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

State wildlife officials in California are investigating whether a bear hit by a car near Lake Tahoe may have had its organs removed for sale on the black market.

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

After a four-year hiatus, thoroughbred horse racing returns to Cal Expo.  But no one can say how long it will last.

Candy-lovers have been warned not to eat Country Aussie Style Soft Gourmet Black Licorice after health officials discovered elevated levels of lead.

Construction to improve congestion on Cirby Way in Roseville has been underway since early May. Now, some businesses are claiming they are losing customer because it's too to find parking.  

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 during a dispute Thursday at a Knoxville high school, police said, as other teenagers watched in horror as the victim clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

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 - 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 - 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 - Blocked stairwells, radio confusion and misinformation about the water supply thwarted efforts to put out a blaze at a condemned ground zero skyscraper that killed two firefighters last year, an internal report said Thursday.

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.

AP - Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors.

AP - The maker of the most widely used touch-screen voting machine in Ohio has acknowledged the machines have a programming error that led to about 1,000 votes being dropped briefly in the March primary.

AP - Two little girls from New Jersey were reunited with their father Thursday and could be returning home within a few days after being trapped by violence in the Republic of Georgia for two weeks.

AP - Two Massachusetts businesses are battling over the macabre legacy of a former Sunday school teacher who was accused in the hatchet deaths of her wealthy father and stepmother more than 110 years ago.

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.