AP - When floodwaters knocked out the water treatment plant in Mason City, Iowa, FEMA rolled into town and promptly set up an account with a Pepsi bottler to supply bottled water. Then FEMA officials moved into a vacant store and began handing out the stuff.

AP - An autistic man who could barely speak and had wandered off without medicine for his transplanted kidney likely had just hours to live when he was found after a week in the woods, a doctor said.

AP - A man who led police to the charred remains of his two children was charged with capital murder on Monday.

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.