AP - Hundreds of feet beneath Earth's surface, a few seasoned cave explorers venture where no human has set foot. Their headlamps illuminate mud-covered walls, gypsum crystals and mineral deposits.
AP - About 2 million Americans get a raise Thursday as the federal minimum wage rises 70 cents. The bad news: Higher gas and food prices are swallowing it up, and some small businesses will pass the cost of the wage hike to consumers.
AP - Federal regulators giving a report on what went wrong at a deadly Utah mine cave-in last summer said they expected a critique of their own performance by another agency. -- read full article
AP - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to pay thousands of state employees the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until lawmakers reach a deal on California's overdue state budget.
AP - The scene repeats itself daily on city streets: a driver gets stuck bumper to bumper, blocking an intersection and preventing another car from turning left.
AP - Residents across south Texas slogged through knee-deep muddy waters, tiptoed around downed power lines and dug through debris Thursday, but were thankful that Hurricane Dolly didn't pack the wallop they had feared.
AP - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama paid a predawn visit to the holiest place in Judaism on Thursday, bowing his head in prayer at the Western Wall.
AP - Dallas police Detective Paul Bentley, who helped arrest presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Theater, had a ready retort for those who didn't accept the official story that Oswald acted alone. -- read full article
AP - A federal judge on Wednesday upheld the corruption convictions of former Newark Mayor Sharpe James and his one-time mistress, but indicated that James probably will get less than the 15- to 20-year prison sentence prosecutors are seeking.
AP - A state lawmaker who gained national notoriety with an anti-homosexual rant was stopped from entering the state Capitol Wednesday when she was found to have a loaded handgun in her purse, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said.
AP - Texas executed a man Wednesday who was convicted of killing a woman and her child, while Mississippi put to death a man who took part in the fatal beating of another man.
AP - The World Trade Center site's owner has offered $20 million to acquire the 1,200-square-foot lot of a church destroyed on Sept. 11, freeing one more piece of land needed to rebuild every inch of ground zero.
AP - The judge in the trial of convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says she told jurors that they made the right decision in sparing his life.
