A Rancho Cordova woman was arrested and faces murder charges after detectives say she drowned her newborn infant in a toilet last July.

A lack of snow is hurting Sierra ski resorts and other related businesses.

Voters have approved an initiative backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to create a bipartisan commission to redraw California's legislative districts.

Gift cards are a popular present but some experts warn they could be worthless if the current trend of retail bankruptcies continues.

A new UC Berkeley study shows marriages improve when children leave home.

The Sacramento City Council was expected to vote Tuesday on making a voluntary buyout plan available to up to 5,000 city employees.

AP - A teenage boy who limped into a local gym with a chain locked to his ankle had been burned by a baseball bat heated in a fireplace and forced to watch a family eat meals while he went without food, a woman accused of abusing him said in a jailhouse interview.

AP - Three men, including a small-town police chief, were indicted Thursday on involuntary manslaughter counts in the gun-fair death of an 8-year-old who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi that a prosecutor said he never should have been allowed to handle.

AP - Doreen Giuliano was obsessed with saving her son from a life behind bars after he was convicted of murder.

AP - A soldier was acquitted of murder Thursday in the 2005 bombing deaths of two superiors in Iraq, triggering loud outbursts and gasps from the slain officers' families.

AP - President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush have bought a home among business leaders and prominent Republican donors in an affluent North Dallas neighborhood, where they will live after the president leaves office in January.

AP - The people of Kansas City thought they were getting a straight-shooter with financial smarts as their new mayor. What they got, critics say, is a henpecked husband who needs his wife to tell him what to do.

AP - Medical marijuana became legal in Michigan on Thursday, but smoking a joint could still get patients arrested because the regulations needed to protect them won't be ready for months.

AP - Some of the five men accused of planning to kill soldiers on New Jersey's Fort Dix told an FBI informant that they lacked the bravery to mount an attack, the informant testified Thursday.

AP - The teenage son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez acted in self-defense in a confrontation that left a college student dead from a stab wound, his lawyer said Thursday after his client and three other men pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges.

AP - Before evangelist Tony Alamo's arrest on federal sex charges, three girls who lived at his Arkansas compound told an FBI agent that he had sexually abused them, and one said he had threatened to have "someone take care of you" if she talked, according to a newly unsealed FBI affidavit.

AP - A Texas Supreme Court justice was fined $29,000 on Thursday after the state ethics commission found that a law firm provided what amounted to an illegal campaign contribution by giving him a $168,000 discount on legal fees.

AP - Two teenage girls who worked at a nursing home have been charged with abuse, accused of taunting, spitting on and groping residents who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

AP - In the last months of his administration, President Lyndon Johnson voiced worry over the Vietnam peace talks and stridently suggested that associates of Richard Nixon were attempting to keep South Vietnam away from the table until after the 1968 election, recordings of telephone conversations released Thursday show.