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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA today moved up the next scheduled space shuttle mission by two days to give Endeavour more chances to lift off during what looks to be a busy month.

Mission managers wanted to make sure the shuttle's August Seventh launch does not conflict with the launches of a robotic geologist to Mars and a military communications satellite. Both of those launches are also planned for August.

Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center also have gotten Endeavour ready ahead of schedule for its first flight since late 2002. The shuttle underwent an intensive maintenance overhaul.

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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - A sheriff's deputy was acquitted of all charges Thursday in the videotaped shooting of an unarmed Iraq war veteran who was a passenger in a car that crashed after a high-speed police chase.

Former San Bernardino County Deputy Ivory J. Webb was found not guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm for opening fire on Elio Carrion, an Air Force senior airman, said Susan Mickey, a district attorney's spokeswoman.

Webb, 46, who has since left the department, had faced as many as 18 years in prison if convicted. He hugged his attorney and burst into tears after the verdict was read in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

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FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) -- There is no crack team of bounty hunters, no elite military unit whose job is to track them down and bring them in. Despite a rise in desertions from the Army as the Iraq war drags on into a fifth year, the U.S. military does almost nothing to find those who flee and rarely prosecutes those it gets its hands on. An Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures shows that 174 troops were court-martialed by the Army last year for desertion - a figure that amounts to...

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WASHINGTON --When President Bush's "grand bargain" on immigration fell apart, Jeff Sessions, the Republican senator from Alabama who is named after a pair of famous Confederates, was very proud.

"Hopefully our Senate has learned some things," Sessions crowed on the Senate floor on Thursday after his colleagues killed a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration law, bouncing on his toes and struggling to contain a grin.

For weeks, the son of a country-store owner from rural Alabama emerged as a front man on immigration, making it his mission to break the uneasy union that produced the bill. Usually a GOP role player, he derided the legislation as the "no illegal alien left behind" bill and its bipartisan sponsors as "masters of the universe."

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Pictured are (front, l-r) Rayanna McFarland, Olive Marie McFarland, Levi Price, West Union Mayor Don Kirker, (back, l-r) West Union Police Chief Roy Stricklett, Raydeena McFarland and Kevin McFarland.

Village honors 'Wreckerman'

Carleta Weyrich

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