With his thumb dangling from his hand and blood squirting from his forearm, Cory McCarthy put his own life-threatening injury aside and responded to his fellow soldiers’ calls for help. It was 2003 in northern Iraq. An improvised explosive device had just sent shrapnel through his body, and the clock was ticking on how much time McCarthy had to stop the bleeding.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus has brought a sudden and unexpected end to the public career of a four-star general who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and was thought to be a potential candidate for president. Petraeus admitted to an extramarital affair in tendering his resignation, which President Barack Obama accepted Friday.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Two Penn State administrators facing new charges they hushed up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky are about to be arraigned in a central Pennsylvania district court. The Friday proceeding was scheduled for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, while the university's former president Graham Spanier isn't due in court until next week.

ATLANTA (AP) — Sports began on American college campuses as a way for students to blow off steam and be healthy. Over the last century and a half, athletics have transformed into something very different: a handful of elite athletes, showered with resources and coaching, competing against other schools while the rest of the student body cheers from the stands. On Thursday, Spelman College — a historically black women's college in Atlanta with a far-from-big-time NCAA athletics program — announced how it plans to return to the old model. The school said it would use the nearly $1 million that had been dedicated to its intercollegiate sports program, serving just 4 percent of students, for a campus-wide health and fitness program benefiting all 2,100.

ATLANTA (AP) — Sports began on American college campuses as a way for students to blow off steam and be healthy. Over the last century and a half, athletics have transformed into something very different: a handful of elite athletes, showered with resources and coaching, competing against other schools while the rest of the student body cheers from the stands. On Thursday, Spelman College — a historically black women's college in Atlanta with a far-from-big-time NCAA athletics program — announced how they plan to return to the old model. The school said it would use the nearly $1 million that had been dedicated to its intercollegiate sports program, serving just 4 percent of students, for a campus-wide health and fitness program benefiting all 2,100.

SEATTLE – As Washington’s prepaid tuition program opens its doors to new investors today, parents and lawmakers are taking a closer look at the program and trying to decide what is best for the state and its children. As they have every year since the recession began, lawmakers are talking again about changing the Guaranteed Education Program to improve its long-term viability and to give Washington’s universities more tuition flexibility.

NEW YORK (AP) — Evoking harrowing memories of Hurricane Katrina, 300 patients were evacuated floor by floor from a premier hospital that lost generator power at the height of superstorm Sandy. Rescuers and staff at New York University Langone Medical Center, some making 10 to 15 trips down darkened stairwells, began their mission Monday night, the youngest and sickest first, finishing about 15 hours later.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not. Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some Americans' more favorable views of blacks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gallaudet University is under fire from both proponents and opponents of gay marriage after placing an administrator on leave for signing a petition to put Maryland's gay-marriage law on the ballot. They say that regardless of Angela McCaskill's personal opinion on the matter, the chief diversity officer at the nation's leading university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students shouldn't be punished for exercising her First Amendment rights.

Spokane Valley’s University of Phoenix campus will close its doors on Oct. 31, but the parent company said students taking courses there will not see a disruption in their education. Apollo Group, which has operated more than 220 locations under the name University of Phoenix, said it’s shutting down 115 campus centers over the next few months.

Spokane Valley’s University of Phoenix campus will close its doors on Oct. 31, but the parent company said students taking courses there will not see a disruption in their education.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Violent crimes unexpectedly jumped 18 percent last year, the first rise in nearly 20 years, and property crimes rose for first time in a decade. But academic experts said the new government data fall short of signaling a reversal of the long decline in crime. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported Wednesday that the increase in the number of violent crimes was the result of an upward swing in simple assaults, which rose 22 percent, from 4 million in 2010 to 5 million last year. The incidence of rape, sexual assault and robbery remained largely unchanged, as did serious violent crime involving weapons or injury.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Praised by colleagues as smart, friendly and passionate about the law, Teresa Wagner was a leading candidate when two jobs came open to teach writing at the University of Iowa law school. An alumnus, she was already working part-time at its writing center and received positive reviews from students and a key committee. But after she interviewed with the faculty in 2007, one job went to someone without teaching experience and the other wasn't filled. She was passed over for other jobs in the coming years. She now says she was blackballed because of her legal work against abortion rights and will take her complaint to a jury this week in a case that is being closely watched in higher education because of longstanding allegations of political bias at left-leaning law schools.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A closely divided Supreme Court. Four justices in their 70s. Presidential candidates with dramatically different views of the ideal high court nominee. And yet, until late in Thursday's debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, hardly a word about the court had passed the candidates' lips. When the presidential candidates debated a week earlier, the Supreme Court was not mentioned even once.

MIAMI (AP) — Workers inched closer Thursday afternoon to pulling a fourth likely casualty from the site of a parking garage collapse as a search for answers continued over what reduced a routine construction project to piles of twisted steel and crumbled concrete. Family members of a still-missing worker huddled near the site, a day after the collapse at Miami Dade College, waiting for a crane to remove large debris and potentially remove a body from an area search dogs had identified. Some still held out hope for a miracle, but authorities said they didn't expect to find anyone else alive.

MIAMI (AP) — A section of a parking garage under construction at a Miami-Dade College campus collapsed Wednesday and a fire official said some workers were trapped in the rubble. Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue Lt. Arnold Piedrahita told WSVN-TV that some workers could be heard calling for help inside the rubble shortly after the multistory garage caved in. It was not clear how many were trapped.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a University of Texas program that considers race in some college admissions. The case could produce new limits on affirmative action at universities, or roll it back entirely. Abigail Fisher, the white Texan who sued the university, arrived at the high court Wednesday morning to hear the argument.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concludes. The findings were eagerly anticipated and come as a bitterly contested Obama administration policy is poised to offer similar coverage. The project tracked more than 9,000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured. They were given their choice of a range of contraceptive methods at no cost — from birth control pills to goof-proof options like the IUD or a matchstick-sized implant.