As Salvador Rios drove himself and his vineyard manager to the California State Pruning Championship early Wednesday morning, he strategized.

Fire swept through a northwest Napa home early Thursday morning, causing $100,000 in damage, according to fire officials.

A Napa women who admitted to having an improper sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy was ordered this week to undergo psychological counseling.

Napa's main wine industry trade group has come out against the measure on the June ballot that would require Napa County to compensate property owners if a new law causes a drop in their real estate values.

WASHINGTON -- The discovery of a furry, beaver-like animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals.

WASHINGTON -- Flawed government planning for major disasters led to rampant confusion during the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House concluded Thursday in a report focusing more on fixing shortfalls before the next storm season than on assigning blame.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials opened the door Thursday to a delay in allowing a state-owned United Arab Emirates company to assume significant operations at six U.S. ports as lawmakers pushed for a new 45-day investigation of the deal.

PHOENIX -- A man pulled a gun during a legal proceeding Thursday and took as many as nine people hostage in an office in a central Phoenix high-rise, authorities said. One female captive later escaped.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The National Rifle Association urged a state judge Thursday to overturn an ordinance voters overwhelmingly approved in November banning handgun possession and firearm sales.

LAS VEGAS -- U.S. and British government scientists performed an underground nuclear experiment, short of a nuclear blast, Tuesday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.

MOSCOW -- Rescuers paused repeatedly in hopes of hearing survivors trapped under concrete and metal beams Thursday after a snow-laden roof collapsed on one of Moscow's biggest markets, killing at least 56 people.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen killed dozens of civilians Thursday and dumped their bodies in a ditch, as the government ordered a tough daytime curfew of Baghdad and three provinces to stem the sectarian violence that has left at least 114 dead since the bombing of a Shiite shrine.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the Associated Press, a move which would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been imprisoned there.