national

Ann Minch, whose YouTube vow to stop making payments on her credit card captured the outrage of a nation, has reached a deal with Bank of America.

VENTURA, Calif. - An unusual situation involving very hot weather and a large pile of composting manure apparently triggered a fast-moving fire that was raging through brush and endangering hundreds of homes Wednesday in California, officials said.

Besides protesters, the G-20 Summit itself most likely will see no "drama" or significant agreement on the controversial issues facing the world leaders who will meet here for two days starting Thursday.

That was the consensus of panelists at a town hall meeting to discuss the agenda and the implications of the G-20 Summit.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti - Mesac Damas has confessed publicly to killing his five children and wife in Naples, Fla., and told the Naples Daily News he wants to die and go to heaven.

"I want death," Damas said from the back seat of the pickup truck transporting him to the Port-au-Prince airport, from where he was extradited to Miami late Tuesday.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Years ago, on an empty locomotive in New Mexico, an engineer and his co-worker found an old Bible that had been left behind.

When no one claimed it after a week in the railroad yard's lost and found, Pat Lynch took the tattered and torn book to his home in Bluewater Lake, N.M.

PITTSBURGH - In some ways, the Obama administration already has pulled off a marketing coup in hosting its first G-20 summit of key world financial leaders.

The team scored merely by choosing a quirky city perched on the East Coast/Midwest divide to host it.

TUCSON, Ariz. - Gone are the days when news of an after-school fight spread solely through word of mouth.

Today, text messages help draw crowds to the scuffle, and inevitably someone will post highlights on YouTube, giving the winner more than just bragging rights.

Tucson police may come across the action-packed video and see a reason to make an arrest.

Federal sharpshooters have begun destroying a herd of about 700 elk on a farm in southeastern Minnesota where chronic wasting disease (CWD) was discovered this year.

When Guerline Dieu Damas sent a letter to a Collier County criminal judge this year, begging to give her husband a second chance, it wasn't the first time.

Four years ago, Dieu filed a motion to dismiss an injunction against Mesac Damas after she contended he'd beaten her.

When Cary Hicks lost his group health insurance earlier this year, he was floored by how much an individual policy could cost him because he is a diabetic.

"I was looking for anything," said Hicks, who runs a small construction company. "I didn't have insurance. I couldn't afford any."