national

In the spring of 2010, thousands of online customers clicked on the terms of service at Game-station.co.uk and unwittingly sold their souls.

TAMPA, Fla. - Busch Gardens is moving its animal hospital from offstage to center stage with up-close views.

"We designed it so people feel like they are right in the operating room with us," said Mike Burton, a 15-year vet of the theme park who toured the few zoos that pioneered the idea before Busch forked out $5 million to build its own.

The family spent months searching winding back roads, following his tracks.

"Last winter, I bet we spent clean up through March ... looking for it," Sharon Richter said.

The missing elk that last year wandered off the Richters' 121-acre farm in Aleppo, Pa., has turned up in West Virginia, and the two states' wildlife officials can't agree on whether it can go home.

Dishwashers are catching fire across the country, charring kitchens and filling homes with smoke, a Scripps Television Station Group investigation has found.

In interviews with families from Baltimore to San Diego, a dozen homeowners described how their malfunctioning appliances started billowing smoke or flames.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A federal judge ruled that FBI documents confirm the late Memphis photographer Ernest Withers served as an informant for the agency.

ABILENE, Texas - The first thing many friends mentioned about Matthew Phillips was his ever-present smile, often accompanied by a joke or a laugh.

Those were just two of the things he could deliver with enthusiasm from his wheelchair, where osteogenesis imperfect -- brittle bone disease -- kept him for most of his 16-year life and forced him to undergo surgeries for broken bones.

TILLERY, N.C. - When he was 20, Dalton Windley fetched a .22-caliber rifle from his car, aimed it from the hip and fired a single shot at Glenn Brame from about 150 yards, catching the young man in the neck.

EUCLID, Minn. - Paul Rutherford stared over his tilled fields of sugar beets, his gaze focused on hundreds of acres in the midst of harvest.

As heavy machinery plucked beets from the ground, they emerged a dull shade of tan. In Rutherford's eyes, they looked as good as gold.

SEATTLE - An intoxicated sailor who walked into the wrong apartment in Bremerton, Wash., urinated on the floor and then climbed into bed with an 80-year-old woman probably won't face criminal charges, according to the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office.

Indiana has its first new law of 2012's legislative session: A crackdown on human trafficking, just in time for Sunday's Super Bowl.

INDIANAPOLIS - Gov.