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MIDLAND CITY, Ala. (AP) Authorities aren't saying if there have been any demands from a gunman holding a five-year-old boy in an underground bunker in southeastern Alabama. Law officers say the retired trucker took the boy off a school bus Tuesday after fatally shooting the driver. Neighbors describe Jimmy lee Dykes as menacing.

PHOENIX (AP) Officials say it was supposed to be a mediation session but ended with one person dead and two others wounded, one critically. It happened at an office complex in Phoenix. Police say the suspect, who is still at large, is a 70-year-old man who had been in a contract dispute.

WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy (LAY'-hee) says he hopes his panel will write gun control legislation next month, but he won't specific what it might contain. Leahy said during a hearing on Wednesday that he supports broader background checks and a federal penalty for so-called straw purchasers -- those who buy guns for those not legally allowed to have them.

WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama says he's looking for immigration reform to be completed within six months. In interviews with Spanish-language TV networks, Obama said that politics, not technical issues, are standing in the way of immigration reform.

BOSTON (AP) The U.S. Senate has a second African-American member. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has selected his former chief of staff, William "Mo" Cowan, to serve as an interim senator. A special election will be held in June to fill the seat left vacant by John Kerry's confirmation to succeed outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.