CHICAGO (AP) — Protesters gathering in Chicago for the NATO summit were gearing up for their largest demonstration Sunday, when thousands are expected to march from a downtown park to the lakeside convention center where President Barack Obama and dozens of other world leaders will meet.

Several hundred demonstrators wound through the city’s streets for hours Saturday, testing police who used bicycles to barricade off streets and horseback officers to coax them in different directions. Increasingly tense clashes between protesters and police resulted in 18 arrests, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said.

BEIJING (AP) — A blind Chinese activist was hurriedly taken from a hospital Saturday and boarded a plane that took off for the United States, closing a nearly monthlong diplomatic tussle that had tested U.S.-China relations.

Chen Guangcheng, his wife and their two children were on United Airlines Flight 88, which took off late Saturday afternoon from the Beijing airport. The flight was scheduled to arrive in Newark, N.J., Saturday evening.

JACKSON, Mich. — A Michigan teen made a gristly discovery after biting into an Arby’s junior roast beef sandwich.

Ryan Hart said he had nearly polished off his sandwich last Friday when he bit into something tough to chew that tasted like rubber, so he spit it out.

Turns out it tasted like finger. The fleshy pad of an unfortunate employee’s finger, apparently.

“I was like, ‘That (has) to be a finger,’” Hart, 14, told the Jackson Citizen Patriot on Wednesday. “I was about to puke. … It was just nasty.”

Updated at 3:56 p.m. ET: John Edwards was a bad husband who lied to his family, but he’s not a criminal, his lawyer told jurors Thursday as the former presidential candidate’s corruption trial wrapped up.

“As many are his moral wrongs,” none of Edwards’ misdeeds was “a legal
one,” lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell said in his closing argument.
Drawing a comparison with the chief prosecution witness, Lowell said:
“John’s conduct is shameful, but it’s human. Andrew Young’s lies on the
stand and the government sponsoring those lies is worse.”

Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their sodas as a result of a California law that mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens bear a cancer warning label.

The companies said the changes will be expanded
nationally to streamline their manufacturing processes. They’ve already
been made for drinks sold in California.

• MORE: Public-interest group says chemical in soda causes cancer

The American Beverage Association,
which represents the broader beverage industry, said its member
companies will still use caramel coloring in certain products but that
adjustments were made to meet California’s new standard.

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(CNN) — Someone who may be posing as a police officer is pulling cars over on Mississippi highways and then shooting drivers dead, authorities said.

After two such shootings this month, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is asking for the public’s help to find the person.

The agency is receiving leads and processing forensic evidence, bureau spokesman Warren Strain said Tuesday.

“There are some similarities between the two incidents, mainly the fact they happened alongside a Mississippi highway,” said MBI director Lt. Col. Larry Waggoner on Monday. “The concern is that someone is posing as a law enforcement officer and that is how these vehicles end up on the side of the road.”

(CBS News) WASHINGTON – The issue of same-sex marriage is pushing the presidential race in a new direction.

A just-released CBS News/New York Times poll shows 38 percent of Americans say they now believe same-sex couples should be allowed to get married. Twenty-four percent think they shold form civil unions. Thirty-three percent are against any legal recognition at all.

The number in favor of same-sex marriage is 10 percent higher than it was in 2004.

(AP) BURBANK, Calif. – Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials and other law enforcement personnel searched a rugged mountain area Saturday for an FBI agent who had not been seen for more than 24 hours and was said to be despondent and possibly suicidal.

Los Angeles-based Special Agent Stephen Ivens was last seen by family members Thursday evening, KABC-TV reported. He left his Burbank home the next morning on foot and hasn’t been seen since, FBI officials said at a news conference.

WASHINGTON — Soon after lawmakers finished work on the nation’s new financial regulatory law, a team of JPMorgan Chase lobbyists descended on Washington. Their goal was to obtain special breaks that would allow banks to make big bets in their portfolios, including some of the types of trading that led to the $2 billion loss now rocking the bank.

Several visits over months by the bank’s well-connected chief executive, Jamie Dimon, and his top aides were aimed at persuading regulators to create a loophole in the law, known as the Volcker Rule. The rule was designed by Congress to limit the very kind of proprietary trading that JPMorgan was seeking.

Even after the official draft of the Volcker Rule regulations was released last October, JPMorgan and other banks continued their full-court press to avoid limits.

JPMorgan’s blunder amplifies calls for tighter regulation

A Florida high school science teacher faces dismissal amid allegations that she used a “cone of shame” dog collar to discipline students.

Pasco County schools superintendent Heather Fiorentino has recommended firing 47-year-old Laurie Bailey-Cutkomp for putting a dog collar on at least eight of her ninth graders on two days in April.