AP - Vice President Dick Cheney and a delegation of U.S. senators joined hundreds of other mourners who paid their respects Tuesday at the funeral of former Sen. Jesse Helms, a five-term Republican who died on the Fourth of July.

AP - Forecasters say Hurricane Bertha has weakened to a Category 2 storm.

AP - Firefighters on Tuesday faced worsening weather conditions that pushed flames across firebreaks in parts of inland California and chased residents out of one small community.

AP - On the morning after the house party on Johnson Street, Jenna Foellmi and several other twentysomethings lay sprawled on the beds and couches. When a friend reached over to wake her, Foellmi was cold to the touch.

AP - Alex Rodriguez's wife filed for divorce Monday, calling her husband an adulterer who "emotionally abandoned his wife and children."

AP - In the hills above the University of California's Berkeley campus, nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather.

AP - A California group submitted a proposal Monday to rename a sewage treatment plant after President Bush, calling the initiative a fitting tribute to the outgoing chief executive and the "mess" he'll leave behind.

AP - A prominent software programmer who had denied having anything to do with his estranged wife's disappearance even after he was convicted of her murder led police Monday to what is believed to be her body, defense attorneys said.

AP - Hurricane Bertha strengthened to a Category 3 storm Monday as it swirled in the central Atlantic, but it posed no immediate threat to land.

AP - Among the smiles and hugs shared by three American hostages freed last week from rebels in Colombia and their families, one of the men on Monday angrily denounced their captors as "terrorists with a capital 'T.'"

AP - As some residents whose homes were threatened by a vast Southern California wildfire were allowed to return home on Monday, forecasters warned that the cooler, damper conditions that have aided recent firefighting efforts would soon turn in favor of the flames.