CHICAGO – Fear of getting sued leads an alarming number of doctors to practice “defensive medicine,” such as ordering unnecessary tests and avoiding risky procedures, a survey found. The practice has been around for decades, and is no secret to many patients. But the survey of 824 Pennsylvania doctors suggests …

HAMDEN, Conn. – A father apparently distraught over his daughter’s suspension from a softball team was arrested on a charge of beating her coach with an aluminum bat. Mark Picard (search), who teaches art at Notre Dame High School in West Haven, was freed on bond and a court appearance …

LIBERTY, Mo. – A school bus slammed into two vehicles at an intersection, killing two people in the cars and injuring 23 elementary students who were headed to class in the morning. Two children were taken to hospitals with life-threatening injuries after the Monday crash. Some of the children suffered …

NEW YORK – Stocks ended mixed Friday after profit-taking hit the Dow and a sunny outlook from Dell lifted the Nasdaq on a day that saw mixed messages on the economy vying for investors’ attention. The Dow Jones industrial average (search) edged lower 49.36 points, or 0.48 percent, to settle …

WASHINGTON – Democratic lawmakers said Thursday that they would not participate on a commission that will recommend how to trim Medicaid (search) by $10 billion over the next five years. Michael Leavitt (search), the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, announced last week the framework of the commission, …

See you weeknights in the No Spin Zone at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET! Tonight … “The O’Reilly Factor” is on… The ABC News magazine show “Primetime Live” unveiled their “American Idol” expose last night. Was the story really newsworthy or just “Idol” chatter? What did we learn? Was …

TORONTO – Nortel Networks Corp. (NT), one of the world’s largest telecom equipment suppliers, reported steeply lower fourth-quarter earnings on Monday and forecast only “modest” revenue growth for the first quarter. The company, which has been restating several years of results to correct accounting errors, filed the fourth-quarter results after …

WASHINGTON – The capture of a senior Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan (search) this week is a rare coup for “human intelligence,” or old-fashioned spycraft, and may yield details of how the terror network hoped to disrupt last year’s presidential elections. Offering a peek into how the arrest of Abu …

Policymakers at the Federal Reserve (search) noted “a discernable upcreep” in inflation, but didn’t believe they needed to raise short-term interest rates (search) more aggressively to keep prices in check, minutes from their May 3 meeting showed. “Participants voiced concerns about recent price trends,” minutes from the Federal Open Market …

The drugs that millions of Americans take to lower their cholesterol may also lower their risk of colon cancer, according to findings from an intriguing early study. Researchers reported that people who took cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for five years cut their colon cancer risk in half, even when they had …