Gov. Schwarzenegger hopes California voters will remember this year's record-breaking budget stalemate when they consider Proposition 11 next month.

Some people had Columbus Day off, but in Nevada City, others gathered in peaceful protest at the 9th Annual Indigenous Peoples Days.

A Texas oil billionaire has financed the campaign for a ballot measure that would offer rebates on cars that burn less gasoline.

A record one-day run-up in the markets doesn't mean choppy times are behind us, says one local financial advisor.

More and more families in Northern California are turning to thrift stores as a way to save money during tough economic times.

Oregon resident Thad Starr says his pumpkin really began putting on weight in August. A lot of weight.

AP - Two huge wildfires driven by strong Santa Ana winds burned into neighborhoods near Los Angeles on Monday, forcing frantic evacuations on smoke- and traffic-choked highways, destroying homes and causing at least two deaths.

AP - An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

AP - A Michigan mother drove roughly 12 hours to Omaha, so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital under the state's unique safe-haven law, Nebraska officials said Monday.

AP - Gay couples from around California and the nation are feverishly tying the knot ahead of Election Day to avoid missing out if voters approve a ballot initiative aimed at banning same-sex marriage.

AP - On issues such as abortion, gay marriage and religion, college students shift noticeably to the left from the time they arrive on campus through their junior year, new research shows.

AP - For many thousands of America's foster children, prospects for a permanent home and stronger support will be brighter under a new law that bridged Washington's partisan divide and is touted as the most significant child-welfare reform in decades.

AP - A teacher initially placed on leave over a book controversy has been charged with trying to have sexual contact with three students, allegedly even asking one girl what she would do for a better grade.

AP - Paul Krugman, whose relentless criticism of the Bush administration includes opposition to the $700 billion financial bailout, won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for his work on international trade patterns.

AP - The parents of four young people killed by a sheriff's deputy and the lone survivor of his shooting spree last year claim in a lawsuit that the gunman's law-enforcement superiors were negligent in supervising him and giving him access to weapons.

AP - The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from an Ohio prisoner who argued he is too obese to be executed. Richard Cooey is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday.

AP - The bombing of a prominent Atlanta synagogue in 1958 claimed no lives, but the community outrage that it prompted helped galvanize the city's nervous Jewish community to embrace the civil rights movement.

AP - A blaze that claimed the lives of a couple and their three children in a Manhattan apartment was likely caused by a child playing with a lighter or matches, authorities said Monday.

AP - For more than two years, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has been consumed by the latest entry on his resume: acting chief of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.