AP - A year after the worst U.S. bridge collapse in a generation brought calls for immediate repairs to other spans, two of every three of the busiest problem bridges in each state carrying nearly 40 million vehicles a day have had no work beyond regular maintenance.

AP - The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has a storied place in California history.

AP - A man accused of fatally stabbing a woman in a Massachusetts apartment and then fleeing with his four children and their mother was arrested Wednesday by police, who said the siblings and their mother were in good health and apparently had not been taken against their will.

AP - Mike Cullipher used to juggle his farm chores and a full-time job, working 275 acres on nights and weekends. Now he’s trying to make a go of it as a full-time farmer, and he’s wondering about his father’s plans for the property.

AP - Spc. Megan Touma and a married Sgt. Edgar Patino began their relationship when both were stationed in Germany.

AP - The latest in plywood-reinforced walls, tied-down foundations, strengthened concrete and stronger welds if an earthquake had to hit somewhere in densely populated Southern California, this relatively new suburb of 80,000 people was about the best place possible.

AP - Residents are returning home Thursday after being forced to flee a wildfire raging outside Yosemite National Park, but some are wondering what they’ll find when they get there.

AP - Police believe a body found in a small-time evangelist’s home freezer is his wife and a mother of eight, and arrested him on a murder charge as he preached at a south Alabama church. Anthony Hopkins, 37, was being held in the Mobile County jail Wednesday awaiting a bond hearing and appointment of an attorney.

AP - Flight attendants discovered the body of a 61-year-old woman in the restroom of a plane shortly before the flight landed in Atlanta Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the airline said.

AP - Sheriff’s deputies say an alligator has bitten off an 11-year-old boy’s arm in Louisiana.

AP - The world’s next space tourist, a computer game wizard, said Wednesday he’s spending the bulk of his fortune on his $30 million adventure this fall.

AP - Despite shaking a large swath of Southern California, a magnitude-5.4 earthquake was not the “Big One” that scientists have long feared. Still, it rattled nerves, causing people to vow to step up their emergency preparations.

AP - Even with a suspect in custody, there are still plenty of questions surrounding the death of a pregnant soldier found in a motel bathtub in Fayetteville more than a month ago.

AP - Florida prosecutors say imprisoned boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman may testify against a fellow jail inmate accused of gunning down an Orlando police officer.

AP - City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet.

AP - A storage tank explosion at a northern Wisconsin paper mill Tuesday killed three workers and injured a fourth, the company that owns the mill said.

AP - The Massachusetts House voted Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law that had been used to block gay marriages involving out-of-state couples, all but assuring that the state will allow same-sex couples to wed regardless of where they live.

AP - Vendors along one of the main roads leading to Yosemite National Park this summer were finally seeing business turn around following a rock slide that kept tour buses away for the previous two years.

AP - Dean Ririe had a fish on the line, then made one wrong step that led to a terrifying night trapped up to his waist in a frigid mountain stream.

AP - As they started their production of “Annie,” a musical about an orphan’s unwavering hope, the children of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church witnessed a scene that may have rattled theirs.

AP - Female suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.

AP - President Bush praised Pakistan’s prime minister Monday for his commitment to their joint battle against extremists. But neither of the men addressed the latest clash in Pakistan, a missile strike that hit a religious school just inside its border with Afghanistan.

AP - Turkish officials suggested Monday that Kurdish militants were the main suspects in bomb blasts that killed 17 people in a crowded square, with Turkey’s prime minister saying it could be a reprisal for air raids on guerrilla positions in northern Iraq.

AP - An unemployed man accused of opening fire with a shotgun and killing two people at a Unitarian church apparently targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal social policies, police said Monday.

AP - Top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by letting politics influence the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges at the Justice Department, says an internal report released Monday.

AP - Virgin Galactic is giving the world a glimpse of its secret space tourism program. Sir Richard Branson’s space company Monday trotted out the mothership aircraft that will launch a still-to-be-built spaceship out of the atmosphere. The mothership is a white, four-engine plane with room in the middle where the spacecraft will go.

AP - Stocks retreated Monday, taking the Dow Jones industrials down more than 100 points as investors watching earnings reports and an uptick in oil found little incentive to buy.

AP - Anna Patterson’s last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

AP - Shia LaBeouf was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving Sunday after an early morning wreck in which the “Indiana Jones” star injured his hand and knee, authorities said.

