In the Napa Valley, houses with vineyards are highly prized and pretty common.

The Register is beginning to compile its annual list of houses in the valley with not-to-be missed holiday decorations. If you would like to recommend a house for this list, send the address to Features Editor Sasha Paulsen at spaulsen@napanews.com. Please include any special details and, for houses in Napa, the area of the city where the address is. The list will be published Saturday./Register

Finally, downtown Napa has a significant piece of public art.

Is Napa doing enough to protect the public from vicious dogs?

Willing to let a camera in on your family Christmas Day? Have a special surprise waiting for a special person?

Thousands of Mexcanos woke up earlier than normal today and gathered at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church to honor The Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico.

WASHINGTON -- Secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Illegal detentions. Suspects snatched off the streets and shipped without extradition to other countries for harsh interrogation. Government directives cloaked in secrecy.

LAKE FOREST -- The white van eases into a liquor store parking lot and is swarmed by 30 Hispanic day laborers who begin intense job negotiations with the driver. Within seconds, another wave of people descend on the van. Mostly white and middle aged, they snap pictures as they cite federal labor laws.

LOS ANGELES -- It is one of those indelible images from the late 1960s that remains locked in the minds of those who were there.

NEW ORLEANS -- Singer Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown was 81 and already seriously ill when he fled the area ahead of Hurricane Katrina, and associates think the stress of evacuating and the heartbreak of losing his home hastened his death.

LOS ANGELES -- Tsunami waves generated by a large offshore earthquake would threaten at least 1 million coastal residents in California and inundate the nation's largest port complex, according to a new report.

NEW YORK -- An actor who once played an aspiring mobster on "The Sopranos" faces murder charges along with another man in the death of an off-duty police officer, authorities said Sunday.

From the Associated Press

POMONA -- When Iraqi state television began transmitting internationally a few months ago, Zaid Altahan bought a satellite dish and got more than he expected: A news source that will help him decide how to vote.

LOS ANGELES -- As he presses for Stanley Tookie Williams' execution for four murders, a top county prosecutor faces legal troubles of his own for killing a man he confronted while working as a reserve sheriff's deputy.

From the Associated Press