AP - A lightning-sparked wildfire in the Los Padres National Forest that already burned 16 homes was moving closer Thursday to the scenic community of Big Sur, where it threatened 500 houses.

AP - Reeling in a 45-pound grouper used to be just an average day on the water in the Florida Keys.

AP - When Mayor Jo Anne Smiley looks down Washington Street at the soggy fortress of sandbags protecting her town, she knows it's a view she will have to get used to.

AP - Leonid Hurwicz, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics last year for developing a theory that helps explain how buyers and sellers can maximize their gains, has died at age 90, a spokesman said Wednesday.

AP - Three women pleaded not guilty Wednesday to child abuse and other charges involving a 5-year-old boy who was burned, starved and beaten.

AP - The efforts of nearly a dozen states to execute child rapists were derailed Wednesday by a Supreme Court decision that incensed supporters of such punishment. Officials in at least two states said they weren't ready to give up.

AP - Crews laboring to strengthen fortifications along the swollen Mississippi tackled new dirt slides and seepages on a fragile earthen levee Wednesday as forecasters said more heavy rain could cause a second round of big crests.

AP - Mike Lytle, a third-generation fisherman from the coastal village of Cordova, said many residents there were walking around stunned, shaking their heads.

AP - An Air Force colonel was acquitted Wednesday of raping a civilian worker but convicted of indecent assault and other charges involving two other women at Sheppard Air Force Base.

AP - Women and girls in prairie dresses entered a courthouse surrounded by dozens of law enforcement officers in this tiny ranching hamlet Wednesday as a grand jury opened its investigation into a polygamist sect accused of forcing underage girls into marriage and motherhood.