Infrastructure and development have been recurring topics at St. Helena City Council discussions, but the underlying question is, what should St. Helena look like 20 years from now?

The apparent suicide of an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer Wednesday remains under investigation, Napa Police reported Thursday.

Anyone who pouts or cries had better watch out -- Santa Claus is coming to town today to usher in Napa's 44th annual Christmas Parade.

Tanya Spott of Pleasanton got up at 5:45 a.m. Thursday to make the shopping trip to the Napa Premium Outlets with two friends. They were particularly drawn to the Coach Outlet store, she said.

Police had to use a taser gun Thursday to subdue a Napa man who they suspected was armed with a handgun.

Atticus Fisher, 18 months, would rather sit on the lap of his dad, Brad Fisher, than Santa’s during Yountville’s 18th annual Festival of Lights. “We were nervous but figured we can tease him with the photo when he’s a teenager and show it to his girlfriends,” said mom Ginger Fisher. Jorgen Gulliksen/Register photos

It was cold, it was dark and in some places it was foggy. None of that would stop millions of bargain-seekers from climbing into their cars for a pre-dawn raid on their local malls, electronics retailers and discounters for the official start to the holiday season.

CHICAGO -- A slain woman's relatives were upset Friday by the way police handled a 23-hour Thanksgiving Day standoff in her apartment building that ended with a gunman killing the 22-year-old and himself.

The shorter days and longer shadows that signal the end of summer also bring us the beginning of a long harvest season that continues into November, long after the peaches and plums have disappeared from the farmers markets. There are several crops you can grow in the home garden that are both ornamental and delicious and which stretch the harvest season into winter, providing a nutritious diet of fresh fruits.

OAKLAND -- Two brothers were in police custody Friday after gunfire erupted at another family's Thanksgiving dinner, leaving a widow, her brother and her mother dead.

MERCED -- Authorities here are taking a new approach to halting the spread of methamphetamine in rural areas, speaking in a familiar language to the Hispanic laborers who are often recruited to manufacture the drug.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- The Associated Press was recently given extensive access to the largest archive of Nazi concentration camp records, which has been closed for 50 years.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Belfast's most infamous militant stormed into the Northern Ireland Assembly headquarters Friday with a bagful of pipe bombs, forcing an evacuation that overshadowed the politicians' failure to meet a deadline for forming a new Catholic-Protestant administration.

LONDON -- A rare radioactive substance killed an ex-KGB spy turned Kremlin critic, the British government said Friday. In a dramatic statement written before he died, the man called Russian President Vladimir Putin "barbaric and ruthless" and blamed him personally for the poisoning.

WASHINGTON -- The Iran-Contra affair exploded 20 years ago today, a scandal that crippled the last two years of Ronald Reagan's presidency and temporarily damaged the career prospects of Robert Gates, President Bush's nominee to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

KINSHASA, Congo -- The United Nations said Friday its investigators have discovered three mass graves at a northeast Congo military camp containing the bodies of 30 people -- including women and children -- who were allegedly killed by soldiers.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers, drenched them with kerosene and burned them alive, and Iraqi soldiers did nothing to stop the attack, police and witnesses said.

GENEVA -- A U.N. anti-torture panel said Friday it had credible reports of unofficial detention centers, abuse and disappearances in Russia's restive southern province of Chechnya.