Although only a handful of Napa flood victims showed up at the first day of a federal assistance program Thursday, officials are bracing for many more in the days ahead.

Manuel Gomez looked stunned and confused as two Napa police detectives put him under arrest just as he clenched a contractor job with what he thought was a Napa homeowner.

More than 90 families across the country were duped by defunct Napa adoption firm Yunona USA for total losses of more than $750,000, according to local police.

There weren't enough chairs in the Napa Valley Unified School District board room to seat all the parents and students from Carneros Elementary School Wednesday night. People were lined along walls and spilled into the hallway, all to show their opposition to the possible closure of their school.

A short pursuit in west Napa ended with arrest of a local woman at an apartment complex.

WASHINGTON -- Under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, President Bush said Thursday that spy work stretching from the U.S. to Asia helped thwart terrorists plotting to use shoe bombs to hijack an airliner and crash it into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

WASHINGTON -- A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

WASHINGTON -- A band of Senate Republican holdouts reached agreement Thursday with the White House on changes in the Patriot Act designed to clear the way for passage of anti-terrorism legislation stalled in a dispute over civil liberties.

TRENTON, N.J. -- Wayne Gretzky was recorded on a wiretap talking to the alleged financier of a gambling ring, discussing how the hockey great's wife could avoid being implicated, a person with knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press on Thursday.

CAIRO, Egypt -- The first tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings since King Tut's in 1922 contains five sarcophagi with mummies, breaking the nearly centurylong belief that there's nothing more to find in the valley where some of Egypt's greatest pharaohs were buried.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll appeared in a video aired Thursday on a private Kuwaiti TV station, appealing in a calm, composed voice for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible."