AP - Many of the rustic inns, restaurants and art galleries that dot the rugged Central Coast are nearly deserted this weekend at the height of the tourist season as a huge wildfire threatens Big Sur.

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 - A makeshift sandbag levee holding back the Mississippi River failed early Saturday and authorities said part of the town was evacuated.

AP - Just outside his sealed bedroom window, beyond the chain-link fence that surrounds his next-door neighbor's yard, sit the reasons David Adams says he can't sleep: two bushy-tailed dogs that bark and howl all night.

AP - There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says.

AP - The steel fence that the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas' Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.

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.