AP - A man was executed early Friday by lethal injection for the 1990 stabbing death of his wife, despite the pleas of his four children who sought clemency for their father.

AP - Police were searching for a second escaped inmate who broke out of an Iowa prison using a homemade grappling hook to scale a 30-foot wall.

AP - Federal immigration agents detained more than 100 workers at a construction site for a new Wal-Mart distribution center, authorities said.

AP - A wildfire fanned by strong wind burned 500 acres of brush early Friday in a rugged canyon area, officials said.

AP - Haider Sediqi didn't give much thought to the small, zippered pouch that a passenger forgot in his taxicab when he got out at Los Angeles International Airport.

AP - A 6-year-old girl reported missing by her father this week may actually have been killed more than a year ago, police said, and they called the father a 'person of interest' in the case.

USATODAY.com - Soaring state tax collections have created momentum for tax cuts in 2006, when most governors and legislators will face voters. State and local revenue rose 7.2% in the first nine months of this year, the biggest jump since 1990, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Spending is up 6%, the most since 2001.

AP - So many deer inhabit the area around Pig's Eye Lake just east of St. Paul that one frustrated local official has compared them to unwanted vermin.

AP - A mechanic with a long criminal record was convicted Thursday of kidnapping, raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl whose abduction was captured by a car-wash security camera.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A wildfire whipped by hot Santa Ana winds raced through parched canyons near the Southern California coast on Friday and threatened expensive communities near the seaside city of Ventura.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to cut $700 million from the food stamp program as part of a broad bill to reduce federal spending by $50 billion, despite objections from antihunger groups.

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida businessman has sued Florida Power & Light over Hurricane Wilma's massive blackouts, accusing the state's largest power company of gross negligence in failing to maintain power poles and other equipment.

PORTLAND (Reuters) - Oregon's second largest school district plans to ask voters to back a May ballot measure proposing $195 million in debt to finance the construction of new schools to relieve overcrowding since enrollment has grown over 20 percent in the past decade.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's not easy finding love in cyberspace, and now some frustrated online daters say they were victims of fraud by two top Internet matchmaking services and have taken their complaints to court.

ASTORIA, Ore (Reuters) - A state employee wielding a wooden club walked the slippery docks looking for a sea lion oozing blood from a gunshot wound.

AP - The second of two inmates who escaped from an Iowa prison was caught Friday in southern Missouri, officials said.

AP - An 18-year-old man accused of killing his girlfriend's parents and kidnapping her was videotaped discussing plans to conduct an armed raid on another family's home and kill people inside, according to court documents released Friday.

AP - Fire spreads through a third-story apartment before dawn Friday, killing four children and injuring two others, authorities said.

AP - A 6-year-old girl reported missing by her father this week may actually have been killed more than a year ago, police said, and they called the father a 'person of interest' in the case.

AP - A high school senior was shot to death outside a fast-food restaurant after fistfights broke out among youths who had gathered there after school, authorities said. An 18-year-old man was arrested Friday.

AP - DNA evidence helped prosecutors win capital murder indictments in the slayings of five people who were kidnapped from a fast-food restaurant more than two decades ago.

AP - Pushed by fierce Santa Ana winds, a wildfire tripled to nearly 1,500 acres Friday and crept toward large, ridgetop homes where residents were told to stand by for possible evacuation.

AP - The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that 'intelligent design' isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, the center of a scandal over pedophile priests, will surrender background information on its priests to the U.S. government under a deal to end a criminal probe.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Finding affordable housing in New York is hard enough for most, but victims of Hurricane Katrina are facing eviction from hotels and may end up ringing in the New Year in the city's homeless shelters.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland (Reuters) - A U.S. advisory panel said on Friday it saw no evidence Roche AG's anti-flu medicine Tamiflu caused the deaths of 12 children in Japan but urged regulators to continue monitoring for potential risks.

AP - An immigration raid at a Wal-Mart distribution center under construction led to the arrests of 125 illegal workers, all of whom will be deported, federal officials said Friday.

AP - One of the nation's largest home lenders offered 1,500 housing units for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency has so far failed to put families into any of them, a Democratic congressman said Friday.

AP - Pushed by fierce Santa Ana winds, a 2,000-acre wildfire crept toward about 200 large, ridge-top homes Friday, prompting a voluntary evacuation.

AP - Engineers responsible for monitoring the levees that failed following Hurricane Katrina were never told that canal water had been pooling in yards beside a flood wall months before the storm, an Army Corps of Engineers manager said Friday.

AP - An atheist who has spent four years trying to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from being recited in public schools is now challenging the motto printed on U.S. currency because it refers to God.