AP - Paul Hamm won’t be going to the Beijing Olympics, after all. The reigning Olympic gold medalist announced Monday that he is withdrawing from the U.S. team because his broken right hand is not sufficiently healthy enough for him to compete in Beijing.

Reuters - Turkey’s highest court began
considering on Monday whether to shut down the governing AK
Party for Islamist activities against a background of tension
following two bomb attacks in Istanbul over the weekend.

Reuters - A man who opened fire
inside a church, killing two people with a shotgun hidden in a
guitar case, was frustrated at being unable to find a job and
blamed liberals and gays, police said on Monday.

AP - A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast.

AP - An out-of-control wildfire burning Sunday near an entrance to Yosemite National Park has destroyed 12 homes and threatened thousands more as flames forced authorities to cut power to the park.

AP - More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.

AP - About a thousand protesters descended on a small town in northeastern Iowa on Sunday, decrying the raid of a meatpacking plant that arrested nearly 400 residents and calling for a change in federal immigration policies.

AP - About 300 people were evacuated from homes, campgrounds and a recreational vehicle park Sunday after flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Dolly. Two people were reported missing in the water.

AP - Some Democratic campaign buttons made for distribution in Idaho show an unlikely pair: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican Sen. Larry Craig.

AP - Jim Lankford’s corn crops used to stretch to the White River. Now the river has stretched itself through his crops.

AP - Rescuers suspended their search Sunday for a 10-year-old girl in the water off Coney Island, one of three swimmers still missing from powerful ocean currents at New York City and Long Island beaches over the weekend.

AP - President Carter has spent his golden years as a global humanitarian: a Nobel laureate pushing for peace in the Middle East, speaking out against the war in Iraq and battling to eradicate deadly diseases in Africa and Asia.

AP - Blame it on the traffic. Or the number of new immigrants. Or the allure of the beach. Whatever the reason, Miami has secured the bottom spot No. 50 among major U.S. cities in new rankings of the percentage of adults who volunteer.

AP - Coming to a store near you: Even higher prices.

AP - The Army formally apologized Saturday for the wrongful conviction of 28 black soldiers accused of rioting and lynching an Italian prisoner of war in Seattle more than six decades ago.

AP - Congress approved mortgage relief for 400,000 struggling homeowners Saturday as part of an election-year housing plan that also aims to calm jittery financial markets and bolster the sagging economy. President Bush said he would sign it promptly, despite reservations.

AP - Australian investigators were exploring the possibility that an oxygen cylinder could have exploded midflight on the Qantas jumbo jet that made a harrowing emergency landing in the Philippines with a giant hole in its fuselage, an official said Sunday.

AP - Bombs exploded Saturday near a busy market and a hospital in a western Indian city, killing 29 people and injuring 88 a day after deadly blasts struck the southern technology hub of Bangalore.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is pledging support for a proposal to expand protections for disabled people under an 18-year-old landmark civil rights law.

AP - The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

AP - Republican John McCain’s campaign on Saturday sharply criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for canceling a visit to wounded troops in Germany, contending Obama chose foreign leaders and cheering Europeans over “injured American heroes.”

AP - Here in the gentle hills of north Texas, televangelist Kenneth Copeland has built a religious empire teaching that God wants his followers to prosper.

AP - Customers of two banks closed by federal regulators were assured that every penny of their money was protected, preventing lines of angry accountholders from forming Saturday.

AP - “Terminator Salvation” won’t hit theaters until next summer, but thousands of fans got an early look at a portion of the film Saturday.

AP - Even Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy isn’t quite sure how the Brett Favre unretirement saga will play out over the next few days. But he does know this much: Favre or no Favre, Aaron Rodgers is his starting quarterback.

Reuters - Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama said in an interview published on Saturday the
size of a residual U.S. force left in Iraq after the withdrawal
of combat troops would be “entirely conditions-based.”

AP - Shares of Apple Inc. fell sharply as investors focused more on the company’s cautious guidance for the current quarter than on the blockbuster Macintosh and iPod sales during the previous three-month period.

AP - Yahoo Inc. averted a showdown with rabble-rousing investor Carl Icahn on Monday by giving him three seats on its board of directors in a truce that still leaves the door open for a possible sale to Microsoft Corp.

AP - Brocade Communications Systems Inc., dominant in an obscure corner of the data storage market, wants a piece of a bigger pie: Cisco Systems Inc.’s cash cow business of networking equipment that shuttles Internet traffic.

AP - Shares of Texas Instruments Inc. took a beating after its second-quarter earnings missed Wall Street estimates.

