By Emily Lane JACKSON, Mississippi (Reuters) - Federal law enforcement agencies investigating ricin-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and other officials broadened their search for clues on Wednesday by targeting the former business of a Mississippi martial arts instructor. Members of an anti-terrorist response team from the Mississippi National Guard wearing hazmat suits had already searched the Tupelo home of Everett Dutschke on Tuesday, accompanied by agents from the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police, according to law enforcement sources and Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham. ...

By Ros Krasny WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Flight delays in the United States linked to the furlough of thousands of air traffic controllers have not been as bad as expected so far, the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told lawmakers the agency could not find the kind of "sizeable" non-payroll budget cuts that would have avoided furloughs and the resulting flight delays, but added that passenger safety is not at risk. ...

(Reuters) - Lawmakers in Rhode Island are working on a bill that would make it the latest state to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples with a vote scheduled in the state Senate on Wednesday. Same-sex marriage is legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, and besides Rhode Island, the issue is also under consideration in state legislatures in Minnesota, Illinois and Delaware. In January, the Rhode Island state House voted in favor of the bill, but the measure has less support in the Senate. Rhode Island is the last of New England's six states without a law allowing gay nuptials. ...

Videos on the Internet and an online jihadist magazine may have played a part in the Boston Marathon bombings suspects’ self-radicalization, according to reports. New accounts say the brothers learned how to build a bomb from the online magazine, Inspire, which gave instructions on how to make them with a pressure cooker. Pressure cooker bombs, [...]

By Jennifer Dobner SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - A Mormon bishop armed with a Samurai sword came to the defense of his neighbor on Tuesday in a Salt Lake City suburb by helping to chase away a man who had accosted the woman, police said. The 37-year-old suspect, Grant Eggertsen, later turned himself in to authorities and was booked into jail on suspicion of robbery, burglary, trespassing and stalking, said local police spokesman Lieutenant Justin Hoyal. ...

NEW YORK—The Time 100 gala took place steps away from Central Park, Lincoln Center and Times Square. But for hundreds of "influential" people in attendance at the black-tie event here celebrating the magazine's annual list, their thoughts were in Boston. “We’ve suffered loss and we’re grieving, but we’re not bending,” Vice President Joe Biden, one [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - District of Columbia voters easily approved a measure that gives the U.S. capital more budget autonomy, and they returned an incumbent to a city council seat made vacant in a financial scandal. The charter amendment on the budget was approved by 83 percent of voters in a Tuesday special election that drew a 10 percent turnout, the Board of Elections said that evening. The amendment is part of the 68-square-mile (177-square-km) district's argument that it needs more self-government. ...

By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When a bipartisan group of U.S. senators began writing legislation to overhaul the nation's immigration laws in January, many Republican leaders embraced the effort as a savvy strategy for fixing the party's tattered image with Hispanic voters. But since the bill was rolled out last week, a rift has emerged among conservatives that has played out in Senate hearings on Capitol Hill, on conservative talk shows and in social media such as Twitter and blogs. ...

(Reuters) - David Petraeus, who resigned his post as CIA director amid revelations of an extra-marital affair with his biographer, will join City University of New York as a visiting professor, the school said on Tuesday. His new appointment will begin in August at CUNY's Macaulay Honors College. Before joining the CIA, Petraeus was a four-star general who commanded U.S. forces during troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he is credited with helping to pull Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war. ...

By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An alleged al Qaeda-backed plot to derail a U.S. passenger train in Canada sought to exploit the vulnerabilities of railroads that have not gotten much attention from the American public. While the United States has sharply tightened security around airlines since the September 11, 2001, attacks, trains are far harder to police, with masses of passengers getting on and off and stops at many stations on a single line. Thousands of miles (km) of track, bridges and tunnels present a major challenge to monitor. ...

By Ronnie Cohen SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval on Tuesday defended his state against a report that a Las Vegas psychiatric hospital improperly sent hundreds of discharged patients by bus to California and other states, a practice known as patient dumping. The Republican governor acknowledged that the state-run Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital improperly discharged at least one mentally ill man but said a new discharge policy put in place in recent weeks would prevent future missteps. ...

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The name of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was listed on the U.S. government's highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists. But the list is so vast that this did not mean authorities automatically kept close tabs on him, sources close to the bombing investigation said on Tuesday. Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout early Friday, while his younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, was captured later that day. ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The civil trial over the death of Michael Jackson is set to get formally underway next week after jury selection was completed on Tuesday in the $40 billion case that pits the pop star's mother against concert promoters AEG Live. Six alternate jurors were chosen on Tuesday following the selection a day earlier of a jury of six men and six women for what is expected to be an emotional three-month trial. The conclusion of the month-long search for a jury set the stage for opening statements to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday. ...

By Laura Zuckerman SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Idaho officials on Tuesday dropped a requirement that transgender residents show proof of surgery to alter sex designation on their driver's licenses, bringing the state in line with policies in most other parts of the country. The change, which comes after a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, requires a court order or sworn statement from a doctor for those seeking to revise their gender on Idaho driver's licenses. It repeals a 2011 rule that required proof of surgical gender reassignment before licenses could be modified. ...

By Andrea Shalal-Esa WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The computer network on the U.S. Navy's newest class of coastal warships showed vulnerabilities in Navy cybersecurity tests, but the issues were not severe enough to prevent an eight-month deployment to Singapore, a Navy official said on Tuesday. A Navy team of computer hacking experts found some deficiencies when assigned to try to penetrate the network of the USS Freedom, the lead vessel in the $37 billion Littoral Combat Ship program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ...

By Jessica Dye (Reuters) - The U.S. government filed court documents Tuesday laying out its case against cyclist Lance Armstrong, who is accused of defrauding the Postal Service by taking millions of dollars in sponsorship money while flouting professional cycling rules by doping. The U.S. Department of Justice said in February it would join a whistleblower lawsuit brought in 2010 by Armstrong's former teammate, Floyd Landis, and on Tuesday filed its formal complaint. ...

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - Katherine Russell has tried to stay out of sight in the five days since her husband, one of the suspects in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing, was killed in a shootout with police. Russell, who wears the traditional Muslim hijab headdress, has made no public comment on what she may have seen or heard in the months before the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 264, in which her husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his brother are the only known suspects. ...

By Robbie Ward TUPELO, Mississippi (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors dropped charges on Tuesday against a Mississippi man accused of sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a state judge, according to court documents. The surprise decision came hours after Paul Kevin Curtis was released from a Mississippi jail on bond. Prosecutors said the "ongoing investigation has revealed new information," but provided no additional details, according to the court order dismissing the charges. Curtis told reporters he respected Obama. ...

By Suzi Parker LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Arkansas's Democratic governor signed into law on Tuesday a plan to extend health insurance to more of the state's low-income residents in a move that could offer a model for other states wrestling with opposition to the federal government's Medicaid expansion plan. The Arkansas law uses federal Medicaid funds to buy private insurance for about 250,000 state residents who earn up to 133 percent of the poverty line, or $15,415 per year. ...