The state Senate will vote on a compromise budget Friday morning at 10, it was announced late Thursday afternoon.

An aide says Republican presidential candidate John McCain decided on a running mate early Thursday.

The state Legislature has approved a bill that would require public hearings and health evaluations before officials could order aerial spraying in cities to control agricultural pests.

Former KGO radio talk show host Bernie Ward was sentenced in federal court Thursday to 87 months in prison for sending child pornography over the Internet.

In an effort to deter metal thieves, state lawmakers have passed legislation that would require recyclers to withhold payment for three days.

The California Farm Bureau Federation is urging boaters to clean and drain their vessels before heading to the water this Labor Day weekend.

AP - With Gustav approaching hurricane strength and showing no signs of veering off a track to slam into the Gulf Coast, authorities across the region began laying the groundwork Thursday to get the sick, elderly and poor away from the shoreline.

AP - Just three years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans confronts a new threat from Gustav and a stark question: Will the partially rebuilt levees hold?

AP - A block-long covered walkway next to a construction scaffold collapsed on Thursday, trapping and injuring 16 pedestrians, three critically.

AP - As New Orleans residents warily track another threatening storm, a new report presents the clearest picture yet of deaths from Katrina in Louisiana. Of the nearly 1,000 who died, almost half were 75 or older, according to researchers.

AP - A former Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi detainees was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter Thursday in a first-of-its-kind federal trial.

AP - It requires enough concrete to build a sidewalk from New York to Miami and enough pipe to reach the top of the Empire State Building 140 times over. Workers carved out enough dirt from the ground to fill more than 100,000 dump trucks.

AP - Like millions of motorists, Eric Hanson used a GPS unit in his Chevrolet TrailBlazer to find his way around. He probably didn't expect that prosecutors would eventually use it too — to help convict him of killing four family members.

AP - Lawyers for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick filed a lawsuit Thursday aimed at scuttling a hearing that could lead to his ouster, saying the proceedings would be unfair and presided over by a governor who is biased against him.

AP - A request from O.J. Simpson's last remaining co-defendant to delay the Sept. 8 start of the pair's armed robbery and kidnapping trial was rejected Thursday by a divided Nevada Supreme Court panel.

AP - The families of 12 Nepali men killed by Iraqi insurgents have filed a federal lawsuit accusing defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor of human trafficking, saying the men were sent to work in Iraq against their will after being promised jobs in a posh hotel in Jordan.

AP - A federal appeals court has refused to rehear the deportation case of a retired western Pennsylvania steelworker who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II.

AP - A crane lowering a heavy length of pipe toppled Thursday morning at a city water pumping station on the Trinity River in Dallas, injuring two city workers.

AP - The National Hurricane Center says Tropical Storm Hanna has formed northeast of the northern Leeward Islands in the Atlantic.