Huffington Wires | AP

DES MOINES, Iowa — Lawmakers under pressure from constituents in the months after the Casey Anthony trial have found it's not easy to toughen penalties for parents who don't immediately report missing children.

Seventeen states tried to pass "Caylee's Law" legislation – named after Anthony's 2-year-old daughter whose 2008 disappearance in Florida was not reported for a month. But many of these efforts have failed or stalled over concerns that proposed changes were too broad, and in some cases, not necessary.

WEATHERFORD, Texas — A Texas woman who was tortured while being held captive for nearly two weeks says her life is getting back to normal.

Lois Pearson says she's relieved that her former neighbor will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

NEWARK, N.J. — The mayor of New Jersey's largest city called for state authorities Wednesday to investigate a widespread spying operation conducted in Newark's Muslim neighborhoods by the New York Police Department that he characterized as "deeply offensive."

At about the same time Newark Mayor Cory Booker made his remarks, Gov. Chris Christie, once New Jersey's top federal law enforcement official, called the surveillance "disturbing" and said Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa was already looking into the reports.

HOUSTON — A former chief executive of construction giant KBR Inc. will learn his penalty for a federal bribery conviction related to the company's natural gas operations in Nigeria from 1995 to 2004.

Albert "Jack" Stanley returns to a Houston federal court Thursday for sentencing. Stanley pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiring in the decadelong scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials in return for engineering and construction contracts.

FORT MEADE, Md. — An Army private accused of spilling a mountain of U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks is being asked for the first time to enter a plea to the charges.

The arraignment of Pfc. Bradley Manning begins Thursday afternoon at Fort Meade near Baltimore.

MESA, Ariz. — A bitter and often personal debate behind them, Republicans Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are shoring up their campaigns in different ways ahead of a series of crucial presidential primaries.

Romney is paying the most attention to Michigan, his birthplace and the site of an unexpectedly tight race with Santorum, by attending a tea party rally Thursday night in an effort to get more conservative support. He has campaigned confidently in Arizona, so much so that he has not aired any television ads in the state.

WASHINGTON — Twenty Republican presidential debates later, the head-scratching claims kept coming.

Did Mitt Romney really cut taxes as Massachusetts governor, as he asserted yet again? Or did he raise them by hundreds of millions of dollars, as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum alleged? And how could Newt Gingrich have given the nation four balanced budgets when he was only in Congress for two of them?

LOS ANGELES — Federal wildlife investigators have broken up an international smuggling ring that trafficked in sawed-off rhinoceros horns for buyers in Vietnam and China who believe they cure cancer, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Three of the alleged traffickers caught in Southern California were 49-year-old Jimmy Kha, his 41-year-old girlfriend Mai Nguyen and Kha's 26-year-old son Felix. Each faces four counts of rhino horn trafficking in violation of federal laws protecting rare and endangered species.

KEENE, N.H. — New Hampshire is using a $10 million federal grant to help people with serious mental illnesses become more physically fit.

The average life span for someone with a serious mental illness is 25 years shorter than someone in the general population. Dr. Stephen Bartels at Dartmouth College says that gap has largely been overlooked, even though an estimated 10.4 million American adults fall into that category.

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — A hospital maintenance worker shot and wounded two of his supervisors Wednesday in a dispute over a disciplinary issue, police said.

The suspect, Victor Valcarcel Sr., 65, was arrested at his house within about an hour of the shooting, New Britain Police Chief William Gagliardi said. He was being held at the New Britain police department on charges of first-degree assault and criminal intent to commit murder. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Superior Court.

LOS ANGELES — Federal wildlife investigators say they've broken up an international smuggling ring that trafficked in sawed-off rhinoceros horns for buyers in Vietnam and China who believe they cure cancer.

Three of the alleged traffickers caught in Southern California were 49-year-old Jimmy Kha, his 41-year-old girlfriend Mai Nguyen and Kha's 26-year-old son Felix.

