AP - A rare leather-bound book that played an influential role in America's early history could bring a windfall for a soldier training for his second tour in Iraq.

AP - It's an old quip in the West: Whiskey's for drinkin' and water's for fightin'. Only these days, there's more people with a stake in the fight for water and a dwindling supply.

AP - The son of a white supremacist accused of killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said Monday the shooting was unforgivable and he wished his father had died instead.

AP - A major Southern California freeway connection remains closed because of the possibility of structural damage caused by a deadly tanker truck inferno.

AP - Police in Houston say a woman was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire in the doorway of her apartment and is in critical condition.

AP - Sal Lazzara needed some new office furniture. Thanks to a flamboyant financier's downfall, he found a matching set with an infamous pedigree.

AP - Brad Pitt and his siblings have given $1 million to help a Missouri hospital open a new pediatric cancer center that will be named for their mother.

AP - Ta'Shon Rain Little Light, a happy little girl who loved to dance and dress up in traditional American Indian clothes, had stopped eating and walking. She complained constantly to her mother that her stomach hurt.

AP - Lawyers for the poor, who say they already are stretched to the breaking point by huge caseloads and dwindling staff, face layoffs across the country as local governments slash spending in these hard economic times.

AP - A family friend says X-rays show the tumor in the chest of a 13-year-old Minnesota boy who resisted treatment has shrunk significantly after court-ordered chemotherapy.

AP - Environmental groups say they are suing the federal government over its decision to remove gray wolves in the upper Great Lakes region from the endangered species list.

AP - Emergency tapes released Monday show workers dialed 911 in a frenzy after escaping an explosion that killed three workers at a Slim Jim processing plant, with one panicked woman telling dispatchers: 'ConAgra just blew up!'

AP - Chancellor Michael Martin doesn't question the prestige the Louisiana State University Press brings to his school, with Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and poetry, tomes on Southern history and culture and other noted works to its credit.

AP - The gym at Eberhart Elementary School is bright and spacious — with high ceilings, several basketball hoops, even a large, colorful climbing wall.

AP - A North Carolina man whose 13-year-old son died after being tied to a tree overnight has entered a plea to second-degree murder in which he acknowledges prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him.

AP - Crunch is no Beast of 'Busco, but he's a decent stand-in for a legendary snapping turtle purportedly the size of a rowboat. The northeastern Indiana town of Churubusco (chair-uh-BUHS'-koh) is hosting a four-day festival this week in honor of the 60th anniversary of a big hunt for its beast.

AP - Texas A&M University System regents have accepted the resignation of president Elsa Murano and named the CEO of their Galveston campus as interim president of the flagship school.

AP - 'He was trying to talk to his son, encouraging him to hang on,' Warden David Gregory said.

AP - The savage drug war in Mexico. Crumbling state budgets. Weariness with current drug policy. The election of a president who said, 'Yes — I inhaled.'

AP - A Chicago teen has pleaded guilty in the killing of a boy who was shot while he tried to shield a classmate aboard a city bus.

AP - Two bodies have been found at the Indiana office of an eye doctor who was under indictment charging he performed unnecessary surgeries on patients.

AP - A South Florida teenager accused of gruesomely killing and mutilating nearly two dozen cats must undergo a psychiatric evaluation before he is released, a judge ruled Monday.

AP - Looting and vandalism that broke out in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Lakers' basketball championship won't keep the city from celebrating the team's victory: City officials and the Lakers are planning to foot the bill for a victory parade they hope will overshadow unrest the police chief blames on a mob of 'knuckleheads.'

AP - A suburban Kansas City woman who already pleaded guilty to murder in a spree of videotaped sex killings also pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping a 5-year-old girl while fleeing police in 2006.

AP - Desiree Andaverde was 3 years old when she told police she watched 'daddy put mommy in the trunk.'

AP - An eye surgeon and his wife were found shot to death Monday, hours before they were scheduled to surrender to authorities on charges of performing unnecessary surgeries on patients, including children, and bilking money from health insurers.

AP - Millions of files containing information about U.S. immigrants will soon be open to the public through a federal facility in suburban Kansas City.

AP - President Barack Obama plugged his party's candidate for Virginia governor into his fundraising and organizational pipeline by e-mailing hundreds of thousands of Democrats on Monday.

AP - A bus driver and another man were shot and killed Monday in the employee lot of a northern Virginia bus station about a mile from a busy shopping mall.

AP - Millions of files containing detailed information about U.S. immigrants — including their spouses' names, as well as personal photographs and letters — will soon become available to the public through a federal facility in suburban Kansas City.

AP - Looting and vandalism that broke out in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Lakers' basketball championship won't keep the city from celebrating the team's victory: City officials and the Lakers are planning a victory parade they hope will overshadow unrest the police chief blames on a mob of 'knuckleheads.'

AP - A co-worker suspected in the Monday morning shootings of a bus driver and another man in the employee lot of a northern Virginia bus station surrendered later in the day, authorities said.