Afghanistan massacre suspect to be charged

WASHINGTON - Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder as well as assault and a string of other offenses in the massacre of Afghan villagers as they slept, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The charges against Bales include 17 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated assault as well as dereliction of duty and other violations of military law, the official said on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.

The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, who lives in Lake Tapps, Wash., will be charged with a shooting rampage in two villages near his southern Afghanistan military post in the early hours of March 11, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the victims' bodies.

The charges are to be read to Bales on Friday at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week. He faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it could be months before any public hearing.

Coroner releases autopsy findings for Houston death

LOS ANGELES - Whitney Houston was a chronic cocaine user who had the drug in her system when she drowned in a hotel bathtub, coroner's officials said Thursday after releasing autopsy findings that also noted heart disease contributed to her death.

The disclosure ended weeks of speculation about what killed the Grammy-winning singer on Feb. 11 on the eve of the Grammy Awards.

Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and her death was ruled accidental. Several bottles of prescription medications were found in her hotel room, but coroner's officials said there weren't excessive quantities.

Standoff in France ends with Islamic suspect shot

TOULOUSE, France - Inspired by radical Islam and trained in Afghanistan, the gunman methodically killed French schoolchildren, a rabbi and paratroopers and faced down hundreds of police for 32 hours. Then he leapt out a window as he rained down gunfire and was fatally shot in the head.

France will not be the same after Mohamed Merah, whose deeds and death Thursday could change how authorities track terrorists, determine whether French Muslims face new stigmas and even influence who becomes the next French president.

The top priority for investigators now is determining whether Merah, who claimed allegiance to al-Qaida, was the kind of lone-wolf terrorist that intelligence agencies find particularly hard to trace, or part of a network of homegrown militants operating quietly in French housing projects, unbeknownst to police.

U.S. Intelligence can keep data for up to five years

WASHINGTON - The U.S. intelligence community will now be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines.

Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there were no clear ties to terrorism.

Giving the NCTC expanded record-retention authority had been called for by members of Congress who said the intelligence community did not connect strands of intelligence held by multiple agencies leading up to the failed bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009.

Sharpton, rally demand arrest in fatal shooting

SANFORD, Fla. - One sentiment was clear among the thousands who rallied Thursday night for action in last month's fatal shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager: justice.

Civil rights leader Al Sharpton helped lead the charge, demanding the arrest of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's killing in Sanford.

"We cannot allow a precedent when a man can just kill one of us ... and then walk out with the murder weapon," Sharpton said, flanked by Martin's parents and a stage full of supporters. "We don't want good enough. We want George Zimmerman in court with handcuffs behind his back."

The rally came the same day that bitterly criticized Police Chief Bill Lee stepped down temporarily, he said to help quell the rising passions surrounding the case. Hours later, Gov. Rick Scott announced that the county prosecutor also had recused himself from the case and that a state attorney from Jacksonville would take over the investigation.

Sharpton attended the rally just hours after the death of his mother. "This is where she would want me to be," he said.

- The Associated Press