SEATTLE — A gun brought to an elementary school near Seattle in a third-grade boy's backpack discharged Wednesday, apparently by accident, and critically wounded an 8-year-old girl, police said.

The unidentified child who brought the gun to Armin Jahr Elementary in Bremerton, Wash., was booked into Kitsap County juvenile detention for investigation of unlawful possession of a gun, bringing a dangerous weapon to school and third-degree assault.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A Saudi Arabian teenager who authorities say swung his fist at a flight attendant, tried to hit passengers and mentioned Osama bin Laden during a flight to Houston was indicted Wednesday on charges of interfering with a plane crew.

A cousin who said he was flying with the teen said his relative suffers from schizophrenia, was flying home to see his sick mother and hasn't taken his medication for three weeks.

DENVER — Strong gusts Wednesday delayed flights arriving in Denver for part of the day, downed power lines and trees, and fueled two wildland fires in Boulder County.

Xcel Energy Inc. reported about 33,000 customers mostly in the west Denver area lost power, and it could be Friday or possibly the weekend before all power is restored.

CONCORD, New Hampshire — The trial of a woman charged with lying about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide is expected to transport jurors back nearly two decades to a roadblock outside a family owned hotel where prosecutors say the defendant decided who would live and who would die.

Prosecutors say 41-year-old Beatrice Munyenyezi lied on applications to enter the United States in 1995 and to obtain citizenship in 2003. They say she ordered the rapes and murders of Tutsis during the genocide that killed up to 800,000 people. She denies any involvement.

— Notable moments from the GOP presidential debate Wednesday night in Mesa, Ariz.

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WASHINGTON — A former District of Columbia police commander whose division provided a police escort to actor Charlie Sheen last April has given notice that he intends to file a whistleblower lawsuit against the city, saying he was demoted because he testified to the D.C. Council that such escorts for celebrities were commonplace.

Hilton Burton was demoted in August as commander of the special operations division and transferred to the medical services branch. In a whistleblower notice filed with the city and obtained by The Associated Press, Burton alleges the demotion was punishment for telling the council that there was nothing inappropriate or unusual about the escort provided to Sheen.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A 73-year-old gunman entangled in a love triangle shot and killed the treasurer of a remote-controlled airplane club who police said was having an affair with the estranged wife of the attacker.

Before turning the gun on himself Tuesday, Robert Gully chased the woman from a parking lot into the lobby of a building where the club was meeting.

ATTALLA, Ala. — At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide.

Her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment are in jail, facing murder charges Wednesday.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that the U.S. government cannot deny health benefits to the wife of a lesbian court employee by relying on the 1996 law that bars government recognition of same-sex unions.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said that because the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally discriminates against same-sex married couples, the government's refusal to furnish health insurance to Karen Golinski's wife is unjustified.

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario — A new company has been chosen to operate the tour boats that have ferried sightseers to the base of Niagara Falls from the Canadian shore for more than 100 years.

The Niagara Parks Commission on Wednesday said Hornblower Canada, Co. has been awarded the land lease for the tours that have been run by the Maid of the Mist Steamboat Co. since they began.

MESA, Ariz. — The Republican candidates say more must be done to combat illegal immigration.

The topic was a natural for Wednesday night's debate in Mesa, Ariz.

MESA, Ariz. — Republicans Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are sparring over Santorum's support for his former Senate colleague, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Romney and Santorum traded barbs Wednesday night in a nationally televised debate in Arizona less than a week before that state's primary.

EAGLE POINT, Ore. — Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana.

After drinking on the drive, and downing more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.

SAN DIEGO — Two members of a breakaway Mexican drug gang dissolved their victims' corpses in vats of acid in a gruesome display of Mexican cartel tactics played out on U.S. soil, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

The defendants held two kidnap victims in the master bedroom of a home in a middle-income San Diego home as ransom payments were negotiated, said Mark Amador, a San Diego County deputy district attorney. After being dragged downstairs and strangled to death in June 2007, the bodies were placed in two 55-gallon barrels of simmering fluids being heated by propane tanks.