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Between 2002 and 2009, homegrown Indonesian militants staged deadly attacks almost yearly. The story of one former terrorist-turned-chef — and his unrealized dreams of global jihad — help illustrate why terrorism hasn't flourished in the Muslim-majority country.

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Between 2002 and 2009, homegrown Indonesian militants staged deadly attacks almost yearly. The story of one former terrorist-turned-chef — and his unrealized dreams of global jihad — help illustrate why terrorism hasn't flourished in the Muslim-majority country.

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the looming automatic spending cuts will damage U.S. national security. But the warnings don't appear to be moving the needle with lawmakers or the American public.

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Economists dream big: open borders, visa auctions or preferential access for high-skilled workers.

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Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte is charged with drafting the House immigration bill. He is against a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants but says the "broken" system needs work. And he says President Obama "should calm down, back off and let the Congress do its work."

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Officials predict that cutbacks at the FAA could lead to takeoff delays and fewer flights. Unless Congress acts, across-the-board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect March 1.

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Secret menus aren't new, but more restaurants are trying them out in order to set themselves apart and increase sales. Panera Bread, for instance, has rolled out a new secret menu with low-carb, health-conscious options to appeal to a new group of customers.

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More than 60,000 people have died in Mexico's war on drugs over the past six years. But that statistic tells only part of the story. Human-rights groups say thousands more, as many as 25,000 people, have vanished — many at the hands of Mexico's security forces.

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When mother and calves or allied males were separated, they used specific whistles to call each other. Dolphins are the first animals — other than humans — to be known to do that.

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Canon law calls for a papal conclave 15 to 20 days after the papacy becomes vacant, but that rule takes into account a funeral. Benedict is retiring.

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Florida's expansion of Medicaid will provide health insurance coverage to more than a million people. Florida will also become the seventh state headed by a Republican to agree to take the federal offer to provide Medicaid to all state residents with incomes up to about $15,000 a year.

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3-D printing can be used to make food, guns and maybe human ears. Researchers say that using collagen to print out ear cartilage solves a lot of the problems in making new ears for people with birth defects or injuries.

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The spots can lead to eruptions of radiation on the sun called solar flares. This huge spot formed over the course of 48 hours.

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Palestinian Emad Burnat got a video camera to document his son's childhood. But he has spent the past several years filming the conflict between Palestinian residents of his village and Israelis who are building a separation barrier. His work is now up for an Oscar.

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Tomatoes grown on organic farms contained significantly higher levels of vitamin C, sugar and lycopene than their conventionally grown counterparts, a study finds. Turns out, organic farming techniques "stress out" the plants in ways that make them more nutrient dense.

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Alex Brown, a senior at Guilford High School in Connecticut, is taking two AP classes: statistics and chemistry.  

“They’re both really intense,” she says. “I don’t think people understand how much AP classes actually take out of us. It’s going to be really rough.” Then she laughs nervously.

More high school students than ever are taking Advanced Placement courses, the College Board announced. And, they are doing better on the exams. The average score rose to 2.83 from 2.80, out of a maximum of 5.

Yet despite all the hard work, students like Brown may not be able to place out of required college courses or even skip freshman year if they score well on the AP tests. Some prestigious colleges have stopped giving academic credit for AP tests scores.

Brown doesn’t. Columbia doesn’t, and most recently, Dartmouth said it won’t let AP students skip ahead.

“We want a Dartmouth education to take place at Dartmouth,” says school spokesman Justin Anderson.

Translation:  APs aren’t Dartmouth.  Will more schools follow suit?  David Conley, a professor at the University of Oregon and CEO of the Educational Policy Improvement Center, says: No.

“We’ve always seen a certain group of colleges not give much credit to AP. It’s not unusual and not new,” he says. “They’re highly selective and can get away with that.”

Conley says prestigious schools can afford to be picky about what credits to accept. But there are “more general admissions schools where they want students to bring AP credits and they do want to reward them for doing that.” In other words, AP credit is like bait for the best students.

Behind this question of college credit for AP tests is a deep-seated anxiety felt by educators that students aren’t prepared for college.

“Three out of four students who get to college come lacking in foundation and strong skills that a good college education requires,” says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Specifically, she says students lack skills in research, writing, and evidence-based analysis. Schneider says the general problem of college readiness “raises questions about whether the courses students took in high school, that might’ve been labeled AP or dual enrollment, were really providing students the preparation in writing and research that college itself will emphasize. Different institutions are making different judgments about that.”

Ken Bernstein, a retired teacher who writes on education, thinks more schools might join Dartmouth, Brown and Columbia on the AP question. Even though a third of high school students are taking AP tests, he says, “There aren’t that many kids prepared at a college level. Let’s be realistic.”

Trevor Packer, a Vice President at the College Board, the organization that runs the AP tests, points out that AP scores weren’t originally used as a replacement for college credit.

“The original use in 1956…was as a tool for placing students appropriately”, he says. That means determining whether a student should be in French II instead of French I, but not about placing out of French altogether.

Packer says the College Board is revamping the AP exams to make them more rigorous.  But there is no question, he adds, that APs are making students more prepared for college.

“The research does consistently show that students who participate in AP courses in high school and earned a score of 3 or better perform at a higher level than matched peers,” he says.

Even if some top schools aren’t giving college credit, AP tests look good on high school transcripts. So they may not let students get out of freshman year, but they’ll help them get into college in the first place.

Republicans delayed a vote on President Obama's defense nominee, saying they wanted more answers about the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last year. In recent months, Benghazi has become a sort of catchword. To Republicans, it symbolizes everything bad about the Obama administration.

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Going public is typically considered an achievement. But reverting to private ownership — as computer giant Dell plans to do — can have benefits, too, like enabling managers to focus on long-term strategies or conduct shake-ups in private. Still, withdrawing from the stock market also carries some risks.

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Through a lawyer Armstrong said he would be willing to cooperate in an international tribunal but not in "American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals."

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Essential benefit requirements apply mainly to individual and small group plans. The federal requirements also affect benefits provided to people newly eligible for Medicaid coverage. Now, for instance, we know that insurers won't be allowed to can't charge consumers a copay for a screening colonoscopy, even if a polyp is removed.

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