AP - The story made headlines almost immediately: High school girls in this New England fishing town had made a pact to get pregnant. Now the account is under fire. The city's mayor on Monday debunked the pact theory originally stated by the high school principal.

AP - A U.S. Supreme Court decision paving the way for a 670-mile federal fence along the U.S.-Mexico border drew swift criticism from environmentalists, who promised to make another legal stand in Texas.

AP - As towns upriver watched the Mississippi River slowly begin to recede, a few farther south focused on holding on for a few more days — furiously filling sandbags and keeping watch over saturated levees struggling to hold back the flooded river.

AP - Firefighters from neighboring states arrived to help Monday after an "unprecedented" lightning storm sparked more than 800 wildfires, from Big Sur to wine country to Humboldt County.

AP - Cooler weather Monday helped firefighters gain ground on hundreds of wildfires that have charred bone-dry terrain in both wine country and remote forests in Northern California.

AP - For a dozen years, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick has routinely defeated all opponents in the Detroit-area congressional district she represents.

AP - Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from homelessness.

AP - The water is still well above the banks of the upper Mississippi River, but residents of both flooded towns and those protected by levees and sandbags can see an ending: The river is cresting.

AP - A jail escapee who set off a manhunt near Virginia Tech's campus by killing a hospital guard and later, a sheriff's deputy, was sentenced to death Monday despite his attorney's pleas for leniency.

AP - A convicted polygamist leader's teenage daughter, who was among the children removed from her sect's Texas compound during an abuse investigation, is fighting her attorney's attempt to shield her from a church official.

AP - Revius Ortique Jr., a former civil rights attorney who became the first black justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court, died Sunday. He was 84.

AP - Hundreds of wildfires sparked by lightning flared Sunday across the heart of wine country and remote forests in Northern California, the latest batch of destructive blazes in the bone-dry state.