AP - A wind-whipped wildfire sent flames roaring through a rugged canyon in the Colorado foothills, forcing hundreds of people to flee and destroying an unknown number of homes mdash; some that belonged to the firefighters themselves.

AP - Tropical Storm Hermine rolled into south Texas early Tuesday, bringing heavy rains and strong winds to an area battered by Hurricane Alex earlier this summer.

AP - An imam who has become the public face of a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero has returned to the United States following a taxpayer-funded tour of the Middle East, his wife said Monday.

AP - A small plane crashed and burst into flames on a street in a southern Nevada residential neighborhood Monday, killing one person and badly injuring three others, authorities said.

AP - Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.

AP - Jefferson Thomas, who as a teenager was among nine black students to integrate a Little Rock high school in the nation's first major battle over school segregation, has died. He was 67.

AP - The Justice Department won't say if the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from gushing from BP's undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to shore.

AP - Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas distributed sandbags and warned of flash floods as Tropical Storm Hermine headed toward the northwestern Gulf coast on Monday.

AP - As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state's renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights.

AP - Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

AP - More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

AP - The USS Olympia, a one-of-a-kind steel cruiser that returned home to a hero's welcome after a history-changing victory in the Spanish-American War, is a proud veteran fighting what may be its final battle.

AP - The Black Widow of eating contests gobbled up nearly 181 chicken wings in 12 minutes, devouring the national championship record in Buffalo on Sunday.