Cell phone text messages. Loudspeakers on towers. Cameras that detect suspicious activity. Colleges and universities are considering these and other measures in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, seeking to improve how they get the word out about emergencies to thousands of students across sprawling campuses. >>

A preacher's wife testified at her murder trial Wednesday that her husband abused her physically and sexually, but she said the shotgun fired accidentally as she pointed it at him in their parsonage bedroom. >>

Higher-than-expected revenue has meant more state government spending this year on transportation, higher education and pensions, a new survey found, though it also picked up new worries over poorly performing sales taxes. >>

The mood in the basketball arena was defeated, funereal. Nikki Giovanni seemed an unlikely source of strength for a Virginia Tech campus reeling from the depravity of one of its own. >>

A young whale that swam aimlessly for two days in a small bay off an industrial section of Brooklyn beached itself at an oil depot dock Wednesday and died suddenly. Animal activists said the minke whale, about a year old, was too young to survive on its own. >>

A first-grader searching his jacket pocket for money found a bag of crack cocaine worth $8,900, authorities said Wednesday. >>

A jury on Wednesday spared the life of a woman who killed an acquaintance and hacked up her body with a chainsaw, sentencing her to life in prison without parole. >>

An FBI informant testified Wednesday that an influential former state senator at the center of a public corruption investigation threatened to kill him after growing suspicious of him. >>