AP Top World Headlines

AP Top Headlines At 12:14 a.m. EST

• Obama administration seeks online privacy rules
  NEW YORK (AP) -- The Obama administration is calling for stronger privacy protections for consumers as mobile gadgets, Internet services and other tools are able to do a better job of tracking what you do and where you go....
  
  
• Newark mayor: NYPD Muslim files 'deeply offensive'
  NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it....
  
  
• FACT CHECK: Errant claims on auto bailout, taxes
  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Twenty Republican presidential debates later, the head-scratching claims kept coming....
  
  
• Jury: 26 years total for former U.Va. lax player
  CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- A jury convicted a former University of Virginia lacrosse player Wednesday of second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend in a drunken, jealous rage, rejecting a first-degree murder verdict and a possible life sentence....
  
  
• Police charge 2 in death of Ala girl forced to run
  ATTALLA, Ala. (AP) -- 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....
  
  
• Fiery charges: Romney, Santorum assail each other
  MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Primed for a fight, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum traded fiery accusations about health care, spending earmarks and federal bailouts Wednesday night in the 20th and possibly final debate of the roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination....
  
  
• Shelling kills 2 Western journalists in Syria
  BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian gunners pounded an opposition stronghold where the last dispatches from a veteran American-born war correspondent chronicled the suffering of civilians caught in the relentless shelling. An intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist - two of 74 deaths reported Wednesday in Syria....
  
  
• Poll: Obama benefitting from improving economy
  WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period....
  
  
• Man's childhood comic collection fetches $3.5M
  DALLAS (AP) -- Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million....
  
  
• Cowell: 'X Factor' wants 2 female judges, 2 hosts
  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Simon Cowell is playing it coy about rumors that Fergie, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are being considered for "The X Factor."...