AP - The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Washington's strict 32-year-old handgun ban was among the first to arrive as the city started registering firearms.

AP - Ricky Green wandered into this town some months ago, a stranger just a bit stranger than most. He had shed his middle-class respectability — a job as a graphic artist in the 'burbs — strapped a guitar over his shoulder and landed here on what he told people was "a spiritual journey."

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.

AP - Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee lead the nation when it comes to obesity, a new government survey reported Thursday.

AP - Money problems will likely force NASA to abandon its ambitious internal goal of having a new moon spaceship ready by 2013, a top space agency official told The Associated Press Wednesday.

AP - Some of the dolphins that have been entertaining spectators in a river at the New Jersey shore appear to have moved into another waterway instead of returning to the ocean.

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.