It's Friday night, and teenage girls are full of excitement as they rimp for a dance at the local Holiday Inn. But for this group of girls in Sioux Falls, S.D., the night's dream date is not a teenage boy.

"I'm going with my dad instead of a boyfriend," explains 15-year-old Angela Merkle.

She and her two sisters are about to be escorted by their father to what's called a Purity Ball.

The event shares all the hallmarks of a wedding: Vows are exchanged, a white cake is served and there is even a first dance. But at the beginning of the event instead of fathers giving away their daughters' hand, they're holding on tight.

The event's purpose is to celebrate father-daughter bonding, but the main focus of the evening is for the fathers and daughters to exchange pledges in an elaborate ceremony. Fathers vow to protect the girls' chastity until they marry, and the daughters promise to remain abstinent.

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap," will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7.

The original members of Spinal Tap will be there: guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). Rob Reiner, who both directed "This is Spinal Tap" and played the fake documentarian Marty DeBergi in the film, will also be in attendance.

A man who spent 25 years in prison for rape was exonerated Monday after a judge threw out his convictions because DNA evidence showed he couldn't have committed the attack.

Jerry Miller smiled and the courtroom erupted into cheers after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane G. Cannon read the ruling that cleared him of all charges.

Miller, 48, had been found guilty of rape, robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated battery even though he testified he was at home watching television at the time of the 1981 attack.

He was paroled in March 2006 and now works two jobs and lives with a family member in a Chicago suburb.

"I want to get on with my life, start a life, have a life," Miller said after the hearing. "I'm just thankful for this day."

In the United States, if you are seriously depressed, you can purchase anti-depressive drugs like Prozac, but only if you have a prescription from a doctor. Anti-depressants are enormously beneficial to millions of people but they are also potentially dangerous if used improperly. So you have to see a doctor and get an assessment before can go to a drug store and purchase one.

But in the United States, in places like Virginia, a seriously depressed or deranged person can walk into a gun store and buy a semi-automatic handgun and a box of ammunition. The only limitation in Virginia is you cannot buy more than one handgun a month and you must present two forms of identification. You don’t need permission from a doctor or counselor or anyone in the business of screening people to make sure they’re fit to have a gun.

We can debate the relative benefits and dangers of anti-depressants and semi-automatic handguns, but if 30,000 Americans were killed each year by anti-depressants, as they are by handguns, it seems likely that anti-depressants would be even more strictly regulated than they are now.

A number of organic farmers across the country say that Wal-Mart has backed off of aggressive plans to offer more organic foods. After placing large orders for organic apples and juices last year, the retailer is cutting back or stopping orders altogether. Wade Groetsch, president at the Florida juice producer Blue Lake Citrus Products, says he stopped shipping his organic orange-tangerine blend to Wal-Mart after a few months. "The sales there just weren't enough to justify our costs of packing and shipping," he says.

A year ago last March Wal-Mart grabbed headlines by announcing its organic push. Stephen Quinn, a top marketing executive, told investors at a Bear Stearns conference that the company would double the number of organic food items in its stores to 400 and offer them "at the Wal-Mart price." But now Karen Burk, a spokeswoman for the company, says that the majority of Wal-Mart stores are offering between 100 and 200 organic food items. She says the company does not have a target, at least not a public one, of stocking 400 organic items in the average store.

Beginning immediately, all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours — three months longer than the usual standard, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

It was the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush's revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.

I am so outraged by this whole criminalization of politics. It’s not good enough to defeat somebody politically. It’s not even good enough to vilify somebody publicly. They have to carpet bomb you with lies and made up scandals and false charges and indicting you on laws that don’t exist. … It’s the same thing as I say in my book, that the Nazis used. When you use the big lie in order to gain and maintain power, it is immoral and it is outrageous.

It’s the same process. It’s the same criminalization of politics. it’s the same oppression of people. It’s the same destroy people in order to gain power. It may be six million Jews. it may be indicting somebody on laws that don’t exist. But, it’s the same philosophy and it’s the same world view.

Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor who has undertaken diplomatic missions to countries at odds with the United States, began a rare visit to isolated North Korea Sunday to recover remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War.

The four-day trip, which has been endorsed by the Bush administration, comes days before a crucial deadline in a recent nuclear disarmament accord. But Richardson, a Democratic candidate for president, said he had no intention of negotiating nuclear matters.

When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant only caring about two issues,­ abortion and homosexuality?

A former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. worker said he was part of a large surveillance operation that included snooping on employees, stockholders and others, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday.

Security worker Bruce Gabbard was fired last month after 19 years with the company for intercepting a reporter's phone calls, the paper said.

Gabbard said he recorded the calls because he felt pressured to stop embarrassing leaks. But he said his spying activities were sanctioned by superiors.

Gabbard said that as part of the surveillance, the retailer infiltrated an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company's annual meeting last year and deployed monitoring systems to record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network.

Many of Gabbard's statements were confirmed by other former Wal-Mart employees, the paper said.