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DENVER (AP) — Bob and Barbara Schmidt dashed to their home on a dirt road in a heavily wooded area northeast of Colorado Springs as smoke from what would become the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history filled the air. After quickly grabbing a few items, they spotted their neighbors. "They were sitting on their porch, watching TV," said Bob Schmidt, adding that his wife urged their neighbors to immediately flee as smoke rolled in at 4:35 p.m. on June 11. "They said they'd leave when they needed to." The couple, Marc and Robin Herklotz, told the Schmidts they hadn't gotten automated calls from authorities ordering them to evacuate and that, while they were packing and monitoring the approaching blaze on TV, the

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's president said Wednesday he will not pursue peace talks with the Taliban unless the United States steps out of the negotiations, while also insisting the militant group stop its violent attacks on the ground after it claimed responsibility for a rocket attack that killed four Americans. Hamid Karzai's strong response and the Taliban attack deflated hopes for long-stalled talks aimed at ending nearly 12 years of war in Afghanistan, just a day after the United States and the Taliban said they would begin initial meetings in Qatar.

OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — FBI agents in suburban Detroit began a third day of digging Wednesday in the search for the remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared 38 years ago. Authorities have pursued multiple leads as to Hoffa's whereabouts since his disappearance in 1975. He was last seen outside an Oakland County restaurant where he was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain. The latest tip about Hoffa's remains came from reputed Mafia captain Tony Zerilli, who, through his lawyer, said Hoffa was buried beneath a concrete slab in a barn in Oakland Township, north of Detroit. The barn is gone, but FBI agents on Monday starting poring over the field where i

Firefighters have responded to a crash involving four vehicles on Interstate 44 Wednesday. The crash is near NW 23

LAWTON — A jury has recommended a death sentence for an Oklahoma man convicted in the 2009 killings of a Comanche County couple.

BERLIN (AP) — Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats. "This is not a situation in which we are rifling through ordinary emails" of huge numbers of citizens in the United States or elsewhere, the president declared during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He called it as a "circumscribed, narrow" surveillance program. "Lives have been saved," Obama said, adding that the program has been closely supervised by the courts to ensure that any encroachment of privacy is strictly limited.

Oklahoma City's tap water has come in first place in a national taste test competition.

SEATTLE (AP) — A Boeing 787 flying from Denver to Tokyo diverted to Seattle because of an oil filter issue, a United Airlines spokeswoman said. An airline maintenance team was inspecting the jet after Flight 139 landed normally Tuesday afternoon at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, United spokeswoman Mary Ryan said in an email statement. United just put its 787s back in the air May 20 after smoldering batteries on two 787s owned by other airlines prompted authorities to ground the planes in January. The Tokyo-bound jet's problem was "completely unrelated to any battery issues," Boeing spokesman Kate Bergman told The Seattle Times on Tuesday evening. "We are aware of the situation, and we're working with Unit

NEW YORK (AP) — Former investigators of the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island are calling on the National Transportation Safety Board to re-examine the case. The retired investigators claim that findings were "falsified." A documentary on the subject is coming out in July. The 1996 crash of the Paris-bound flight killed 230 people. Initial speculation ranged from maintenance problems to a bomb and even a meteorite. Some critics theorized that a Navy missile accidentally brought down the jetliner. The NTSB concluded that Flight 800 was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring. The agency said Wednesday its four-year probe remains one of its

GENEVA (AP) — The Syrian civil war contributed to pushing the numbers of refugees and those displaced by conflict within their own nation to an 18-year high of 45.2 million worldwide by the end of 2012, the U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday. Those are the highest numbers since 1994, when people fled genocide in Rwanda and bloodshed in former Yugoslavia. By the end of last year, the world had 15.4 million refugees, 937,000 asylum seekers and 28.8 million people who had been forced to flee within the borders of their own countries, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a report. Of those, 17 percent were new to their situations in 2012: 1.1 million new refugees and 6.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 41-year-old man is being held on $5 million bail after police say he castrated a paraplegic during a dispute at an assisted living facility in Philadelphia. Authorities say Edgar Bonilla is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and other counts in Monday night's attack inside the Inglis Apartments at Elmwood. Lt. John Walker says Bonilla was visiting a female friend at the facility and that she apparently had some sort of dispute with the victim. Walker says Bonilla was apparently trying to settle that dispute. The victim, Bonilla and the woman were all apparently friends. Bonilla is in custody and it couldn't immediately be determined if he had an attorney.

SEATTLE (AP) — A Boeing 787 flying from Denver to Tokyo diverted to Seattle because of an oil filter issue, a United Airlines spokeswoman said. An airline maintenance team was inspecting the jet after Flight 139 landed normally Tuesday afternoon at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, United spokeswoman Mary Ryan said in an email statement. United just put its 787s back in the air May 20 after smoldering batteries on two 787s owned by other airlines prompted authorities to ground the planes in January. The Tokyo-bound jet's problem was "completely unrelated to any battery issues," Boeing spokesman Kate Bergman told The Seattle Times on Tuesday evening. "We are aware of the situation, and we're working with Unit

A sunny day is ahead Wednesday in central Oklahoma. Winds will gust up to 21 mph

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael Hastings, the war correspondent whose unflinching reporting from Afghanistan led to the resignation of a top U.S. army general, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, according to his employer and family. Hastings, who was 33, was described by many of his colleagues as an unfailingly bright and hard-charging reporter who wrote stories that mattered. Most recently, he wrote about politics for the news website BuzzFeed, where the top editor said colleagues were devastated by the loss. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians," said Ben Smith, BuzzFee

Helen Kasony, 64, was last seen about 9:10 a.m. at the Walmart in Mena, Ark., on June 11, police said.

In Oklahoma, the National Council on Teacher Quality's Teacher Prep Review flagged East Central University's undergraduate elementary education program and Northeastern State University's undergraduate special education program with consumer alerts.

The state fire marshal's office can't account for a missing shotgun and has failed to meet its legal duty to annually inspect all Oklahoma correctional facilities, a state audit has revealed.

Judge orders Gaillardia Golf and Country Club owners not to sell or transfer club assets, and to hand over financial records to First Liberty Bank.

More than 70,000 insurance claims have been filed.

Rayvon Johnson, 22, of Oklahoma City, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 deaths of Lamar Shirley and Marcel Grigsby. A third victim was the intended target, prosecutors said.