national

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Sarah Palin was a hockey mom, small-town mayor and rising young Republican star in Alaska in 2003 when she ran afoul of her party's establishment over ethics reform and was cast into the political wilderness.

PITTSBURGH -- By her own admission, Katie Spotz was no swimming star at her high school in Mentor, Ohio. In fact, she was one of the worst on the team.

"I'm slow," she said. "But endurance I can do."

PITTSBURGH -- Stephanie Babines is trying to open a pole-dancing studio. It's the first thing a visitor will see on her Web site.

Babines, in a black tube top with long, blond hair caressing her shoulders, is grasping a gleaming stripper pole.

Her shirt is just high enough -- and her black pants just low enough -- to reveal a large tattoo on her lower back.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Army National Guard Spc. James Roland Ambler III said his uniform put steel in his spine and transformed a life headed nowhere into one worthy of the tattooed inscription displayed on his inner forearms: "American Soldier."

Care packages to soldiers overseas contain a lot of the stuff you'd see in a convenience store: Cookies, men's magazines and beef jerky.

But a veterans' group organizing care package campaigns at both the Democratic and Republican conventions has an item that's uniquely crafted for an arid war zone: Indestructible playing cards.

Although Indiana law forbids the sale of raw, unpasteurized milk directly to consumers, Gina Robinson Ungar manages to distribute it from her small Rose Hill Dairy to nearly 40 families.

When Sen. Barack Obama takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Thursday night, he will be heralded as the first black candidate to accept a major-party presidential nomination.

Hundreds of thousands of children are going to school this fall without protection from deadly diseases.

Barbara Loe Fisher has been fighting about the safety of childhood vaccines for three decades.

But the president of the National Vaccine Information Center says she's not opposed to vaccination so much as she's opposed to a "one-size-fits-all vaccine policy imposed by government health agencies."

By the time an American child is 12, most will have received up to 35 shots to protect against some 34 diseases. Public health officials say even though many of these diseases are now rare in the U.S., the viruses and bacteria that cause them are either still in common circulation or can be easily imported by travelers.