AP - A San Francisco performance artist was sentenced Friday to as many as four years in prison and ordered to pay restitution for the early torching last summer of the signature effigy of the counterculture Burning Man festival.

AP - Firefighters bulked up their defenses Friday against a wildfire that threatened parts of this storied tourist town and prepared for more lightning strikes that could ignite new fires across Northern California.

AP - A police officer who body-slammed an unarmed woman and broke her jaw during a medical call to a suburban restaurant last year was arrested Friday and charged with civil rights violations.

AP - A millionaire convicted of helping his wife keep two Indonesian housekeepers as virtual slaves was sentenced Friday to more than three years in prison, ending a trial that shed light on the often little-seen exploitation and abuse of domestic workers.

AP - A Michigan man was sentenced to 43 years in prison Friday for driving the wrong way on an interstate and slamming his pickup truck into a minivan, killing a Maryland mother and four children who were returning home from a Christmas trip.

AP - Cathy Campbell did a double-take and tapped the brakes when she spotted what appeared to be a pointy-edged box lying in the road just ahead.

AP - Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who became one of the wealthiest civil lawsuit attorneys in the country by taking on tobacco, asbestos and insurance companies, was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge.

AP - The goal to raise levees and build large-scale flood defenses around this flood-torn city could be delayed indefinitely because of congressional demands that Louisiana chip in $1.8 billion to the effort over three years.

AP - The National Rifle Association sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its ban on handguns in public housing, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the nation's capital.

AP - A heroic effort by hundreds of townspeople, volunteers and National Guardsmen to hold back the Mississippi River failed Friday — undone by a burrowing muskrat.

AP - Superstar swimmer Michael Phelps and his Club Wolverine teammates were headed for an afternoon practice for the U.S. Olympic trials when the tornado sirens sounded.

AP - Some in the hometown of a man who opened fire at a plastics plant described him as a "good kid," while others called him a troublemaker and said Thursday that they weren't surprised when he killed himself and five others.

AP - Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who became one of the wealthiest civil lawsuit attorneys in the country by taking on tobacco, asbestos and insurance companies, was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge.