A motorcyclist who was blinded by the sun as he crested a hill on SW Shumway Road in Powell Butte, Oregon early this morning was injured after he lost control and crashed, deputies reported. Shortly before 6:30 a.m. May 16, Crook County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of a single motorcycle crash on SW Shumway Road near SW Alfalfa Road, Detective Sergeant Travis Jurgens said. They found the motorcycle operator Darold Rose, 49, sitting ... [full story]

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The family of the evangelical leader of the Moral Majority, Rev. Jerry Falwell, announced his Virginia funeral plans for next week on Wednesday. In a statement issued in Lynchburg, Va., the family said public viewings would begin Thursday night at Liberty University, which Falwell founded. The 73-year-old's funeral service will be 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, which he also founded. Falwell collapsed in his office on Tuesday. His ... [full story]

SAN FRANCISCO - A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York ... [full story]

GALVESTON, Texas - A Galveston, Texas, grand jury convened Wednesday to hear charges against an Arkansas man accused of burning his infant daughter in a microwave. Prosecutors say Joshua Maudlin, 19, his wife, mother and 2-month-old daughter checked into a Galveston motel last Thursday. While the women were picking up take-out food, Maudlin called 911 to report his daughter had been burned. Police reports said he told police he had spilled hot water for coffee ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - News of nuclear advances in Iran prompted U.S. officials to call for new international sanctions against Tehran. "What is key here, and what is obvious to everyone is that Iran has continued to act in defiance of the wishes of the international community," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in The Washington Times. "We need to continue to apply pressure and increase pressure with an additional Security Council resolution if they don't ... [full story]

SACRAMENTO - California corrections officials, in response to a court challenge that has halted executions, unveiled a new protocol for administering lethal injections. Executions in California stopped 15 months ago on an appeal by inmate Michael Morales, who alleged the three-chemical intravenous process could result in "cruel and unusual" physical punishment. Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Hoch, and James Tilton, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, unveiled the proposal ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - The social networking Web site MySpace said it needs subpoenas from state attorneys general looking for sex offenders who belong to the site. MySpace said it was "doing everything short of breaking the law to ensure that the information about these predators gets to the proper authorities," The New York Times reported Wednesday. But an attorney general seeking the names of known sex offenders who are members of MySpace, which is popular with ... [full story]

ELIZABETH, N.J. - DNA evidence has been used to clear a learning-disabled New Jersey man of the deaths of two children 19 years after he was convicted of the killings. Byron Halsey, 46, was convicted in 1988 of the 1985 sexual abuse and slaying of his partner's son and daughter, aged 7 and 8 in Plainfield, N.J. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, the New York legal clinic that revived the case, told The ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft nearly resigned after the White House recertified an anti-terrorism program, another former official told Congress. Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he, Ashcroft and other officials were poised to resign when the White House went ahead with a counter-terrorism program that Ashcroft had refused to approve, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. Comey didn't say which program he was discussing, but ... [full story]

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - The first-born of the late civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Yolanda King, has died in Santa Monica, Calif., at the age of 51. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of the King family's closest friends and knew all of the King children since birth, told reporters he did not know the cause of her death Tuesday night. However, a spokesman for the King Center in Atlanta told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ... [full story]