U.S. National News

Tired firefighters battle 330 Calif. wildfires

Firefighters monitor a burning redwood tree along Highway 1 in Big Sur, Calif., Saturday, July 5, 2008. Cooler temperatures and marine fog allowed firefighters here to gain some ground early Saturday on an obstinate wildfire that wiped out this world-famous coastal retreat's holiday tourist trade. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
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AP - 13 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - Firefighters got a gift of a mild, mostly windless night and a forecast for similar conditions Sunday as they attempted to protect thousands of Santa Barbara County homes from a huge wildfire, one of more than 300 taxing their energy and resources around the state.

  • Black-I Robotics founder Brian Hart, whose son was killed during an ambush in Iraq in 2003, poses in Tyngsborough, Mass., Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007 with a six-wheel cost-effective robot that his company designed to protect troops and perform certain risky missions. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
    Grief leads father to create bomb-defusing robot AP - Sun Jul 6, 12:52 AM ET

    TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass. - The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq.

  • ACLU plans to investigate Rainbow Family treatment AP - Sat Jul 5, 11:58 PM ET

    CHEYENNE, Wyo. - The American Civil Liberties Union said Saturday that it plans to investigate the actions of federal law enforcers who arrested five Rainbow Family members in western Wyoming during their annual gathering.

  • Allan E. Lucas, Jr., a licensed firearms instructor in Washington, is seen in his office in Washington on Tuesday July 1, 2008. Lucas has been trying for two years to open an indoor shooting range in the city to train security guards and other clients. Because the city currently has no zoning category for such a business, he takes his clients to ranges in the suburbs. 'It's pretty ridiculous to think of so many people qualifying to register for firearms and not having a range to practice on,' he said. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
    After DC gun ban overturned, city seeks new rules AP - Sat Jul 5, 9:22 PM ET

    WASHINGTON - Dale Metta, who manages a gun shop just outside the District of Columbia limits in Maryland, has had to turn away dozens of city residents wanting to buy handguns in recent days. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court just struck down Washington's 32-year-old ban on possessing handguns.

  • In a March 22, 1979 file photo, from left: Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), activist Phyllis Schlafly, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), stand at the podium during an anti-Equal Rights Amendment dinner in Washington. The dinner was held to celebrate the date of what would have been the expiration of the seven-year ratification period for the ERA before its extension by Congress.Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who served 30 years in Congress, died Friday, July 4, 2008, the Jesse Helms research center says. He was 86. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File )
    Helms never changed on civil rights opposition AP - Sat Jul 5, 10:45 PM ET

    RALEIGH, N.C. - Jesse Helms forever changed North Carolina politics and the conservative movement. The former senator did it without ever changing much about himself.

  • Jones Beach evacuated after fireworks wash up AP - Sat Jul 5, 9:42 PM ET

    NEW YORK - A popular beach on Long Island was evacuated at the height of a holiday weekend after stray, unexploded fireworks washed ashore the day after a July Fourth show, state parks officials said Saturday.

  • Accident at Iowa town's fireworks display hurts 37 AP - Sat Jul 5, 10:12 PM ET

    DES MOINES, Iowa - A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday.

  • A home sits unharmed in Crown King, Ariz. Tuesday, July 1, 2008. Some of the most devastating wildfires in the country's recent history have been started by people. In Arizona, the latest wildfire to be caused by man has burned more than 15 square miles, destroyed four homes in the community of Crown King, forced the weeklong evacuation of more than 100 people and cost upward of $2 million. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)
    At root of most wildfires, by far: People AP - Sat Jul 5, 5:50 PM ET

    CROWN KING, Ariz. - Playing with matches, being careless with a campfire, even burning a letter from an estranged husband: Some of the most devastating wildfires in the country's recent history have been started by people.

  • In this May 26, 2008 file photo, a tattered American flag sits atop a mound of debris at a destroyed convenience store in Parkersburg, Iowa, a day after a tornado struck the town. The nation's psyche is battered and bruised, the sense of pessimism palpable. The Independence Day holiday is typically a time to honor all that we are as a nation, but the feeling is there's less to celebrate on this our 232nd birthday. Happy? It would seem not. (AP Photo/Kevin Sanders, file)
    Last of flood-closed Mississippi locks reopen AP - Sat Jul 5, 5:34 PM ET

    ST. LOUIS - The last of the Mississippi River navigational locks that were closed to barges because of flooding are back in business.

