CHICAGO – A strip club on the northwest side of Chicago has received a neighborhood award for its efforts to improve the area. Albany Park Neighbors decided this month to give one of six “Block Star Business” awards to the Admiral Theatre. The group’s website says the award is meant …

SAN FRANCISCO – Feeling the sting of rejection? Itching to get even with an ex? The San Francisco Zoo is offering the burned and spurned masses the chance to “adopt” a hissing cockroach or giant scorpion in honor of their special ex-someone for Valentine’s Day. The zoo is highlighting two …

WASHINGTON – Scornfully branded “George Bush Lite,” by political foes, leaders of theDemocratic Leadership Council (search) and the “New Democrat” movement say their centrist agenda will ultimately buy them the last laugh on Capitol Hill and in the 2004 election. “We all know that at the end of the day, …

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The NAACP is asking elected officials in western New York to reject any future requests to name anything after President Millard Fillmore, who lived in Buffalo and is buried there. The Buffalo branch of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization tells The Buffalo News (http://bit.ly/1zKV70q ) that …

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – States across the country are accelerating their drive for new revenue to repair aging road systems, moves that come as the amount of federal funding has been falling. Figures compiled by The Associated Press show the total amount of money available to states from the Federal …

NEW YORK – McDonald’s says it’s raising pay for workers at its company-owned U.S. restaurants, making it the latest employer to sweeten worker incentives in an improving economy. The company owns about 10 percent of its more than 14,300 U.S. restaurants, representing about 90,000 workers. The rest are run by …

SPRINGDALE, Wash. – Authorities say a log cabin that a family reported stolen off its foundation has been found in rural northeast Washington. Stevens County Sheriff Kendle Allen says deputies following a tip found the cabin Thursday morning about 10 miles from its original location. He says the structure had …

HONOLULU – Hawaii Gov. David Ige says a nonprofit company planning to build one of the world’s biggest telescopes on a mountain many Native Hawaiians consider sacred will continue to postpone construction. This is the second time the Thirty Meter Telescope has extended a moratorium on building at the summit …

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Janay Jumping Eagle is on a mission to curb teen suicide in her hometown on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Dahkota Brown of the Wilton Band of Miwok Indians in California wants to keep American Indian and Alaska Native students on track toward graduation. The teenagers …

Police are hailing a man who shot and killed a would-be carjacker outside a Utah grocery store, saying he did the “right thing” by coming to the aid of the vehicle’s owner. Investigators say the 31-year-old man with a concealed weapons permit was in Macey’s parking lot in Orem, 45 …