NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Homicide charges were filed against the husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home where 34 elderly patients are believed to have drowned in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters, the first major criminal case related to the storm’s still rising death toll. For Louisiana alone, the toll surged by more than half Tuesday to 423,…

NASHVILLE (AP) — Of all the tasks required following a disaster, perhaps the most unpleasant — identifying the dead — falls to members of Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, special units of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Three Tennessee residents are working with a DMORT team on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, which was left in ruins…

NEW YORK (AP) — It sounds cruel, but let’s face it: Except for the occasional highlight like “Vanilla Sky” or “My Brave Face,” for the past 20 years, Paul McCartney’s catalogue has been pretty barren. So the former Beatle wanted to make his new solo album, “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” stand out. “I…

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Roberts emerged virtually unscathed from his first Senate Judiciary Committee interview, smoothly parrying questions on abortion, civil rights and the limits of presidential power. A second and possibly final day of questioning Wednesday gives Democrats another shot at probing Roberts’ mind before voting on his candidacy to become the nation’s youngest…

By JOHN GEROME / Associated Press Writer YEARWOOD NASHVILLE — A quick reality check for Trisha Yearwood’s old boyfriends back in Jasper County, Ga.: Her touching new single, “Georgia Rain”? It’s not about you. “There may be one or two who think it’s about them,” Yearwood laughed during a recent interview, “but it’s not. It’s…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and several other senators will head to the Gulf Coast Friday to tour damage done by Hurricane Katrina. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, will accompany Frist and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on the trip. They are…

NAGS HEAD, N.C. (AP) — Officials urged evacuation as a strengthened Ophelia edged toward North Carolina early Wednesday, while many people in the storm’s path shrugged at the threat of flooding rains and sustained high winds. Many residents and visitors to the exposed Outer Banks chain of barrier islands expressed doubt that Ophelia, which was…

NASHVILLE (AP) — A water district supervisor in Polk County pleaded guilty to discharging untreated sewage multiple times into a tributary of the Ocoee River, where whitewater rafting is a recreational attraction. A judge Monday sentenced Randy David Adcock, supervisor of the Coppertown Utilities Basin Water District in Turtletown, to two years probation and a…

PIGEON FORGE (AP) — A 17-year-old student was arrested Tuesday for bringing a loaded gun into Pigeon Forge High School. Several students told school officials they saw what they believed was a gun in the waist area of a male student’s clothes, according to a written statement from Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin. School…

NASHVILLE (AP) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has named the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Medicaid fraud investigation unit as the best in the nation. The award is based on number of fraud cases worked and the amount of money recovered from offenders. Last year, TBI’s Medicaid unit investigated and prosecuted 58…