AP - Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

AP - When Russian troops invaded the Republic of Georgia this month, two little girls from New Jersey visiting their grandparents there were stranded behind a series of checkpoints.

AP - It had already been a long day when Dr. Lansing Ellsworth and his team of dermatology specialists climbed aboard a twin-engine plane in southeastern Utah, ready to return home to their families 200 miles away.

AP - The mystery man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller and is suspected of kidnapping his daughter in Boston is still not talking about his life before 1993.

AP - It's billed as the oldest writers' conference in the nation, a gathering at a picturesque mountaintop retreat where literary giants, book editors and up-and-coming novelists have been coming together once a year since the 1920s.

AP - People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.

AP - The action comedy "Tropic Thunder" weathered a rush of new movies to remain No. 1 for a second-straight weekend with $16.1 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

AP - She has shuttered 23 schools, fired more than 30 principals and given notice to hundreds of teachers and administrative workers.

AP - President Bush declared Sunday that four Florida counties hit hardest by Tropical Storm Fay are major disaster areas, making them eligible for federal aid.

AP - A man who held police at bay during a two-day Maryland motel standoff and his pregnant girlfriend, who claimed to be his hostage, both face charges, state police said Saturday.

AP - A Spanish tenor, a British soccer star and a throng of kung-fu fighters are among the scheduled closing-ceremony attractions Sunday night as China concludes its first Olympics and hands over the role of Summer Games to London.