CNET - AOL announced partnerships to bolster its AOL Health site with content from Caring.com, Health.com, and HealthCare.com, the Time Warner subsidiary said Monday.

PC World - Staying home this summer instead of winging off to Beijing? No problem, when your interest in team handball and Greco-Roman…

PC World - Shipments of Blu-ray Disc-based video recorders and players are increasing fast in Japan and hit 122,000 in June, according to…

AP - Iraq’s government welcomed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday with word that it apparently shares his hope that U.S. combat forces could leave by 2010.

AP - The first war crimes trial at Guantanamo has begun with a not guilty plea from a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

AP - A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction.”

AP - Tropical Storm Dolly drenched a sparsely populated section of the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday and was poised to plunge into the Gulf of Mexico, where it could grow into a hurricane and move toward the Texas-Mexico border.

AP - Zimbabwe’s president and opposition leader have signed an agreement calling for formal talks on sharing power.

AP - Yahoo Inc. is relinquishing three seats on its board of directors to activist investor Carl Icahn, ending a battle for control of the Internet company while still leaving the door open for a possible sale to Microsoft Corp.

AP - Hundreds of thousands of tractor-trailer and bus drivers in the United States carry commercial driver’s licenses despite also qualifying for full federal disability payments, and some of those drivers have suffered seizures, heart attacks or unconscious spells, according to a new U.S. safety study obtained by The Associated Press.

AP - The popular online hangout Facebook is sporting a new look to reflect changes in how its members communicate with each other and how they share photos and updates about their lives.

AP - Ready for the latest in spa pampering? Prepare to dunk your tootsies in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away.

AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror “with vigor” if elected, an Afghan official said.

AP - The Pentagon’s top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to “dangerous consequences.”

AP - Tropical Storm Cristobal dumped rain and brought rough seas to the North Carolina coast Sunday, and forecasters predicted the weakening system was headed for the open Atlantic.

AP - The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.

AP - Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a “barricade situation.” Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK.

AP - Trapped in a hospital with 2,000 people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Anna Pou recalls her throat burning from the rancid smell.

AP - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead.

AP - Batman has sent Spidey packing as king of Hollywood’s box-office superheroes.

AP - Tens of thousands of fans gathered on Quebec City’s historic site, the Plains of Abraham, in hopes of securing a good spot to watch Paul McCartney’s free concert Sunday night as part of the city’s 400th anniversary celebrations.

AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq for talks with commanders of a war he long opposed follows the prime minister’s apparent endorsement of his troop withdrawal plan and a shift by the White House away from refusing to discuss that option.

Reuters - The U.S. economy needs months to
recover from its slowdown, but the banking system remains sound
despite a home mortgage crisis that could cause more problems,
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

AP - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled “Jail Bird.”

AP - In the Soviet days, Russians asked their American friends to bring blue jeans, rock records and other Western goods into the country. Today Russians can buy almost anything they want here but they are still begging for one item: Apple Inc.’s slick iPhone.

AP - One of Yahoo Inc.’s largest shareholders is supporting the re-election of the Internet company’s incumbent board, delivering a significant blow to an attempted coup being led by activist investor Carl Icahn.

AP - When Coke bottle glasses just won’t cut it for safe driving, a futuristic windshield might do the trick.

CNET - SAN FRANCISCO–On the tech conference circuit, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are the typical deep-pocketed sponsors. But when the tech is geared toward women, the pockets are those of Chevrolet, Macy’s, and K-Y Jelly.

AFP - The rights group headed by Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi on Saturday condemned a draft bill on Internet crime, warning that it could boost the number of executions in the Islamic republic.

CNET - NEW YORK–Using a laptop, cell phone headset, building access badge, credit cards, or even a passport can make you a walking target for data thieves and other criminals, a security expert warned at the Last HOPE hacker conference here late Friday.

AFP - Indian mobile phone group Reliance Communications and Africa’s largest cellular firm MTN have called off talks for a tie-up because of “legal and regulatory issues”, the companies said.

AP - The largest mobile crane in the nation collapsed at a Houston oil refinery Friday, killing four workers and injuring six others in the latest of several fatal accidents that have raised concerns about the safety of construction cranes.

AP - Customers at big fast-food chains in New York City are finally facing the facts about their meal choices. And for some, the truth may be hard to swallow like 1,130 calories for a Big Mac, medium fries and a medium soda.

AP - Authorities say a body has been found in the apartment of a Pittsburgh-area woman who arrived at a hospital with a newborn she falsely claimed was her own.