AP - Police may have ignored a warning years ago that a woman with five dead spouses was trying to hire a hit man to kill one of the men, investigators in North Carolina said Monday.

AP - There isn't much John Peyton can do on his own except speak, and soon he'll lose even that.

AP - Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.

AP - A couple accused of killing their 13-year-old son by tying him to a tree for two nights for punishment appeared in a North Carolina courtroom Monday to face charges of murder and felony child abuse.

AP - His lifelong dream of becoming a soldier had, in the end, come to this for Isaac Stevens: 28, penniless, in a wheelchair, fending off the sexual advances of another man in a homeless shelter.

AP - Even as flood fears eased in Iowa City, the state's south and east prepared for new problems ahead for a string of towns along the Mississippi River.

AP - Tim Russert's chair was empty on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, two days after his unexpected death.

AP - Americans dissatisfied with political sound bites are turning to the Internet for a more complete picture, a new study finds.

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 - A week's work of frantic sandbagging by students, professors and the National Guard couldn't spare this bucolic college town from the surging Iowa River, which has swamped more than a dozen campus buildings and forced the evacuation Sunday of hundreds of nearby homes.

AP - Four days after Greg Zach spotted the water coming toward his driveway, he was allowed back Sunday into what's left of his house on Cedar Rapid's southeast side.