National News

2 fires still raging along Calif.'s Central Coast

BIG SUR, Calif. (AP) -- Cool, damp weather early Saturday helped crews gain ground on the huge wildfire that wiped out this coastal retreat's holiday tourist trade, allowing some personnel and gear to be shifted to a growing blaze farther south...

Grief leads father to create bomb-defusing robot

TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq....

Man flying lawn chair lifted by helium balloons

BEND, Ore. (AP) -- Riding a green lawn chair supported by a rainbow array of more than 150 helium-filled party balloons, Kent Couch took off Saturday in a third bid to fly from central Oregon all the way to Idaho....

Accident at Iowa town's fireworks display hurts 37

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday....

Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong right now'

Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days....

FBI probe latest setback for beleaguered Detroit

DETROIT (AP) -- Auto industry cutbacks, double-digit unemployment and one of the nation's highest home foreclosure rates have left Detroit with a dreary economic future....

Toledo apartment complex fire leaves 100 homeless

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- Authorities in Toledo, Ohio, say a fast-moving fire at an apartment complex has destroyed eight buildings and left more than 100 people homeless....

Questions raised about capital case 24 years later

SHERMAN, Texas (AP) -- Three months after four bodies were found shot execution-style in an airplane hangar on the B&B Ranch north of Dallas in 1984, chemical salesman Lester Leroy Bower Jr. was charged with capital murder....

Calif. governor's race: youth or experience?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Charismatic and politically bold, both San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa seem like naturals to help Democrats reclaim the governor's office in 2010....

Poe Cottage in NYC park to undergo renovation

NEW YORK (AP) -- It was many and many a year ago in a cottage in the Bronx where Edgar Allan Poe lived his last years and wrote some of his classic pieces....