US Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

CLARKSVILLE, Mo. (AP) , Those fighting floods in several communities along the Mississippi River were mostly successful Sunday despite the onslaught of water, but an ominous forecast and the growing accumulation of snow in the upper Midwest tempered any feelings of victory.

CAMPO, Calif. (AP) , Richard Gordon is one of the Border Patrol's best at spotting the smallest human traces in pursuit of people who enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico: dusty footprints, torn cobwebs, broken twigs, overturned pebbles.

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

Within hours of the Boston Marathon bombings, the controversial Westboro Baptist Church took to Twitter to celebrate the carnage. Now, they're planning to protest the funerals of those killed. "Westboro Baptist Church to picket funerals of those dead by Boston Bombs! GOD SENT THE BOMBS IN FURY OVER FAG MARRIAGE! #PraiseGod," the group tweeted at 5:20 p.m.

BOSTON (AP) , A defiant David Ortiz stood on the Fenway Park infield and told the crowd, "Stay Strong," bringing a rousing cheer from Bostonians weary from a week of bombings, stay-at-home orders and a manhunt that locked down the city for a day.

The woman wearing bib No. 19,255 was a flute instructor from Utah, listening to her son singing through her headphones as if the sound of his voice could somehow will her body the last few yards to the finish line. Just ahead of her was a pediatric nurse running her first marathon as a tribute to a teenage liver transplant patient.

A crowd of marijuana smokers expected to swell to 80,000 gathered Saturday in Denver to mark the counterculture holiday known as 4/20 on the first celebration since Colorado and Washington made pot legal for recreation use.

WEST, Texas (AP) , Town official: Some residents in West, Texas, can return home under curfew.

OXFORD, Miss. (AP) , Federal authorities have produced scant evidence linking a Mississippi man to the mailing of ricin-laced letters to the president and a senator, his attorney says. Christi...

Key Republicans are calling on the Obama administration to declare captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspect in the bombings at the Boston Marathon, an enemy combatant subject to the laws of war so intelligence officials can continue to interrogate him for as long as they deem necessary.

There were no sprinklers. No firewalls. No water deluge systems. Safety inspections were rare at the fertilizer company in West, Texas, that exploded and killed at least 14 people this week. This...

A number of the globe's most powerful countries "continued to repress or attack the means by which individuals can organize, assemble, or demand better performance from their rulers," according to the State Department's annual review of human rights worldwide released Friday.

Both Chechnya's Moscow-backed president and the Islamic extremists seeking to overthrow him have distanced themselves in blog postings from the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, claims analysts take seriously.

A massive manhunt for one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers shutdown one of the nation's largest cities Friday following violent gunfights with police that left a second suspected bomber and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer dead.

An unnamed Jordan source said the U.S. military agreed on Friday to the country's request to put Patriot missile batteries along the border with Syria. A London newspaper quoting the Jordan source said the United States was sending two Patriot missile batteries to the area, The Times of Israel reported.