The South Carolina Republican Party is backing Gov. Nikki Haley’s pressure on lawmakers to approve a bill capping lawsuit punitive damages and creating a new cabinet-level Department of Administration.In an e-mail sent to activists Tuesday morning, the party asked members to call their state senator and insist they pass the two bills in the legislative session’s final week."Our party is ...

A Salt Lake City woman has been charged with offering her 13-year-old daughter's virginity to a man for $10,000.The 32-year-old woman was charged Monday in Utah's 3rd District Court with two first-degree felony counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child and two second-degree felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.If convicted, the woman faces a lifetime prison sentence for each first-degre...

The South Carolina Senate voted to fast-track a bill to grant online retailer Amazon an exemption from collecting sales tax from state residents.The Senate voted 31-14 to suspend their rules and add the bill to the calendar. Typically the bill, which is Senate legislation, would have to return to committee because the House added an amendment that significantly changes the original bill.The Senate...

Several South Carolina senators say they think the Senate would approve a proposed deal to bring Amazon to the state, if they can just get the Senate to vote on it.Two Republican and two Democratic senators said Monday they're working to bring the proposal to a vote this week.The House voted 97-20 last week to approve the deal. The fight now moves to the Senate, which has been stuck in the budget ...

There was an unmistakable echo of the dot-com boom Thursday on Wall Street.LinkedIn, a trailblazer in the online networking craze, went public with a roaring stock offering. Within minutes, shares were trading at twice the value set by the company.Buyers crowded the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and financial news networks flashed LinkedIn's stock price urgently all day. By the closing bel...

CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reported on a U.S. Navy SEAL unit in southern Afghanistan for "60 Minutes" in 2004. She talks to Erica Hill about her unique experience inside a top secret world and shows an excerpt of her report.

Eight NATO service members and a contractor are dead after an Afghan military pilot opened fire on the foreign troops following a dispute at the airport in Kabul.Wednesday's shooting was the deadliest incident in which a member of the Afghan security forces turned against coalition forces.NATO did not disclose the nationalities of the troops killed.The worst incident before that occurred on April ...

The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don't want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered.The government now borrows about 42 cents of every dollar it spends. Imagine that one day soon, the borrowing slams u...

The 14th week of the legislative session:---SCHOOL CHOICE: A Senate committee on Wednesday defeated the latest proposal to help parents send their children to private school, but advocates say the bill is far from dead. The bill failed 6-10 in the Senate Education Committee without debate. The plan would give tax credits to parents who can afford to pay tuition upfront and would give scholarships ...

South Carolina voters will need to have photographic identification to vote under a deal reached by a House and Senate conference committee Wednesday.Three House members signed off on the deal while two of three senators did so. The House and Senate will decide whether to accept the compromise next week and send it to the governor's desk.Republicans say the bill is about voter integrity. Democrats...

South Carolina budget writers on Thursday turned to tax scofflaws to help patch the state's budget.They've been a repeated target, but the twist this time? The crackdown would aim to collect from out-of-state tax cheats and help generate money to enforce the state's illegal immigrant laws and revive a mothballed Statehouse security system.The Senate Finance Committee wrapped up work Thursday on a ...

Gov. Nikki Haley again rapped a sales tax collection exemption for online retailer Amazon but said she won’t block it if authorized by the Legislature.“You don’t change tax policy to bring in jobs on the backs of all businesses,” she said after an appearance this morning at the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce. “If they go and get it through (the General Ass...

An envoy of Moammar Gadhafi told Greece's prime minister Sunday that the Libyan leader was seeking a way out of his country's crisis two weeks after his government's attacks to put down a rebellion drew international airstrikes, Greek officials said.Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi, a former Libyan prime minister who has served as a Gadhafi envoy during the crisis, will travel next to Turkey and Malta in a sig...

Getting people to go green is a matter of education and economic incentives, according to a panel of U.S. and U.K. experts speaking in Columbia on Friday.U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and British energy minister Gregory Barker took part in the discussion at the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business.Barker, a leader in U.K. green initiatives that in...

A newly released email exchange between then-state Rep. Nikki Haley and Lexington Medical Center’s chief executive raises new questions about Haley’s job duties for the Lexington hospital and her role in seeking state approval for its heart surgery center.The email was contained in a second batch of hospital documents released this week in response to a public records request.In it, Hale...

Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa says Libya is declaring an immediate cease-fire and stopping all military operations.Friday's decision comes after the U.N. voted to authorized a no-fly zone and "all necessary measures" to protect the Libyan people, including airstrikes.Koussa says the cease-fire "will take the country back to safety" and ensure security for all Libyans.But he also criticized the au...

