Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps will not face criminal charges in connection with a November party at which he was photographed using a bong, a South Carolina sheriff said Monday. "We do not believe we have enough evidence to prosecute anyone" who was at the party in Columbia, South Carolina, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told reporters, adding that authorities are ending their investigation into Phelps. "We had a photo, and we had him saying he was sorry for his ...

A one-of-a-kind bicycle belonging to U.S. cycling legend Lance Armstrong was stolen from a team truck in California just hours after he rode it Saturday on the first day of a nine-day race. Cancer survivor and seven-time Tour de France champion Armstrong is racing in the Amgen Tour of California this week as he attempts another comeback after retiring from the sport in 2005. Armstrong's first comeback came in 1998, two years after he was diagnosed with ...

Sexual exploitation and forced labor are the most common forms of human trafficking in the world, a new report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said. The "Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" is based on data from 155 countries and offers a global assessment of human trafficking and efforts to fight it. The most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, at 79 percent, the report said. The victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and ...

A six-page rant to Virgin Atlantic's Sir Richard Branson about a woeful in-flight meal attracted so much attention on the Internet that it was rumored to be a clever marketing stunt. The author was reported to be Oliver Beale, a 29 year old art director who works at a London advertising agency. Both he and Virgin have insisted the letter, described as possibly "the world's best passenger complaint," is authentic. Here's what Beale had to say after a flight ...

When Lynn Houston was 27, she met an affectionate young man during a business trip to Virginia. Although she lived in Arizona, the two began dating; they married six months later. But after she joined him in Virginia, he became distant and had angry flare-ups, Houston says. He barely resembled the man she'd married, but he did remind her of another man she knew well: her father. "They were both very emotionally unavailable and prone to outbursts of rage," says ...

Police arrested a man near the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday after he drove up to one of the building's barricades with a rifle in his vehicle and told officers that he had a delivery for President Obama, a Senate spokesman said. Sgt. Kimberly Schneider identified the man as Alfred Brock, 64, of Winnfield, Louisiana. She said Brock was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. Brock drove up to the north barricade at the Capitol late Tuesday ...

Federal judges tentatively ruled on Monday that California must reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prison system by up to 40 percent to stop a constitutional violation of prisoners' rights. "Overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons," the court concluded. California state officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately promised to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. "The governor and I strongly disagree ...