WASHINGTON – The national intelligence director (search) has hired several deputies and about a dozen of the 500 new employees he’ll need to coordinate the 15 agencies that make up the spy community, senior intelligence officials said Friday. One of John Negroponte’s (search) first moves was to set up an …

WASHINGTON – People scurrying to meet tonight’s tax deadline might consider this: It’s taking you and your fellow Americans 6.6 billion hours to do all that paperwork. The basic tax return — the Form 1040 filed by most people every year — accounts for 1.6 billion hours. The Internal Revenue …

DENVER – Travelers spent the night sleeping in airport terminals and hunkered down at truck stops and churches after a howling blizzard grounded airplanes, shut down highways and snapped tree limbs. Almost a foot of snow fell in Denver on Sunday and 2 feet fell in Greenland, about 20 miles …

CHICAGO – Lutheran bishops could allow gay and lesbian clergy in committed relationships to become pastors of congregations under a proposal advanced Monday by a council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (search). Church policy currently bans gay and lesbian clergy (search) who are involved with partners but allows …

DALLAS – Landing a commercial plane at Dallas’ Love Field is no longer allowed for Southwest Airlines pilots Mickey Oksner and Bert Yetman. Both were forced to retire for one reason — they reached 60 years of age. “It has never been fair. There are a lot of pilots in …

TRENTON, N.J. – An alarming number of American girls, some as young as 9, are using bodybuilding steroids (search) — not necessarily to get an edge on the playing field, but to get the toned, sculpted look of models and movie stars, experts say. Girls are getting their hands on …

This is a partial transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” April 7, 2005, that has been edited for clarity. Watch “Hannity & Colmes” weeknights at 9 p.m. ET! SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Terri Schiavo’s (search) family lost their long battle to keep Terri alive. But the battle with her husband, Michael Schiavo, …

NEW YORK – Knocked down by cancer, Sheryl Crow is back to rock ‘n’ rolling. The 44-year-old singer made her first public performance Tuesday after undergoing breast cancer surgery in February and subsequent radiation treatment. Crow was hired to sing three songs at a sales presentation to advertisers by My …

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq‘s new prime minister promised Sunday to use “maximum force” if necessary to end the brutal insurgent and sectarian violence wracking the country, while a homicide bomber killed more than a dozen people at a restaurant in downtown Baghdad. Although he focused on the need to end …

WASHINGTON WASHINGTON – Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports. Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming …