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The NCAA men's basketball tournament featured more surprises as first-round play continued Friday. Cornell, Missouri and Georgia Tech were all underdog winners.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ripped into the $657 million deal to compensate workers sickened by ash and dust from the collapsed World Trade Center. He said the figure was too low and workers did not have enough time to decide whether to accept the deal. "I will not preside over a settlement that is based on fear or ignorance," he said.

Dodgers Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully was released from a hospital Friday after a night of observation following a fall and a bumped on the head. Scully, 82, issued a statement thanking people for their thoughts and prayers and apologizing for any concerns he caused.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks has lived with a $100,000 bounty on his head since 2007 for a drawing he made depicting the Prophet Muhammad. But unlike the angry protest that erupted in 2005 after similar cartoons were published in Denmark, Swedes have remained largely silent on the controversy.

All of the 33 children that U.S. missionaries tried to take out of Haiti after the deadly January earthquake have been returned to their parents. But at least one mother says that she would consider giving up her children for a better life elsewhere than subject them to the desperate living conditions in Haiti.

The attorney for Casey Anthony, who is accused of killing her daughter, told a court Thursday that ABC News had paid Anthony $200,000 for exclusive rights to reproduce family photos and a video. Several journalists said ABC's failure to tell viewers of the payment for the pictures was an ethical lapse.

Democratic leaders scrambling for every last vote on health care have managed to win over the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, despite its members' previous objections to the bill. That support came as the White House pledged to push through a comprehensive immigration overhaul. But that's a long shot for this year.

President Obama held a big rally Friday, hoping to persuade the few wavering lawmakers he needs to vote "yes" on the overhaul bill. But protesters outside warned that the country can't afford to extend health insurance to 30 million more people.

In more flush economic times, voters in many states approved education mandates for things like smaller class sizes. But now that states are being forced to slash education budgets, those mandates are coming back to haunt them.

In the world of atoms, one thing can exist in two places at once. But on a larger scale, that rule usually breaks down. For the first time, scientists have put an object large enough to be seen with the naked eye into a state where it exhibits "weird" quantum behavior.

"Lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be treated as what they are — patriots," Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

Retired Gen. John Sheehan claimed that Dutch military leaders had called the presence of gay soldiers "part of the problem" that allowed Serb forces to overrun the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia in 1995 and kill 8,000 Muslims. He was speaking before a Senate committee in opposition to a proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the U.S. military.

In Fargo, N.D., and across the river in Moorhead, Minn., the Red is expected to reach nearly 20 feet above flood stage. Residents along the river were waiting to see if their makeshift sandbag levies would hold.

With Sunday's expected vote hanging on the support of just a handful of wavering Democrats, Obama delivered a closing argument for the goal to which he has devoted much of his presidency and on which its future could pivot.

In their push to pass a sweeping health care overhaul this weekend, House Democrats unveiled a package of legislative fixes to lure undecided or opposed members of their party to the "yes" category.