TOMS RIVER, N.J. – A 24-year-old Toms River man has been charged with killing his 15-year-old cousin in the basement of her home Tuesday night, police said Wednesday. Garry Zigich Jr. is charged with murder in the strangulation death of Brittany Cena. Police responded to the home after receiving a …

NEW YORK – A New York man who was drunk when he fell into the path of a subway train and lost part of his leg has been awarded $2.3 million by a jury. Dustin Dibble, of Brooklyn, has admitted that he was so drunk he doesn’t even remember the …

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – James Franco, who won recent acclaim for playing both a goofy pot dealer and Harvey Milk’s lover, has been named Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year. Franco will receive the award at a roast Feb. 13 by the Hasty Pudding — the nation’s oldest undergraduate drama …

BAGHDAD – U.S. and Iraqi forces have begun a new military offensive in northern Iraq aimed at rooting out Al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents, American and Iraqi officials said Sunday. The offensive — dubbed Operation New Hope — has netted 84 suspects in the provincial capital of Mosul and …

ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. – West Feliciana Parish sheriff’s deputies have arrested a Louisiana State Penitentiary social worker on one count of aggravated rape involving an inmate. Sheriff’s Capt. Spence Dilworth said Thursday that 32-year-old Gary Dewayne Midkiff of Baton Rouge is accused of using threats of violence on Oct. 7 …

TOPEKA, Kan. – A state senator wants to know if the Kansas social services department had any contact with an 11-year-old boy who went missing a decade ago but whose disappearance wasn’t reported until this month. Adam Herrman disappeared from his home in Towanda in 1999. His disappearance came to …

SAN FRANCISCO – In the first major census of people living on the streets since the recession, thousands of volunteers across the country are fanning out in the thick of night this week to count the most desperate members of their communities. On the streets and in shelters, volunteers conducting …

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman, who won international acclaim as one of the few white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of racist rule, died Thursday. She was 91. Suzman, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, fought a long and lonely …

Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the high temperature is forecast to be six degrees on Wednesday, is going to sell out of the hot new Maxim Swimsuit Issue in about three hours. Because the photos in the February issue are guaranteed to raise temperatures through the roof. PHOTOS: Click for both covers …

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A prosecutor said Thursday that an auto mechanic was “a man bent on destruction” who ignited a wildfire that killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters in 2006. In opening statements for Raymond Lee Oyler’s murder trial, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin told jurors that Oyler …