Albany, NY - New York gets a middling grade in a report assessing how well states do in preventing tooth decay in children. A report by the Pew Center on the States examined how well states provide children with dental sealants, which are clear plastic coatings applied molars to prevent tooth decay. The report graded all 50 states on their efforts to prevent tooth decay by improving access to...

Washington - Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's pick to become the next US defense secretary, has begun calling critics in the Senate in an attempt to clarify his views about how to deal with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas before his upcoming nomination hearing. The decorated Vietnam veteran's Republican credentials have done little to rally support with his party, which he publicly split with...

Washington - The first black U.S. president is coming under fire from some of his own Democratic Party for naming a stream of white men to key cabinet and leadership posts in his second administration. President Barack Obama on Thursday named Jack Lew as his Treasury secretary, the fourth white male he has named to the most prized cabinet posts in recent weeks. Lew's nomination follows...

New York - Fire officials say one person has died in a five-alarm fire in an apartment building in lower Manhattan. Fire officials say 168 firefighters were battling the blaze in the five-story building on Spring Street. The fire was reported just after 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Fire officials say two other people have suffered minor injuries. No word on the cause of the...

New York, NY - A Manhattan federal judge refused to block a New York City regulation requiring people who perform circumcisions and use their mouths to draw away blood from the wound on a baby's penis to first obtain written consent from the parents. U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald on Thursday refused to issue a preliminary injunction against the change to the city's health code...

Vienna - An Austrian court has convicted a leading neo-Nazi and two accomplices of glorifying Nazism through a website and sentenced them to prison terms of up to nine years. Gottfried Kuessel was given a nine-year prison sentence Thursday for being the founder of the "Alpen-Donau" website. He already spent time in prison in the 1990s on conviction of trying to form a successor to the Nazi...

Newtown, CT - The mother of one of the children killed in last month's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school said Thursday she is disappointed she hasn't had an opportunity to be heard in the discussion over gun control in Washington. Veronique Pozner's 6-year-old son, Noah, was among 20 first-graders killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. "As the mother of a six year...

New York - New York State sells more bootlegged cigarettes than any state, with 60.9 percent of the cigarettes sold secreted into its borders improperly, according to a report released on Thursday. Arizona and New Mexico also had high rates of smuggled cigarettes, at 54.4 percent and 53.0 percent, respectively, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., business-oriented tax research...

Washington - Inaugural revelers hoping to get close to President Barack Obama at a ball are going to have a lot of competition, with around 40,000 expected to pack the pair of parties. While Obama has cut the number of inauguration night balls lower than any president since Dwight Eisenhower was first sworn into office in 1953, the two celebrations the night of Jan. 21 will be elaborate. The...

Washington - Vice President Joe Biden butted heads with the powerful National Rifle Association on Thursday in his drive to reduce U.S. gun violence, drawing complaints from the lobby group that the White House is trying to limit constitutionally protected gun rights. Biden sat down for about an hour and a half of talks with an NRA representative and officials from other gun owners' groups...

Jerusalem - Shas courted trouble with another one of its election ads on Thursday, after removing its controversial commercial casting aspersions on the state conversion process. The family of an elderly woman appearing in Shas' advertisements complained that the party misrepresented her as childless and alone, even though the family takes care of her. In addition, the woman is not of sound...

Washington - President Barack Obama is joking that Jack Lew's nomination as treasury secretary nearly fell through because of Lew's loopy signature. Lew's nomination means a new signature will be added to the dollar bill. Lew's starts off with a soft "J'' but is followed by seven loopy scribbles, making it difficult to read. Obama said at the nomination ceremony that he never noticed the...

Washington - President Barack Obama nominated White House chief of staff Jack Lew to be treasury secretary Thursday, declaring his complete trust in an aide with three decades of Washington experience in economic policy and a penchant for shunning the limelight. "He is a low-key guy who prefers to surround himself with policy experts rather than television cameras," Obama said. Obama...

Washington - The pastor selected to deliver the benediction at President Barack Obama's inauguration withdrew from the ceremony on Thursday after being attacked for making anti-gay comments. Rev. Louie Giglio, an Atlanta minister, called homosexuality a sin in a mid-1990s sermon and warned against the gay rights movement, the liberal website ThinkProgress reported on Wednesday. "That...

Washington - Twenty months after U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, the United States told a court on Thursday it is not ready to release images taken after the al Qaeda leader's death because they still might lead to violence. A federal appeals court heard arguments in a lawsuit over whether the government must release the images under the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that...