AP - The drive to remake the nation's health care system suffered yet another setback in Congress on Thursday when a pivotal group of House Democrats demanded changes in legislation the leadership was drafting on a fast track.

AP - Thousands of protesters streamed down avenues of the capital Thursday, chanting "death to the dictator" and defying security forces who fired tear gas and charged with batons, witnesses said.

AP - South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford pushed for a packed schedule but wanted to keep an evening free on the tax-funded trip to Buenos Aires where he says his friendship with an Argentine woman turned physical, e-mails released Thursday show.

AP - Sen. John Ensign said Thursday his parents gave his mistress and her family nearly $100,000 "out of concern for the well being of longtime family friends during a difficult time," providing his first public acknowledgment that the woman received payments tied to the affair.

AP - Bombs killed nearly 60 people in Iraq on Thursday in the worst violence since U.S. combat troops withdrew from urban areas last week, and American forces released five Iranian officials suspected of aiding Shiite insurgents.

AP - Detectives investigating the death of Michael Jackson are looking at his prescription drug history and trying to talk with his numerous former doctors, the Los Angeles police chief said Thursday.

AP - Sen. Roland Burris, whose deep ties to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich seemed to doom his Senate tenure from the start, will not run for a full Senate term in 2010. The move increases Democrats' chances of holding on to the former Senate seat of President Barack Obama.

AP - Three gravediggers and a cemetery manager unearthed hundreds of corpses from a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, dumping some in a weeded area and double-stacking others in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots, authorities said Thursday. All four were charged with felonies.

AP - The hit Steve McNair took to his chest in September 2000 had the NFL quarterback ready to quit the game. It caused him so much pain he spent a bye weekend with the team's former chaplain in Houston. Then McNair, who struggled to breathe, watched his backup knocked out of the Titans' next game.