AP - Gay rights advocates asked California's highest court Friday to keep off the November ballot a citizens' initiative that would again ban same-sex marriage.

AP - A fast-moving fire erupted Friday along the Northern California coast, burning homes, forcing hundreds of residents to flee and backing up traffic for miles on a scenic highway.

AP - The little boy's body was a study in pain. He was covered in cigarette burns, including to his genitals. He couldn't fully open his hand because it had been burned on a stove. His tooth was broken with a nerve exposed. And he had been made to sit in his own urine and feces, authorities say.

AP - The school board of a small central Ohio community voted unanimously Friday to fire a teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs despite staff complaints and using a device to burn the image of a cross on students' arms.

AP - The girls showed up repeatedly at the high school health clinic, asking for pregnancy tests. But their reactions to the test results were puzzling: high-fives if they were expecting, long faces if they weren't.

AP - The flooding in the Midwest has brought freight traffic on the upper Mississippi to a standstill, stranding more than 100 barges loaded with grain, cement, scrap metal, fertilizer and other products while shippers wait for the water to drop on the Big Muddy.

AP - A South Carolina man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents 14 years ago was executed in the state's electric chair Friday night after a last-ditch effort to halt the sentence was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.