AP - A wildfire threatening hundreds of homes in Southern California spread slowly through scenic canyonlands Saturday, straining resources as crews struggled to contain hundreds of other blazes around the state.
AP - 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.
AP - 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.
AP - Riding a green lawn chair supported by a rainbow array of more than 150 helium-filled party balloons, Kent Couch took off Saturday in a third bid to fly from central Oregon all the way to Idaho.
Accident at Iowa town's fireworks display hurts 37 (AP)
AP - 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.
Cincinnati NAACP rises again to host convention (AP)
AP - 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.
AP - 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.
AP - Auto industry cutbacks, double-digit unemployment and one of the nation's highest home foreclosure rates have left Detroit with a dreary economic future.
AP - 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.
AP - 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.
AP - After battling rowdy renters and out-of-control keggers for decades, this Jersey shore party town has finally decided to lighten up a little.
Hundreds remember 9/11 flight crews with sculpture (AP)
AP - On a pedestal in a Texas intersection hundreds of miles from where terrorists crashed planes seven years ago, two flight attendants and two pilots, rendered in bronze, now care for a traveling child.
AP - The call girl involved in a scandal that brought down New York's former governor has dropped a lawsuit claiming "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis exploited her image and name on the Internet.
AP - The nation's largest fireworks display exploded in a spectrum of color over the East River, temporarily stealing the spotlight from New York's world-famous skyline and helping to create a brilliant end to a day of July Fourth celebrations nationwide.
AP - The National Park Service is considering reopening Lady Liberty's crown for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to documents a congressman released on July Fourth.
AP - Joey Chestnut achieved frankfurter immortality Friday, outdueling his celebrated Japanese rival in an epic hot-dog eating contest that pushed both of the gluttonous gladiators to the brink.
