AP - During a recent afternoon storm, brothers Angel and Salvador Badillo sat under a tin roof with a couple of friends, sipping beers as the open drainage ditch in front of their clapboard house filled like a moat.

AP - A fifth person has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the suspected torture of a young woman who authorities say was held captive in West Virginia last summer.

AP - In a tribute mixed with praise and personal anecdotes, pioneering heart surgeon Michael DeBakey was remembered at a memorial service Wednesday as not only a brilliant physician and medical innovator but also a friend and humanitarian.

AP - A sixth body was pulled from a rural, central California canal Wednesday after a collision between a septic truck and a sport utility vehicle carrying farm workers from a peach orchard. A seventh victim remained missing and is presumed dead.

AP - A woman poisoned her infant son by repeatedly injecting salt water into his feeding tube at hospitals in Tennessee and Pittsburgh in what she claimed were attempts to hasten the death of a suffering child, authorities said Wednesday.

AP - The brother of a man suspected of killing eight people in Illinois and Missouri was charged Wednesday with concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice.

AP - The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.

AP - A man recently divorced from his wife of more than 20 years shot and killed her inside a suburban St. Louis mall on Wednesday before committing suicide, police said. No one else was injured but the Jamestown Mall in Florissant was evacuated.

AP - Garry McCarthy had barely settled into his new job as Newark's police director in the fall of 2006 when he came face to face with the twin scourges of violence and apathy that plagued New Jersey's largest city.

AP - When Volkswagen said yes, a city that shed its reputation for dirty air to become a top outdoors destination forgot years of frustrating rejections by automakers.

AP - Police in the District of Columbia are set to begin registering residents for handguns Thursday now that the district's 32-year-old ban has been lifted.

AP - Debbie Halcomb unpacked boxes as she moved back into her flood-damaged home, but worried that her damp carpet harbors mold. She enjoys the normally tranquil setting of Winfield, a community about three miles from the Mississippi River. But she's had enough. She's hoping for a government buyout so she can move to higher ground.

AP - The White House said President Bush will visit Northern California on Thursday to get a first-hand look at the wildfires that have ravaged hundreds of square miles and strained the state's firefighting resources.