Michael Jackson lawsuit — A jury cleared a concert promoter of negligence on Wednesday in a case that attempted to link the death of Michael Jackson to the company that promoted his ill-fated comeback shows. The panel rejected a lawsuit brought by Jackson’s mother claiming AEG Live was negligent in hiring Conrad Murray, the doctor who killed Jackson with an overdose of a hospital anesthetic the singer used as a sleep aid. The five-month trial provided the closest look yet at Jackson’s drug use and his battles against chronic pain and insomnia.

NSA tracking — National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander revealed Wednesday that his spy agency once tested whether it could track Americans’ cellphone locations, in addition to its practice of sweeping broad information about calls made. Alexander denied a New York Times report published Saturday that said NSA searched social networks of Americans searching for foreign terror connections, and detailed 12 previously revealed cases of abuse by NSA employees who used the network for unsanctioned missions like spying on a spouse. He said all employees were caught and most were disciplined.

Tennessee bus crash — A bus taking a church group home to North Carolina blew a tire, veered across a highway median and crashed into a sport utility vehicle and tractor-trailer Wednesday in a fiery wreck that killed eight people, authorities said. Fourteen other people were hurt in the accident in northeastern Tennessee, including eight who were in critical condition. The bus was carrying members of the Front Street Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C., which is about 140 miles east of the crash site.

Berlusconi reversal — In a startling move, a shaken Silvio Berlusconi stood before Italy’s Senate on Wednesday and announced that his center-right party would support the fragile coalition government, a dramatic reversal after the former prime minister had spent days vowing to bring down the government and force new elections. The backing of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party allowed the prime minister, Enrico Letta, to easily win a confidence vote in the Italian Senate on Wednesday afternoon. Letta is expected to win a similar vote in the lower house of Parliament, where he commands a secure majority.

Russia Greenpeace charges — Defying complaints from international human rights and environmental organizations, as well as the apparent wishes of President Vladimir Putin, Russian prosecutors brought piracy charges on Wednesday against 13 Greenpeace activists and a journalist who covered their protest. The activists and the journalist were among 30 people aboard a Greenpeace International ship, the Arctic Sunrise, that was seized by helicopter-borne Russian border guards in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, after several members of the crew attempted to board a Russian offshore oil platform using inflatable boats. The piracy charges carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

BP settlement — A federal appeals court gave BP a partial victory Wednesday by ordering a lower court judge to reconsider his interpretation of a settlement with claimants who filed billions of dollars in claims against the oil company after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. BP has repeatedly complained about the claims process, arguing that the program’s administrator, Patrick Juneau, was approving fabricated payments for business economic losses based on an unsound interpretation of an agreement the company reached with victims last year.

— From wire reports