Mark Washburn

Patrick Cannon, who rose from public housing to become mayor of North Carolina’s largest city, was arrested Wednesday by the FBI and accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes – including $20,000 in cash delivered in a briefcase last month to the mayor’s office.

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, a Democrat, was arrested Wednesday on federal public corruption laws after a four-year investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte announced.

As crews lowered a second dome into the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday in BP's latest bid to stop the underwater oil leak, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and a federal investigative panel in Louisiana continued a second day of hearings that shed more light on the events.