USA: South Dakota officials have cancelled a public safety campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of jerking the steering wheel on icy roads, saying it’s too risqué.

A handyman with financial problems has shot dead his wife and three children before committing suicide, in what police in Maine say is one of the worst cases of domestic violence in state history.

The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was the subject of a massive manhunt and died after a gun battle with police, has been claimed.

Relatives of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said yesterday.

Worshippers came in their hundreds to pray at a church service honouring the victims of the Texas fertiliser plant blast.

A number of people have been killed in a massive explosion at a fertiliser plant near Waco, Texas.

Suspicion in the murders of a Texas district attorney and his wife has shifted to a violent white supremacist prison gang.

At least three men accused of making threats during or after watching the new Batman movie have been arrested in separate incidents in the US, underscoring filmgoers’ anxieties and heightened security in the wake of a deadly mass shooting at a Colorado cinema showing the film.

Police wore body armour, sported automatic weapons and were backed by an armoured personnel carrier for a raid on a West Texas polygamist retreat, photos and video show.

Teams searching for missing US adventurer Steve Fossett plan to comb a rugged area near Death Valley after receiving new information.

Recovery efforts were in full swing today as water-logged Texas dealt with the rainy remnants of Tropical Storm Erin, which authorities blamed for at least four deaths and said could be a prelude to

The gunman who took six girls hostage in a high school classroom in Bailey, Colorado, killing one of his captives and himself, began the takeover by ordering students to line up at the blackboard.

The high school in the tiny Colorado mountain town of Bailey was closed today.

A gunman took six girls hostage at the high school in the Colorado mountain town of Bailey, using them as human shields for hours before he shot and fatally wounded a girl and then killed himself as a SWAT team moved in, authorities said.

A C-5 cargo plane carrying 17 people crashed near Dover Air Force Base in the US state of Delaware early today, state officials said.

Firefighters weary from three days of battling blazes that have ravaged 840,000 acres and killed 11 people in the US state of Texas, braced for the threat of strong winds to return.

A three-year-old girl survived five days alone in a car in Arizona after an accident that killed her mother.

A bus carrying a children's church group has crashed on Texas' Interstate 20 about 50 miles east of Dallas, killing six children and injuring up to 35 others.

A divorced father has shot his three children to death outside his ex-wife's house in Texas then committed suicide.

Authorities in Texas say Mike Tyson properly registered as a sex offender with police in San Antonio when he trained there briefly last year.

Six people have been killed in the US after a passenger on a Greyhound bus cut the throat of the driver, causing the vehicle to crash.

A Texas judge today fined President Bush’s daughter Jenna more than £400 for violating under age drinking laws.