Thursday News

• Dear Sen. Obama: Republican-leaning small-business owner is ready for change

  Presidential candidates talk a lot. But how much do they listen? For the next two months, Sentinel reporter Jim Stratton will be on the road, asking Florida's voters a simple question: "If you could talk to the presidential candidates, what would you tell them?"

• Cops: Trunk of Casey Anthony's car held a body

  Air-sample tests from Casey Anthony's abandoned car show that the trunk once held a decomposing human body, an Orange County sheriff's official said Wednesday.

• Dems unite for Obama

  Thousands of Democrats transformed their convention hall into a joyful, shouting celebration Wednesday as Barack Obama became the first black American to win a major party's presidential nomination.

• Floridians more likely to vote GOP with Romney on ticket than Crist

  Floridians would rather have Mitt Romney as Republican John McCain's vice-presidential pick over the raft of other talked-about options -- including their own first-term governor.

• Making his case for change

  A triumphant Barack Obama will claim his piece of American history tonight, after becoming the first African-American to win a major-party presidential nomination. As he celebrates that milestone, he must begin his more challenging courtship of the rest of America beyond the Democratic Party.

• Florida will make it easier for ex-convicts to vote

  Gov. Charlie Crist ordered Florida's parole agencies Wednesday to make more information -- including voter-registration forms -- available to ex-convicts to enable them to exercise their newly restored civil rights.

• Convention highlights

  Up next: On the road again

• Nervous New Orleans keeping eye on Gustav

  On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched Wednesday as another storm -- Gustav -- threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt.

• Nukes -- and chicken prices -- at stake as Georgia tension simmers

  Western leaders warned Russia on Wednesday to change course, hoping to keep a conflict that already threatens a key nuclear pact and could even raise U.S. chicken prices from blossoming into a new Cold War.

• To help McCain, GOP backs off push for drilling in Arctic refuge

  Republicans are putting John McCain's presidential prospects above their wish to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

• Bush administration ratchets up fight over congressional authority

  The Bush administration is raising the stakes in a court fight that could change the balance of power between the White House and Congress.

• Dead Sea Scrolls to be click away

  Scientists using American space technology have started a huge project to digitally photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known version of the Hebrew Bible, and post it on the Internet for all to see, Israeli authorities said Wednesday.

• Arctic Ocean ice hits 2nd-lowest level on record

  More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global-warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second-lowest level in about 30 years.

• Cops: Palestinian family hid disabled siblings for decades

  A Palestinian couple locked their disabled son and daughter in two stinking, urine-stained rooms for four decades out of fear they would ruin the marriage prospects of a healthy child if discovered, police said Wednesday.

• Swiss exonerate witch -- 225 years after execution

  A woman beheaded after she was accused of causing a girl to spit pins and convulse was exonerated Wednesday, more than 200 years after she became the last person executed as a witch in Europe.

• Highlights

  17 minutes

• Missing mom, truck found in ravine

  LENOIR, N.C.

• Sex offender to die for boy's brutal killing

  A longtime sex offender was sentenced to death Wednesday for the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a 9-year-old northern Idaho boy after jurors who watched video of the brutality deliberated three hours.

• Billionaire backs pot proposal

  BOSTON

• Marines could thin presence in west

  AL ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ

• HIV rate triples nation's average

  NEW YORK

• Exhausted Dalai Lama cancels trips

  DHARMSALA, INDIA