AP - The price tag for fighting California wildfires during just the past few weeks has climbed to more than $60 million, with the fire season's peak months still looming ahead.

AP - Deep beneath the crystalline blue surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the southeastern U.S. lies a virtual rain forest of coral reefs so expansive the network is believed to be the world's largest.

AP - Six more cases have been found of cancer patients being given incorrect radiation doses at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia.

AP - Prosecutors are to give the first public glimpse into the case against the man accused of killing a Kansas college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn model.

AP - Phoenix police have found two young children taken when armed gunmen burst into a home.

AP - Researchers at Michigan State University are working to turn the rutabaga into an oil-producing powerhouse that could make the turnip-like vegetable a better source of biofuel than other food crops.

AP - An attorney for a New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges says he worked with the FBI to deliberately make provocative statements.

AP - Nearly all residents have been allowed back into their homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where a wildfire once threatened their communities.

AP - What killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart so suddenly in 1791? Was the 35-year-old composer poisoned? Could it have been kidney failure? A parasite?

AP - Jury selection has begun in the trial of two suspects accused in the 2007 rape and assault of a mother and her young son.

AP - Ohio on Tuesday executed a murder-for-hire triggerman for killing the mother of his intended target, who lay severely wounded nearby as his mother died.

AP - Construction of new single-family homes rose for the fifth-straight month in July as more buyers walked into model homes ready to sign contracts, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.

AP - Four gunmen burst into a home early Tuesday, kidnapping a 2-year-old boy and 11-month-old girl when their mother could not meet demands for money, police said. The children were released safely five hours later.

AP - Tourists coming to ground zero to see the Sept. 11 memorial often peer through a fenced-off construction site for a glimpse and ask street vendors when it will be built.

AP - A Missouri woman has been charged with cyberbullying for allegedly posting photos and personal information of a teenage girl on the 'Casual Encounters' section of Craigslist after an Internet argument.

AP - A New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges had training from the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative, his attorney said Tuesday.

AP - The public will get to pay their respects to guitar virtuoso and inventor Les Paul on Friday in Milwaukee followed by a burial in his Wisconsin hometown of Waukesha.

AP - The man accused of causing a security scare that shut down New York City's LaGuardia Airport has been ruled mentally unfit for court proceedings.

AP - Former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Carly Fiorina has taken the first formal step toward running for the U.S. Senate seat of Democrat Barbara Boxer.

AP - South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she feels sorry for her husband's Argentine lover and believes the philandering governor's affair is almost like an addiction to alcohol or pornography.

AP - The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.

AP - New York's attorney general said Tuesday he is trying to shut down a debt collector whose employees used outrageous tactics in several states, such as threatening to sexually attack one debtor's daughter, berating people as drunks and deadbeats, and bullying others with threats of arrest.

AP - An investment banker accused of bribing Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford pleaded guilty Tuesday and will cooperate with prosecutors, the second co-defendant to admit funneling cash and gifts to Langford in exchange for $7.1 million in bond business.

AP - An attorney for an executed man is sparring in court with a lawyer for the judge on trial for closing her court before the inmate could file a last-minute appeal.

AP - Voters in eco-conscious Seattle were deciding Tuesday whether to pay a 20-cent fee for every paper or plastic bag they get from supermarkets, drug stores and convenience stores.

AP - A former Swiss banker should get a sharply reduced prison term for helping the U.S. government as a star witness in a wide-ranging tax evasion investigation of banking giant UBS AG, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The banker contends his cooperation warrants no jail time at all.

AP - A tornado swept through a southeast Texas shopping district without warning Tuesday, collapsing a department store roof, overturning vehicles and leaving several people in stores and parking lots with minor injuries, authorities said.

AP - A Missouri woman is accused of cyberbullying for allegedly posting photos and personal information of a teenage girl on the 'Casual Encounters' section of Craigslist after an Internet argument.

AP - Two studies by federal and academic researchers have found low rates of side effects with the blockbuster cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, but a total of 32 deaths — and questionable promotion tactics by maker Merck & Co.

AP - This week's indictment of a hacker believed responsible for the biggest retail-store data breaches in U.S. history doesn't necessarily make shoppers safer from having their credit card numbers plundered.

AP - Do your friends cover their ears when you sing along with the radio? Does the choir director ask you to lip-sync?

AP - Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's niece called 911 after a man beat him up while he was answering a grandmother's cries for help, saying her uncle was 'bleeding all over the place.'

AP - Wildlife officers are looking for a bear that forced its way into a home and attacked the homeowner, and may have been behind other break-ins in the Aspen area this summer.

AP - The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.

AP - Judge Sharon Keller has taken the stand in her ethics trial over whether she denied a death-row inmate's chance at a last appeal before being executed.

AP - An elderly homeowner fired a gun at a utility worker after mistaking him for a robber breaking into his home, and another homeowner backed his car into a worker after a long-running dispute about a tree, police said Tuesday.

AP - A Kansas college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn model spent the evening she disappeared with her friends at various bars, where she was seen leaving with the man accused of killing her, witnesses testified Tuesday.

AP - The Fort Worth police chief says he's revising his department's bar inspection policies in the wake of a June raid on a gay bar that left one man hospitalized with a serious head injury.

AP - Two 10-year-old boys charged in the alleged gang-rape of an 8-year-old Liberian girl must be released from juvenile detention and placed in therapeutic foster-care homes rather than with their own families, judges ruled Tuesday.

AP - Police in South Florida searched for clues Tuesday after a woman, her 15-year-old son and another person were killed at a home in a quiet neighborhood.

AP - An Oklahoma judge on Tuesday overturned a state law that required women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound and a doctor's description of the fetus.

AP - Curfews might not be just for kids anymore in one northern New Jersey city.

AP - Federal agents seized several rifles and other guns, $14,000 cash and newspaper clippings of the Sept. 11 attacks from a man accused of plotting international terrorism, according to a warrant unsealed Tuesday.

AP - A man accused of killing a Kansas college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn model pleaded not guilty to her murder Tuesday.

AP - A Texas judge on trial for closing her court despite knowing that a death-row inmate's final appeal was running late testified Tuesday that denying a request to stay open was no judicial ruling on her part.

AP - Seattle voters rejected a 20-cent fee for every paper or plastic bag they get from supermarkets, drug stores and convienence stores.