US Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

Former President Bill Clinton decided to officially join the Twitterverse Wednesday night, posting his own tweets a couple weeks after Comedy Central funny man Stephen Colbert set the account up for him. "Excited to join @ChelseaClinton and my good friend @StephenAtHome on Twitter!" @billclinton tweeted Wednesday.

A conservative group called out Coca-Cola on Wednesday for lobbying to keep soda and candy eligible for purchase with food stamps, asking why the company expects taxpayers to pay for poor Americans' unhealthy purchases under part of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

Editor of The New Yorker and former Washington Post reporter David Remnick suggested Monday night that the Senate gun control legislation would have made the Boston Marathon bombing "a hell of a lot more difficult to pull off."

The Obama administration on Wednesday sought to downplay remarks by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who had asserted early in the day that Tamerlan Tsarnaev , the older of the two brothers believed to have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings , must have drawn inspiration for the attack during a trip he made to Chechnya.

Thousands of well-wishers and mourners gathered Wednesday at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a memorial service for slain campus police officer Sean Collier. Mr. Collier, 27, was shot and killed in his patrol car last Thursday.

The early verdicts are in and the Boy Scouts of America's proposed new membership policy pleases no one. It's a "half-pitched tent," said one wag on the Scouts for Equality Facebook page. It's "a backhanded shove into the closet," opined another.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were headed to New York City to "party" in the hours after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured nearly 200, police said Wednesday. New York police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that information came from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, during hospital questioning, NBC reported.

Maine Sen. Angus King says the FBI is getting a bad rap on its investigation off the Boston bombings, saying it doesn't appear the agency mishandled an earlier inquiry of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russian officials warned he could be dangerous.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says it's "way too premature" to conclude the Boston Marathon bombing suspects acted without foreign help. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly has told investigators...

Boston's police commissioner called on Wednesday for more cameras, more surveillance and even drones in the aftermath of the April 15 marathon bombings that killed three and injured dozens. "Drones are a great idea," said police Commissioner Edward Davis in a Boston Herald report.

Crude prices rose Wednesday to near $90 a barrel as a string of positive corporate earnings and an improved U.S. housing report pointed to higher oil demand and drew investors back to the market. By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for June delivery was up 47 cents to $89.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) , The Rhode Island Senate is poised to vote on whether the state should join the rest of New England in allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. The Senate is expected to decide the contentious issue Wednesday. Dozens of supporters cheered Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-4 to forward the bill to the Senate floor.

A 10-year-old California boy is clinging to life after being shot five times while in the front yard at a family member's birthday party late Saturday night. Sacramento County police said Eric Raya was playing with another child in front of a North Highlands home when a car pulled up and shot him, News10 reports.

WASHINGTON (AP) , Federal regulators let Boeing write the safety conditions for the problematic battery system in its beleaguered 787 "Dreamliner," prescribe how to test it and carry out those tests itself, according to testimony and documents released at a hearing Tuesday.

NEW YORK (AP) , The trustee in the MF Global Holdings bankruptcy case has sued ex-CEO Jon Corzine and other former executives, alleging that they pushed the company into risky practices that ultimately led to its collapse.