AP - Cooler weather on Sunday gave a boost to crews battling the enormous wildfire that was threatening nearly 2,700 homes in Santa Barbara County.

AP - The first clue that the Tuesday afternoon session in Part 4 of Buffalo City Court is not like other criminal proceedings comes just before it starts.

AP - They were precocious toddlers, both blond-haired and blue-eyed, separated by a thousand miles between Miami and a small Kentucky town.

AP - Marty Boyer's carefully maintained sport utility vehicle growled more like a dragster than a 2001 Honda Passport when he turned the key.

AP - Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days. Eighteen members of the volunteer organization's Gilbert, Ariz., chapter have gathered, a few days before this nation's 232nd birthday, to focus on the positive: Their book drive for schoolchildren and an Independence Day project to place American flags along the streets of one neighborhood.

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.

AP - Jesse Helms forever changed North Carolina politics and the conservative movement. The former senator did it without ever changing much about himself.

AP - Playing with matches, being careless with a campfire, even burning a letter from an estranged husband: Some of the most devastating wildfires in the country's recent history have been started by people.