LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer CHICAGO (AP) —

New research suggests giving patients easier-to-take medicine and no-copay medical visits can help drive down high blood pressure, a major contributor to poor health and untimely deaths nationwide. Those efforts were part of a big health care provider's eight-year program, involving more than 300,000 patients with high blood pressure.

GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash.—

Jury selection began Tuesday in the sentencing of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who killed 16 Afghan civilians during raids on two villages. Bales, an Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., pleaded guilty in June to avoid the death penalty for killing the civilians, mostly women and children, on March 11, 2012.

SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press OKLAHOMA CITY —

An Australian baseball player out for a jog in an Oklahoma neighborhood was shot and killed by three "bored" teenagers who decided to kill someone for fun, police said. Christopher Lane, who was visiting the town of Duncan, where his girlfriend and her family live, had passed a home where the boys were staying and that apparently led to him being gunned down at random, Police Chief Danny Ford said Monday.