US Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

Parents of a New York student are outraged after finding their daughter's homework that instructed her to formulate an argument against dropping the atomic bomb during World War II. "Both of our grandfathers were in World War II and this worksheet makes it seem as if they were the bad guys," the girl's father, Bob Fisher, told Fox News' Todd Starnes.

WASHINGTON (AP) , Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the powerful Senate Finance chairman who steered President Barack Obama's health care overhaul into law but broke with his party on gun control, said Tuesday he will not run for re-election.

U.S. investigators have gone to the war-battered Russian North Caucasus to interview the family of the Chechen-American brothers accused of being behind the Boston Marathon bombing. A U.S. Embassy official in Moscow told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that a team flew from Moscow Tuesday to Dagestan, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus area.

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. (AP) , Police say a man killed his live-in girlfriend at an apartment complex south of Seattle then fatally shot three men, including one who had phoned 911 to report hearing gunfire. Arriving officers found a chaotic scene in Federal Way on Sunday night. Authorities say officers twice shot at the suspect in a stairway and in a parking lot.

NEW YORK (AP) , It was a tough start to the week for many air travelers. Flight delays piled up all along the East Coast Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers were forced to take an unpaid day off because of federal budget cuts.

As the White House moves ever so slowly toward a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, some environmental groups used Monday , Earth Day , to remind the president that approval of the massive project would carry real consequences.

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced new legislation Monday that would raise the minimum age limit from 18 to 21 to purchase tobacco products in the city. "With this legislation, we'll be targeting the age group at which the overwhelming majority of smokers start," Ms. Quinn said at a city council meeting, joined by Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.

The only reason the carjacking victim in the hunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn't killed was that he wasn't an American, several media outlets have reported. The victim made those statements to police, the Wall Street Journal reported.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday the Boston bombing suspect will not be tried as an enemy combatant, throwing cold water on a heated partisan debate over how to handle his interrogation and prosecution. But he will be charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The FBI did not know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older Boston Marathon bombing suspect who was killed following a firefight last week, took a six-month trip to Russia because his name was misspelled, Sen. Lindsey Graham said.

The two brothers suspected in bombing the Boston Marathon were not permitted to own handguns in the area they lived, authorities said Sunday. In the confrontation with police early Friday on the streets of a Boston suburb, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were armed with handguns and exchanged gunfire with officers.

WEST, Texas (AP) , On the first Sunday after a fertilizer plant explosion leveled part of this tiny Texas town, the Rev. John Crowder stood atop a long flatbed overlooking a hayfield and spoke to his congregation. Mr. Crowder's First Baptist Church in West remains blocked off as investigators work on the scene of Wednesday's blast, which killed at least 14 people and injured 200.

BOSTON (AP) , Four glowing white pillar candles illuminated photographs of the people killed in bombing-connected violence in the Boston area last week as the city sought comfort in religious services on the first Sunday after the blasts plunged the community into days of chaos.

BOSTON (AP) , In the tight rows of chairs stretched across the Commonwealth Ballroom, the nervousness , already dialed high by two bombs, three deaths and more than 72 hours without answers , ratcheted even higher. The minutes ticked by as investigators stepped out to delay the news conference once, then again. Finally, at 5:10 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) , Disappointment. Disgust. Grossly unfair. That's how some families who lost loved ones in December's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school view the Senate's defeat earlier this week of the most far-reaching gun control legislation in two decades, as they pledged to keep fighting for measures to prevent gun violence.