LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Southern California woman who grew up knowing little of her father - a heroic casualty of World War II - is now the proud owner of his long-lost battle medals, including a Silver Star and Purple Heart.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday that he's heading to California in an effort to get West Coast businesses to consider setting up shop in Iowa.
NEW YORK (AP) - Letters from John Lennon's killer detailing his obsession with the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" to the police officer who arrested him went on sale Monday through a Los Angeles auction house.
CARSON, Calif. (AP) - Drivers near Southern California's notorious Interstate 405 had reason to tone down their road rage when it was revealed the thing stopping traffic was a baby seal on city streets several miles from the ocean.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard says an Oregon man injured in a high-speed crash on the San Francisco Bay between a ferryboat and a motorboat has died.
GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) - His city's best fishing days are long past it, but lifelong Gloucester resident Ron Gilson still sees what once was when he drives past what remains.
WASHINGTON (AP) - With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.
HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) - Mindy McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, died Sunday in Arkansas in an apparent suicide. She was 37.
PALM CITY, Fla. (AP) - Michelle Obama jokingly says a mid-life crisis is what inspired her new haircut with bangs.
MANTOLOKING, N.J. (AP) - On the surface, things look calm and placid. Just beneath the waterline, however, it's a different story.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The CIA thrillers "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.
LAKE ELSINORE (AP) - A former councilman for the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore has been found slain in his home.
ROME (AP) - An influential Italian Catholic magazine is asking its readers if disgraced former Los Angeles archbishop Roger Mahony should participate in the upcoming election for a new pope.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - Ruby-throated hummingbirds are migrating to North America weeks earlier than in decades past, and research indicates that higher temperatures in their winter habitat may be the reason.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Jerry Buss, the Los Angeles Lakers' playboy owner who shepherded the NBA franchise to 10 championships from the '80s Showtime dynasty to the Kobe Bryant era, died Monday, his assistant said.
BRUSSELS (AP) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his NATO counterparts are considering leaving 8,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but a dispute arose Friday between the U.S. and German defense officials over whether that contingent would be an international force or an American one.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department has joined a lawsuit against disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong that alleges the former, seven-time Tour de France champion concealed his use of performance-enhancing drugs and defrauded his long-time sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service, Armstrong's lawyers said Friday.
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Police searched Friday for a Range Rover with dark tinted windows and custom rims that set off a fiery crash on the Las Vegas Strip when someone in the luxury SUV opened fire on a Maserati driven by an aspiring rapper.
PHOENIX (AP) - A woman charged in the stabbing and shooting death of her Arizona lover traded barbs with a prosecutor under a withering cross-examination as she struggled to explain why she can recall precise details of her life from years earlier, yet can't remember crucial aspects of the murder case against her.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - A car bomb exploded Thursday near Syria's ruling party headquarters in Damascus, killing at least 53 people and scattering mangled bodies among the blazing wreckage in one of the bloodiest days in the capital since the uprising began almost two years ago.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A Haitian judge on Thursday summoned Jean-Claude Duvalier to appear in court after the former dictator defied an order to attend a hearing to determine whether he should again face charges for human rights abuses committed during the nearly 15 years of his brutal regime.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - You think the Academy Awards are boring? Try the nominations. They only last a few minutes, but it's generally a sleepy academy suit and a sleepy starlet droning a list of names at 5:30 in the morning.
THOMSON, Ga. (AP) - A small private jet carrying a surgeon and members of his clinic staff aborted its landing at a Georgia airport before it hit a 60-foot utility pole and crashed in a flaming wreck, killing five people onboard and injuring two, federal authorities said Thursday.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - In an agonizingly slow announcement, a magistrate allowed Oscar Pistorius to go free on bail Friday, nine days after the Paralympian was arrested in the Valentine's Day killing of his girlfriend.
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Bullets were flying from a black Range Rover at a gray Maserati as the vehicles raced toward a red light on the Las Vegas Strip.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Four young adults have been stabbed after a feud spilled out of a downtown Los Angeles nightspot.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - More testing must be done to determine the cause of death of a 21-year-old Canadian tourist whose body was found wedged in a water tank atop a downtown Los Angeles hotel, authorities said Thursday.