BOSTON -- Boston College says it refused to allow a planned satellite speech by University of Illinois Professor William Ayers out of fear for students' safety. The move by BC officials followed a similar refusal to let the University of Illinois at Chicago education professor and former member of the 1960s radical anti-war group Weather Underground address students in person on the campus, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Administrators refused to allow both the Ayers visit ... [full story]

TUNKHANNOCK, Pa. -- A judge says three teenage girls in Tunkhannock, Pa., cannot be charged for appearing seminude in photos found on cell phones. U.S. District Judge James M. Munley Monday granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the Wyoming County District Attorney's Office from filing felony charges against the girls, The Times-Tribune newspaper in Scranton, Pa., reported. The girls were among about 20 teenagers threatened with child pornography charges after Tunkhannock Area ... [full story]

BALTIMORE -- In an unusual plea agreement, charges against a mother accused of starving her son will be dropped if the dead boy is resurrected, Maryland prosecutors say. Ria Ramkissoon, 22, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of child abuse resulting in death in exchange for testimony against four co-defendants, The Baltimore Sun reported. The plea agreement includes a "process of deprogramming" for Ramkissoon and a promise the charge against her will be dropped if her 2-year-old ... [full story]

CHICAGO -- Federal grand jurors investigating former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich questioned witnesses about his wife's real estate transactions, defense sources said. The Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday the investigation focused on the deals between Patti Blagojevich's former firm, River Realty, and those with political ties to Blagojevich, as well as with convicted businessman Tony Rezko. The deadline for a federal indictment against the ex-governor is April 7, but one could come as early as Thursday when ... [full story]

DALLAS -- A Dallas police officer says he regrets detaining Ryan Moats for a traffic violation while the NFL player's mother-in-law was dying. "If I were in that situation again, I would take them inside and let them be with their mother, which is where they needed to be," Officer Robert Powell, who has been placed on leave from the department, told The Dallas Morning News. Moats, who plays for the Houston Texans, told police he rolled ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- More than 8-in-10 Americans said they think Barack Obama will represent the country well in his first overseas trip as president, a CNN poll indicated. The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday also indicated 7-in-10 respondents said they thought leaders of other countries respect Obama, a difference from survey results concerning former President George W. Bush's standing in the world, when 49 percent said they believed foreign leaders respected Bush. "Except for the period following ... [full story]

CHICAGO -- A Chicago lawyer and former Playboy columnist says she is suing the company for more than $4.5 million in damages for alleged sexual harassment. Corrie Fetman, 45, a divorce lawyer who posed nude for Playboy and wrote the "Lawyer of Love" column, alleges she was harassed by Thomas Hagopian, an executive of Playboy Enterprises who since has left the company, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday. In a lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors say the business manager of the Islamic Center of Washington stole $430,000 from a high-profile U.S. mosque in a complex financial scam. After a D.C. Superior Court trial jury deadlocked last year on the charges against Iranian-born Farzad Darui, U.S. prosecutors are seeking to retry him in a case that has harmed the reputation of the center as a prominent symbol of Islam in the United States, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The key ... [full story]

NEW YORK -- Police say they want to know if two men found slain in New York were killed in the Long Island luxury condo owned by NFL linebacker Jonathan Vilma. Vilma, who plays for the New Orleans Saints, is trying to sell the condo and is not a suspect in the killings, The New York Post reported Tuesday. However, police want to talk to Vilma about who had access to the property. A resident of a ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- High-tech companies such as Amazon and Microsoft want U.S. government agencies to store data on their servers as a way to cut costs, industry analysts say. If they did so, they would join consumers who are using "cloud computing" to store documents and other data on off-site servers run by such popular Web sites as Google, Flickr and Facebook and accessed over the Internet, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. In a bid to tap government ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- Cost overruns for the U.S. Department of Defense's major weapons projects continued to soar last year, U.S. Government Accountability Office says. In a report released Monday, the congressional watchdog said that in 2008, cost overruns on the projects were 42 percent higher than initial estimates, compared with 27 percent over estimates in 2000, The Washington Post reported. The overruns totaled nearly $300 billion, while the average delay for programs such as new fighter jets lengthened ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- U.S. residents' favorable view of first lady Michelle Obama was at 76 percent, a 28-point upsurge since the summer, poll results released Tuesday indicate. A Washington Post-ABC News survey said the number of people who view Mrs. Obama negatively plummeted, with the biggest turnaround coming from Republicans who viewed her negatively last year, in part because of comments she made about feeling proud of her country for the first time. Just before the inauguration, ... [full story]

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles police are looking for a badly damaged car involved in a hit-and-run that killed one University of Southern California student and injured another. Adrianna Bachan, 18, died and Marcus Garfinkle, 19, was critically injured when a car ran a red light near the campus, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. Police were looking for a black sedan -- possibly a Lexus, a Honda Accord or a Toyota Corolla -- with a cracked ... [full story]