  • Cincinnati NAACP rises again to host convention AP - Sat Jul 5, 5:27 PM ET

    CINCINNATI - The NAACP's Cincinnati chapter sagged to a low point a few years ago, its membership the smallest it had been in decades. Some outside the chapter even questioned its relevancy — this in a city recently torn by racially tinged rioting.

  • A July 2, 2008 file photo shows Nicholas T. Sheley being escorted out of the Granite City Police Department Wednesday, July 2, 2008, in Granite City, Ill. Authorities from two states conducted an exhaustive manhunt for Sheley, who is suspected in eight grisly killings and was arrested Tuesday evening outside a bar in Granite City. His arrest came after one of the bar patrons remembered a TV news image of Sheley's mug and realizing Sheley was at the bar notified police. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
    Public tipsters help foil fugitive murder suspect AP - Sat Jul 5, 4:11 PM ET

    GRANITE CITY, Ill. - The television image of fugitive murder suspect Nicholas Sheley's mug shot was fresh in Samantha Butler's mind as she ventured out to get dinner for the family, warning her relatives to lock the door behind her.

  • This artist's rendering provided by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation shows the planned visitors center for the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage in the Bronx. Renovations are scheduled to begin next year on the cottage and a visitors center is under construction. (AP Photo/Historic House Trust of New York City, Madeleine Isom)
    Poe Cottage in NYC park to undergo renovation AP - Sat Jul 5, 2:36 PM ET

    NEW YORK - It was many and many a year ago in a cottage in the Bronx where Edgar Allan Poe lived his last years and wrote some of his classic pieces.

  • Detroit City Council Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. leads the council during a meeting in Detroit, Monday, June 30, 2008. A mayoral text-messaging sex scandal, federal investigation into a City Council-approved $47 million sludge recycling deal, and poorly run and deficit-plagued public school system have dashed inroads toward respect and reopened Detroit to outside ridicule. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
    FBI probe latest setback for beleaguered Detroit AP - Sat Jul 5, 6:15 AM ET

    DETROIT - Auto industry cutbacks, double-digit unemployment and one of the nation's highest home foreclosure rates have left Detroit with a dreary economic future.

  • Toledo apartment complex fire leaves 100 homeless AP - Sat Jul 5, 11:48 AM ET

    TOLEDO, Ohio - Authorities in Toledo, Ohio, say a fast-moving fire at an apartment complex has destroyed eight buildings and left more than 100 people homeless.

  • Trial evidence that was used in case against Lester Leroy Bower Jr., is shown in the Grayson County District Clerk's office Wednesday, July 2, 2008, in Sherman, Texas. Three months after four bodies were found shot execution-style in an airplane hangar on the B&B Ranch north of Dallas, Bower, a chemical salesman, was charged with capital murder. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
    Questions raised about capital case 24 years later AP - Sat Jul 5, 2:06 PM ET

    SHERMAN, Texas - Three months after four bodies were found shot execution-style in an airplane hangar on the B&B Ranch north of Dallas in 1984, chemical salesman Lester Leroy Bower Jr. was charged with capital murder.

  • San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, right, and his fiancee Jennifer Siebel, left, wave to spectators during San Francisco's 38th annual gay pride parade on Sunday, June 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar)
    Calif. governor's race: youth or experience? AP - Sat Jul 5, 2:08 PM ET

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Charismatic and politically bold, both San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa seem like naturals to help Democrats reclaim the governor's office in 2010.

Crimes and Trials News

  • Federal judge orders 2 Marines released from jail AP - Fri Jul 4, 2:46 AM ET

    RIVERSIDE, Calif. - A federal judge in Riverside, Calif., has ordered two Marines released from jail despite their refusal to testify before a grand jury investigating the alleged killing of Iraqi detainees in 2004.

  • Woman charged in Chicago police officer's death AP - Thu Jul 3, 11:28 PM ET

    CHICAGO - A 44-year-old woman was charged Thursday with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting death earlier this week of a veteran Chicago police officer.

  • Assistant U.S. Attorney John Siegel walks down the steps from the federal courthouse in Cleveland, Thursday, July 3, 2008. A federal jury on Thursday convicted the former top accountant at the Cleveland Catholic Diocese of tax charges and acquitted him of more serious charges related to alleged kickbacks. Joseph H. Smith was convicted of six tax-related charges, including conspiracy to defraud the IRS, making a false tax return and obstructing an IRS investigation. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)
    Former top Cleveland church accountant convicted AP - Thu Jul 3, 8:19 PM ET

    CLEVELAND - A federal jury on Thursday convicted the former top accountant at the Cleveland Catholic Diocese of tax charges and acquitted him of more serious charges related to alleged kickbacks.