The oil price hovered near $105 a barrel Tuesday in Asia, giving back some of the previous day's gains but still near its highest level since late 2008 as battles raged between Libyan rebels and forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.Benchmark crude for April delivery was down 68 cents at $104.75 a barrel at late morning Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract...

When Jay Ricker, owner of the BP filling station off Interstate 70 in Plainfield, Ind., set the price of unleaded gasoline at $3.44 per gallon on Monday of last week, it was 4 cents higher than the Friday before.That alone might have been irritating to drivers paying the highest gas prices in more than two years. It was even more so because it happened on a day when the price of crude oil, which i...

The former chief financial officer of a Columbia-based medical company was sentenced Thursday to 6 1/2 years in a federal prison for embezzling nearly $3 million from his former employers.Jerry F. Wells also must repay the money he stole and will spend three years on supervised release after serving his time in prison. Wells's sentence is more severe than the one he agreed to in July 2009 when he ...

International pressure on Moammar Gadhafi to end his crackdown on opponents escalated Monday as his loyalists fought rebels holding a city near the capital and his warplanes bombed an ammunition depot in the east.The U.S. moved naval and air forces closer to Libya and said all options were open, including the use of warplanes to patrol the North African nation’s skies.France said it would f...

Libya's opposition movement launched a new push against Moammar Gadhafi on Friday, calling for mass demonstrations as it seeks to solidify its gains and loosen the longtime leader's grip on the capital.The government responded by tightening security in the capital, with tanks and checkpoints lining the airport road and security cordons around mosques where protesters might gather. Young armed men,...

A movie about the Hunley that was filmed and shown for the first time in Charleston in 1999 will be playing in the city once again.The Friends of the Hunley, the group that is working to preserve the historic Confederate submarine, shows the film at Charleston's Old Exchange building on Thursday.The Hunley was the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.The film stars Armand Assante and Dona...

Keep an eye on the mailbox - Britain's Prince William and bride-to-be Kate Middleton have sent out invites to their hotly anticipated royal wedding to around 1,900 guests.Military personnel and charity workers will mingle with European royalty, diplomats and the family and friends of the couple at the Westminster Abbey ceremony on April 29, St. James's Palace said Sunday.Queen Elizabeth II and the...

The control systems of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant have been penetrated by a computer worm unleashed last year, according to a foreign intelligence report that warns of a possible Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational.Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, also has raised the specter of the 1986 reactor explosion in Ukraine, but suggested last week that th...

Witnesses say they saw a woman throw herself from the 23rd story of a Buenos Aires hotel Monday and survive.The woman landed in a sitting position on the roof of a taxi whose driver got out just before the impact deeply dented his roof and shattered the windshield.The woman, a 30-year-old Argentine, was rushed to the nearby Hospital Argerich, where she was being operated on for injuries including ...

An ambulance carried Rep. Gabrielle Giffords along a route lined with well-wishers holding flags Friday, taking the congresswoman to a plane that will fly her to a Houston rehab hospital and her next step in recovery.It's the first time Giffords left the Tucson hospital since she was brought there with a gunshot wound to the head nearly two weeks ago, and people came to see her off with signs that...

Osama bin Laden demanded that France withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the release of French hostages being held by al-Qaida affiliates, according to an audio message broadcast on an Arabic news channel Friday."The exit of your hostages out of the hands of our brothers depends on the exit of your troops from Afghanistan," bin Laden said in the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera.Ext...

Police are looking for two men who are accused of conning three Forest Acres businesses out of about $100 each time.The con artists, described by police as Hispanic and speaking in broken English, confuse young store clerks while purchasing small items with $100 bills, said Forest Acres police Lt. Bryant Hinson.In the exchange over the purchases, the men walk out with the large bill they brought i...

A Charlotte private equity firm appears set to win a battle to buy the Hooters restaurant chain, known for its provocatively dressed waitresses, according to court documents.Chanticleer Holdings LLC will succeed in its last-minute bid to buy Hooters of America Inc., beating out competitor Wellspring Capital Management LLC, a company that spent nearly a year going through a formal bidding process. ...

Suicides among active-duty soldiers dropped in 2010 for the first time in five years, but the number of Army reservists and National Guard members who killed themselves nearly doubled, leaving Army officials scrambling to find ways to gain control of a suicide crisis that's defying the Pentagon's investment in prevention programs. "It's not a deployment problem, because over 50 percent of the ...