AP - With gasoline climbing toward $4 a gallon, police officers around the country are losing the right to take their patrol cars home and are being forced to double up in cruisers and walk the beat more.

AP - A wind-whipped wildfire burning out of control in central California mountains destroyed buildings and threatened several rural homes Thursday morning, closing schools and prompting some evacuations.

AP - The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season could be slightly busier than average, with a good chance of six to nine hurricanes forming, federal forecasters said Thursday in a new way of making predictions.

AP - A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch.

AP - Investigators and scientists went to Charles Manson's last hideout to hunt for clandestine graves that could contain other possible victims. The closest thing they found were animal bones.

AP - In a stroke of cosmic luck, astronomers for the first time witnessed the start of one of the universe's most fiery events: the end of a star's life as it exploded into a supernova.

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney told newly minted Coast Guard officers Wednesday that the war on terrorism would be won on their watch and dismissed fears that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would drag on indefinitely.

AP - Quick: Cochabamba is the third-largest conurbation in what country?

AP - A coalition of animal welfare groups says it has evidence that Ringling Bros. circus elephants are sometimes chained for days at a time, and the groups asked a judge Wednesday to halt the practice while a lawsuit comes to trial.

AP - Former police Sgt. Drew Peterson turned himself in Wednesday on a weapons charge unrelated to the disappearance of his wife, a high-profile case in which he has been named as a suspect.

AP - Never mind the free lunch. Almost nothing is complimentary on airlines anymore, not even what many passengers consider a simple necessity: a single checked bag.

AP - A dig for clandestine graves at Charles Manson's last hideout ended Wednesday, yielding no bodies and leaving scientists puzzled over the clues that enticed them to go this far.