AP - A 16-year-old girl is a key witness in the state's effort to pursue criminal charges against members of her polygamist sect, even though she denies investigators' claims that she was abused.

AP - Substantially improving the accuracy of hurricane intensity predictions could take years and tens of millions of dollars, the National Hurricane Center's director said Tuesday.

AP - Bill Jakob arrived in this small town with an offer to help police curb the community's methamphetamine problem. He had a badge and a gun and told officials he had previously worked as an anti-drug agent in Illinois. He even drove a fully equipped Ford Crown Victoria, which he said was for undercover work.

AP - Fire crews joined aircraft from neighboring states Tuesday to battle hundreds of lightning-caused wildfires across Northern California.

AP - One of the girls who became pregnant at Gloucester High School this year denied Tuesday there was any pact among them to have children, saying instead they decided to help each other make the best of their situations.

AP - An East Texas newspaper acknowledged Tuesday that a reporter covering a trial of a child sex club dated the prosecutor until five months ago, an allegation the defense team is using to seek a change of venue.

AP - In one of the biggest conservation deals in U.S. history, the nation's largest producer of cane sugar reached a tentative agreement Tuesday to get out of the business and sell its nearly 300 square miles in the Everglades to the state of Florida for $1.75 billion.

AP - The weakest spot left along the swollen Mississippi River may be the Pin Oak levee, a barrier so tenuous that soil slides down its slope.

AP - In less than a day, an electrical storm unleashed nearly 8,000 lightning strikes that set more than 800 wildfires across Northern California — a rare example of "dry lightning" that brought little or no rain but plenty of sparks to the state's parched forests and grasslands.

AP - A pregnant high school student disputed the notion Tuesday that girls in this New England fishing town made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

AP - U.S. consumer confidence fell unexpectedly sharply in June, sinking to its lowest level in more than 16 years, according to a private industry group.