AP - A wind-driven brush fire destroyed dozens of homes Thursday in the tony enclave of Montecito, forcing residents to evacuate what has long been a hideaway for the rich and famous.

AP - Authorities were trying to determine whether a natural gas leak caused an explosion that leveled a restaurant and a shop, killing one person, injuring at least seven and forcing several downtown blocks to evacuate.

AP - County clerks across California are clamoring for legal advice to resolve confusion about when to begin the gay-marriage ban that voters passed last week in a ballot initiative.

AP - Federal prosecutors in Iowa say a former CEO for a kosher slaughterhouse has been arrested on a bank fraud charge.

AP - Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers said Friday he doesn't know President-elect Barack Obama any better than 'thousands of other Chicagoans' and the two never talked about Ayers' anti-war activities.

AP - Three Chicago teens who apparently sneaked away from a school-sponsored camp retreat to paddle along a nearby river drowned early Friday. Their paddle boats — missing floor plugs already removed for the winter — quickly took on water and sank.

AP - The former CEO of a slaughterhouse raided by immigration authorities earlier this year was arrested Friday on new charges accusing him of bank fraud.

AP - Zeituni Onyango came to the United States seeking asylum from her native Kenya but was turned down and ordered to leave the country in 2004.

AP - A Georgia priest facing excommunication for supporting the ordination of women said Friday he plans to visit the Vatican with a contingent of fellow priests and a bishop to appeal the decision.

AP - No one is sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School.

AP - California's generous offering of holidays for state workers — the equivalent of nearly three work weeks — is among the items Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to trim to help counter a mounting budget deficit.

AP - The FBI says the white powder that spilled onto a mail clerk's hand at the Utah headquarters of the Mormon church is nontoxic.

AP - In recent months, General Motors has been burning through about $3.1 million an hour, or $52,000 — the price of a well-equipped Chevy Tahoe SUV — every minute.

AP - Evidence from the suicide of a Missouri girl can be used by prosecutors against a woman charged with helping to create a false Internet identity that was used to harass the teenager, a federal judge ruled Friday.

AP - A former host of a TV stunt show put himself and others in danger because he was reckless and selfish enough to try to parachute from the Empire State Building 2 1/2 years ago, a prosecutor told jurors Friday.

AP - Unstable rubble hampered efforts Friday to determine what caused a thunderous explosion that killed one person, injured several and leveled a downtown restaurant and a store in the southern Colorado city of Pueblo.

AP - A former escaped inmate who killed a New York state trooper and wounded two others while on the run in 2006 cannot withdraw his guilty pleas and stand trial, an appeals court ruled Friday.

AP - Mayors of three cities hit hardest by the economic crisis — Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix — asked the federal government Friday for a piece of the $700 billion bailout package, saying they need help just like financial institutions.

AP - A Massachusetts state senator charged over the summer with sexually harassing four women has resigned.

AP - Police say a laid-off worker returned to his former office in Northern California and fatally shot three people.

AP - The Mormon church on Friday blamed opponents of California's gay marriage ban for sending hoax mailings containing white powder to temples, while a group that also supported the measure condemned 'acts of domestic terrorism against our supporters.'