeting Tuesday, someone in a chicken costume quietly entered the council chambers just as the mayor was discussing a recently-passed backyard hen ordinance. The costumed chicken took a few turns, flapped its arms, then took a seat in the nearly empty gallery. Several minutes later, the big bird left - without identifying itself - after ...

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JEFF BAENEN Associated Press Writer AUSTIN, Minn. (AP) - A tour bus returning from an Iowa casino ran off a southern Minnesota interstate and rolled over in a ditch Wednesday, killing two people and injuring 21, authorities said. The bus, operated by Strain Bus Line Motorcoach Tours in Rochester, was eastbound on Interstate 90 just west of Austin about 3:20 p.m. when it crossed into the westbound lanes and flipped over, Department of Public Safety spokesman Andy Skoogman said. Passenger Ardell Swenson, 71, of ...

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An overly zealous attempt to cover an odor with a spray air freshener Tuesday in a teachers restroom set off a fire alarm at Burlington High School, firefighters suspect. At the sounding of the alarm, students evacuated the school and were forced to wait outside in rainy 45-degree weather. ... More from The Hawk Eye

Amazon.com now offers full searchability and a free preview for select pages of the new book.  Follow this link and search for iowa or cedar rapids. It looks like Palin wrote about the Cedar Rapids  rally on pages 248 to 250. Only p. 250 is viewable online.

Des Moines Register/Associated Press, 11/18: Iowa labor company sued for underpayment DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The U.S. Department of Labor says a Texas labor company and its owner broke minimum wage laws when they allegedly paid mentally disabled workers $65 a month to work in an Iowa meatpacking plant. The civil suit filed in U.S. District Court says Henry's Turkey Service and its owner, Kenneth Henry, collected the wages earned by at least 32 men and in exchange offered them lodging ...

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TAMARAC, Fla. (AP) - Authorities in Florida are searching for an alleged bank robber with "notably bad breath" who asked a teller to fill an orange Halloween bag with cash. The Broward County sheriff's office says the man wore sunglasses when he held up the TD Bank branch in South Florida on Monday morning. The man told a teller to fill the bag with cash and motioned toward his waistband. The teller didn't see a gun during the heist. Authorities believe the man ...

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HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) - Authorities say they have arrested five people who allegedly tried to rob a bank in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. The FBI says that five men went into a Wells Fargo bank on Friday and presented a false federal search warrant to the bank manager. The agency says the search warrant demanded all money in the bank's vault and that when the bank manager refused to comply, he was handcuffed and threatened. Henderson police arrested the five ...

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TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio jeweler says thieves who smashed their way into his store and got away with rings are in for a surprise when they try to sell them. Henry Triplett of Henry's Jewelers in Toledo says what appeared to be thousands of dollars in gold rings in his display cases were actually rings made of brass and worth barely 25 cents apiece. They were dealers' samples in the style of genuine gold rings that Triplett had safely locked ...

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TAMMY WEBBER, Associated Press Writer CHICAGO (AP) — The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday. The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has ...

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A 27-year-old Anchorage man has been convicted of robbing his mother at gunpoint because she didn't give him money to help pay a $430 parking ticket. The Anchorage district attorney said Friday that Cheng Saelee was also convicted of illegally contacting his mother from jail and trying to get her to drop the charges. Prosecutor Gustaf Olson says Saelee was arrested in November 2008 after he became angry during an argument with his parents, got a handgun from ...

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt have tied the knot. The 42-year-old "Office Space" star and 35-year-old "Rachel Getting Married" actress married Nov. 2 in San Francisco, according to Livingston's spokeswoman, Carri McClure. Livingston and DeWitt starred together as crisis negotiation partners in Fox's short-lived drama "Standoff." Livingston also appeared in "The Time Traveler's Wife" and the ABC series "Defying Gravity" earlier this year. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

(Scott) DeMuth and (Carrie) Feldman also are mentioned in a search warrant related to 2008 Republican National Committee convention protesters in Minneapolis ... Feldman, she said, was featured in a video promoting protest efforts in advance of the convention. The video can be found at rnc08report.org/archive/403.shtml. DeMuth was not involved in the video, but did escort an elder during a march on the first day of the convention, he said. ... More from Quad-City Times That video and the entire RNC08Report site ...

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ATHENS, Tenn. (AP) - When Ricky Butler went to sleep on a rural, East Tennessee roadside, he didn't have to worry about comfort but apparently he was feeling insecure. McMinn County deputies found the 31-year-old Decatur man sleeping on his back in a roadside ditch, with a loaded rifle on his chest and an almost empty jar of moonshine in the bib of his overalls. Butler told deputies who woke him up Sunday that he didn't know where he was. He also ...

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FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Two University of Winnipeg students canoeing their way to New Orleans have been forced to change their plans. Nick Turnbull and Murray Jowett stopped in Fargo in early October as they traveled down the Red River from Winnipeg before continuing on to the Mississippi River. Then they ran into trouble. Jim Turnbull, Nick's father, told Fargo's KFGO radio that the pair had to be rescued from an island in Muscatine, Iowa, when their canoe was swamped by high ...

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CHRIS JENKINS AP Sports Writer GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - Linebacker Aaron Kampman does not blame the Green Bay Packers' coaches and medical staff for him playing most of Sunday's game with a head injury. Kampman took a blow to his head on the fourth play of Green Bay's loss at Tampa Bay, but played into the fourth quarter before he told coaches he wasn't OK and was taken out of the game. "They didn't know what was going on," Kampman said Wednesday. "They ...

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One of the suspects, David Mohler, has worked for Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, for 27 years and was arrested on its Independence campus. BILL DRAPER Associated Press Writer LEXINGTON, Mo. (AP) - Authorities on Wednesday searched a rural property in western Missouri for bodies and buried glass jars containing notes written more than 15 years ago by children who may have documented sexual abuse by five members of their own family. Lafayette County Sheriff Kerrick Alumbaugh pleaded for the public's help, saying investigators ...

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Without their national championship hopes and their starting quarterback, Iowa now limps into Ohio Stadium not the proud rebels looking to crash the BCS, but a desperate and disappointed band clinging to a distant Rose Bowl bid. ... More from U Weekly (Ohio State University)