State senators formally selected Democrat Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento Thursday as their next leader.

A 38-year-old Calaveras County woman is in the hospital with 100 stitches after being attacked by a one-ton roaming buffalo she tried to lure back into his corral.

California would outlaw text-messaging while driving under a bill that's headed for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk. 

Stanislaus drug enforcement agents recovered $1.2 million in drug money and arrested two suspects in Turlock Wednesday, say Modesto police.

Sacramento River Cats fans will have their say on the likely next president by participating  in the first-ever Bobblelection August 30. 

A state program which offers below-market-rate-loans to first-time home buyers purchasing foreclosed properties is expanding into Sacramento County.  

AP - As if a fourth straight day of rain from Tropical Storm Fay wasn't enough, weary residents are now dealing with quintessentially Floridian fallout: alligators, snakes and other critters driven from their swampy lairs into flooded streets, backyards and doorsteps.

AP - A student fatally shot a 15-year-old classmate Thursday at a high school, police said, as other teenagers watched in horror as the victim clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

AP - A grand jury issued three new felony indictments Thursday against members of a polygamist sect raided here in April.

AP - A former Marine charged with killing unarmed detainees in Iraq did what he did to save his comrades, his attorney said Thursday as opening statements in the defendant's first-of-its-kind federal trial began.

AP - A major voting machine maker has cautioned its customers in 34 states to look out for a programming error that may cause votes to be dropped.

AP - A burglary suspect wanted in four states was holed up Thursday in a western Maryland motel with a woman police believed was his pregnant girlfriend, and doctors were standing by in case she went into labor, authorities said.

AP - An auto body shop worker was convicted and swiftly sentenced to life in prison Thursday for grooming children as young as 5 to perform in sex shows at a small-town swingers club.

AP - In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.

AP - Jurors cringed, cried and some desperately looked away as they were shown a series of deeply disturbing and graphic videos taken by a convicted child killer as he tortured, sexually abused and nearly killed a 9-year-old boy.

AP - They had no water, hardly any air and no way out.

AP - Rapidly melting ice on Alaska's Arctic is opening up a new navigable ocean in the extreme north, allowing oil tankers, fishing vessels and even cruise ships to venture into a realm once trolled mostly by indigenous hunters.

AP - An initial investigation into a deadly helicopter crash that killed nine people in Northern California earlier this month has found that the chopper's main rotor lost power during takeoff.

AP - A soldier who fled to Canada when his unit was deployed to Iraq plans to plead guilty Friday to a reduced charge of desertion, his lawyer said.