NEW YORK -- It requires enough concrete to build a sidewalk from New York to Miami and enough pipe to reach the top of the Empire State Building 140 times over. Workers carved out enough dirt from the ground to fill more than 100,000 dump trucks.

DENVER -- A Colorado man suspected of making racist threats against Barack Obama is scheduled to appear in federal court Thursday on a charge of methamphetamine possession.

DAYTON, Ohio -- A mother intentionally put her month-old daughter in a microwave oven and cooked the child to death after a fight with her boyfriend, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.

DETROIT -- Three lawyers are refusing to testify next week at a removal hearing for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, possibly harming his ability to defend himself, the mayor's attorney says.

LOS ANGELES -- Defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor are accused of human trafficking in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles.

NEW ORLEANS -- National Guard troops stand ready, batteries and water bottles are selling briskly, and one small-town mayor has spent a sleepless night worrying. The New Orleans area is skittishly watching as a storm marches across the Caribbean on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary.

MIAMI -- The National Hurricane Center says Tropical Storm Hanna has formed northeast of the northern Leeward Islands in the Atlantic.

DETROIT -- A former lawyer for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has filed a lawsuit against the mayor claiming he's owed about $80,000 in fees stemming from his work after Kilpatrick's text-message scandal surfaced.

BOISE, Idaho -- In the end, killer pedophile Joseph Edward Duncan III couldn't - or wouldn't - offer a reason why he should live.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A majority of California voters oppose a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage, though they are evenly split on the practice itself, according to a poll released Wednesday.

LAUREL, Miss. -- Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A federal jury on Wednesday began deliberating whether a former Marine squad leader committed manslaughter in Iraq, marking the first time in which civilians will decide whether the actions of a military service member during combat were criminal.

CLOVIS, N.M. -- Four jail inmates who authorities say helped eight others make a brazen escape were charged Wednesday, as officials kept up the search for the five prisoners who remain on the loose, including a convicted murderer.

WASHINGTON -- More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

SAN MARINO, Calif. -- Linda Sohus was a towering blonde fantasy buff who liked to paint unicorns. Her husband, Jonathan, was a diminutive computer programmer working at a NASA lab who shared his wife's passion for science fiction.

CHICAGO -- When a computer system that distributes flight plans nationwide came rolling to a halt this week because of a software glitch, so did airplanes on tarmacs from Orlando to Chicago. The ensuing delays drove home just how easily an apparently isolated problem can trigger network-wide disarray in the country's aging air traffic control system.

IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif. -- Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures.

DENVER -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton released her remaining convention delegates on Wednesday as Democrats were poised to formally deliver the party's presidential nomination to Barack Obama, making him the first black nominee of a major party.

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles officials have broken ground on a new pocket park at the site where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago.

BOSTON -- A measure that would decriminalize minor marijuana-possession cases is on the ballot in Massachusetts largely because of one man: billionaire financier and liberal activist George Soros.