AP - Fire officials prepared late Sunday for rapid growth of a wildfire blazing 20 miles north of downtown with the expected arrival of strong, dry wind gusts overnight.

AP - A month later, piles of Sheetrock, appliances, furniture and family mementos dot most streets in this island town. Electronic road signs in southeast Texas flash, "Watch for cows next 20 miles," a reminder that few fences remain to hem in livestock. Blue tarps cover 11,000 roofs for 100 miles from Houston to the Louisiana line.

AP - In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.

AP - She shot herself in the chest Oct. 1 before she could be taken away from the foreclosed house, which was worth less than its mortgage from the day she took out the loan.

AP - In the Tenderloin, corner stores sell more alcohol than food, drug-addled pan handlers shake paper cups at passers-by and churches vie for real estate with strip clubs.

AP - The attorney for a Marine accused of killing a pregnant colleague says his client is fighting extradition to the United States.

AP - A watched clock never moves — unless it's the National Debt Clock.

AP - Chicago's police superintendent is denying a news report that officers in his command are working the streets less aggressively out of fear of being second-guessed by him.

AP - David Letterman and Sen. John McCain will get a chance to make up.

AP - Trillions in stock market value — gone. Trillions in retirement savings — gone. A huge chunk of the money you paid for your house, the money you're saving for college, the money your boss needs to make payroll — gone, gone, gone.

AP - National forests and parks — long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels — have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said.