In the news

Sen. Robert Byrd, 91, a West Virginia Democrat and the longest-serving senator in history, fell at his home in northern Virginia and was admitted to a Washington area hospital after blood tests showed his white blood-cell count was high, which raised the possibility of an infection, his office said in a statement.

Former President Bill Clinton

told ABC's Good Morning America that he doesn't think racial bias is a principal factor in resistance to President Barack Obama's plan for overhauling health care, adding that he believes "if he [Obama] were not an African-American, all of the people who were against him on health care would still be against him. They were against me, too."

Faron White, a former Decatur, Ala., police sergeant, has been sentenced in Huntsville to 16 months in prison, with credit for eight months already served, for stealing from his department, faking his abduction and fleeing to Las Vegas.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Republican governor, has signed legislation restoring funding to the state's Healthy Families program, a government-funded health insurance plan for children from low-income families, in a move that will preserve coverage for the 670,000 children whose coverage was to end next month.

James Auchincloss, 62, the half brother of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, pleaded innocent in an Oregon court to charges of possessing and duplicating child pornography and was freed without bail.

Alan Bersin, President Barack Obama's Southwest border czar, is the president's pick to be commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, a position that requires Senate confirmation, the White House announced.

Myles Weathers, a former Postal Service employee, pleaded guilty to stealing more than 30,000 Netflix DVDs that moved through the Springfield, Mass., post office.

Jim Yong Kim, a former director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS department, was inaugurated as president of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, becoming the first Asian-American president at an Ivy League school.

Marine Cpl. Cody Daniel Richardson, 22, a Carroll, N.H., man based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., has been charged with first-degree murder after authorities say he confessed during a 911 call to strangling his wife, Jessy.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/23/2009

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