AP - Despite a massive effort to repair and upgrade flood defenses since Hurricane Katrina, storm surge could pour over levees in New Orleans if a strong Category 2 or higher hurricane strikes the city, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

AP - To hear many students tell it, law school is a guaranteed ticket to a well-paying career. So a recent milestone must have sounded like good news.

AP - From the beach of Lake Willoughby's Southwest Cove, the sheer cliffs of Mount Pisgah tower over the deep, frigid water. Across the narrows, Mount Hor's peak completes the look of a Scandinavian fjord. In the summertime, the beach offers a different view: naked sunbathers.

AP - As southeastern Iowa prepared for the Mississippi River's wrath, the rest of Iowa began the slow move from protection to cleanup.

AP - Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples had appointments to secure marriage licenses and exchange vows Tuesday, the first full day same-sex nuptials will be legal throughout California.

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

AP - The little town of Columbus Junction put up a good fight against the Flood of 2008. But, in the end, the water won.

AP - A Missouri woman pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles federal court Monday to charges in an Internet hoax blamed for a 13-year-old girl's suicide.

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.