The anemic economy has left millions struggling to get ahead. Student debt is making it even harder for many of them, as they delay purchases of things like homes and cars.    

A Durango area couple is giving up their fight to keep a 13-foot escape route for their cats outside their Colorado apartment.

Martha Spence and her husband built the catwalk from a window to a nearby tree to allow their two cats to go outside from their second-floor unit whenever they wanted. The Durango Herald (http://bit.ly/YKl7Jb ) reported that they agreed to take it down Thursday at the request of the development's homeowners association.

The couple had planned to appeal the board's request, but Spence said her husband wasn't able to take off work to pursue it.

Neighbors objected to the look of the catwalk and also worried children would try to use it. In addition, the association says its regulations bar pets from roaming free in the development.

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Information from: Durango Herald, http://www.durangoherald.com

Claims nearly $40 billion in savings in next decade.

A Philadelphia jury is back at work deliberating murder and abortion law charges involving a veteran doctor.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran a busy corner medical clinic for 30 years, until an FBI raid shut it down in 2010.

The 72-year-old Gosnell is charged with killing babies after they were born alive during unorthodox, late-term abortions. He is also charged in the overdose death of a patient. Gosnell is also charged with performing illegal, third-term abortions and failing to counsel women.

The defense says Gosnell provided care to the needy and helped desperate women get abortions.

The jury heard nearly two months of graphic testimony about conditions at the Philadelphia clinic. Several employees have pleaded guilty to murder charges.

The jury has been weighing the approximately 260 counts for nine days.

Why do so many donors ask that buildings and professorships be named after them? Judeo-Christian tradition cautions against such self-aggrandizing.    

Boston Globe reports on elder suspect's remains.

The best of last night's late night television.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly using forfeiture laws to seize cash and assets from suspected criminals and also some people with little connection to crime.

The 30-man police force in Bal Harbour, Fla., recently came under fire from the Justice Department for how it used millions of dollars in forfeiture proceeds from drug investigations. The town has had to return some $1.2 million and may have to repay more.

Critics say police focus increasingly on seizing assets because they get to keep the money. Some state legislatures are looking at new laws to give people more rights in such cases, particularly when they aren't charged with a crime.

The Justice Department's forfeiture program has grown $297.5 million in payouts in 2006 to almost $454 million in 2012.

In its 35th year, the Texas Star Party drew more than 500 amateur astronomers from across the United States and Canada to gaze together into the vast open skies.    

Two defendants who pleaded guilty to plotting to hire a hit man to behead federal informants from a domestic terrorism trial are set to be sentenced.

Shkumbin Sherifi and Nevine Aly Elshiekh are scheduled to appear before a judge in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, N.C., at 2 p.m. Friday.

Sherifi and Elshiekh, a former special education teacher, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit murder for hire. Prosecutors offered them plea deals, agreeing to drop eight other counts in exchange for testimony against Sherifi's older brother, Hysen Sherifi.

The elder Sherifi was one of six Raleigh Muslims convicted last year of being part of a homegrown terrorist plot to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., and targets overseas. He faces life in prison.

Regulators used sharp words to accuse JPMorgan Chase of manipulating energy markets, in language similar to that which buffeted energy giant Enron.

"We're not going to have a world where the Sierra Club and Exxon sing 'Kumbaya' together," says Michael Levi, author of "The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity and the Battle for America's Future." But both sides will benefit by finding ways to work together.

Ruben Navarrette says amendments from the left and right could kill the best hope for change in years

Electric vehicles use the same roads, the same bridges and the same infrastructure as the rest of us. But because they don't burn gasoline, they're immune from paying taxes at the pump to fund that infrastructure. That's going to change.

We are using the Internet wrong. Smartphones turn people into horrible listeners. And cat videos aren't as riveting as we think they are.

When the Social Security Administration released its annual list of the most popular names on Thursday, all the usual winners were there: Jacob and Sophia are tops. Again.

DEVELOPING: The body of alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried at a private cemetery in Virginia, sources told the Boston Globe. 

The Ohio attorney general says preliminary tests confirmed that alleged kidnapper Ariel Castro is the father of a 6-year-old girl rescued from his house with three women this week.

Attorney General Mike DeWine's office confirmed Castro's paternity in a news release Friday. DeWine says a sample of Castro's DNA was taken Thursday and forensic scientists worked through the night on the case.

The girl is the daughter of Amanda Berry, who authorities say was held for about a decade in Castro's house in Cleveland along with Gina Dejesus and Michelle Knight.

Meanwhile the FBI says it did not recover human remains in its search of the house. 

FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson says investigators have for now concluded their search at the house where the women were found earlier this week. 

Anderson said Friday that agents took more than 200 items from the house, though she wouldn't discuss what was found. 

Prosecutors say they may seek the death penalty against Castro. Police say he impregnated one of his captives at least five times and made her miscarry by starving and beating her. 

Castro is being held on $8 million bond.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

"We got a black president [who] can't even go talk to [Kim Jong Un]," the former NBA star says.