AP - One look at Eileen Mulligan lying soberly on the exam table and Dr. John Marshall knew the time for the Big Talk had arrived.

AP - Improved weather on Sunday helped crews tamp down several Northern California wildfires that had destroyed dozens of homes and led thousands of residents to evacuate.

AP - Displaced residents trickled back into the hardest-hit areas of Cedar Rapids on Sunday for their first up-close look at flood devastation, while a forecast of an earlier and lower flood crest at Iowa River sparked hope that the university city would escape a similar fate.

AP - McDonald's Corp. says it will begin serving sliced tomatoes again after a multistate salmonella outbreak caused the world's largest restaurant chain to yank the vegetable from its sandwiches.

AP - The cost of the April raid on a polygamist compound in West Texas is expected to top $14 million, about one-third of it in lawyers' fees, according to a published analysis of state records.

AP - The speech I was holding should only have been a backup. I knew the words by heart because I'd lived them.