AmCan Toys for Tots drive

Register Staff Writer

Downtown Napa is getting its mojo back.

Want proof that downtown Napa is becoming a hot address? One hundred investors together and paid an eye-popping $63 million last week to own rooms in the luxury Westin Verasa hotel on McKinstry Street.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - It's a name that needs no address. Everyone knows Santa Claus lives at the North Pole.

A high speed chase that began in Vallejo and ended in Napa Friday evening landed 21-year-old Eric Anthony Tyson in Solano County Jail. American Canyon Police and Napa County Sheriff's deputies assisted Vallejo Police officers as the chase entered Napa County.

Decorated boats embark on a holiday parade on the Napa River, Saturday evening. The boating enthusiasts’ holiday spirit shone through the wet weather in this year’s parade, which began at the Napa Valley Yacht Club. The boats lit up the river all the way to the Third Street Bridge and back again.

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The average person may find it tough to understand state government, but Washington state officials want to deploy changes to alleviate state personnel's employment of acronyms, jargon and legalese that routinely pervade interfaces with constituents.

CHICAGO -- The gunman who fatally shot three people in a law firm's high-rise office before he was killed by police felt cheated over an invention, authorities said Saturday.

Plants to give for Christmas

"Fifty is the new 40. That's my mantra," said Mike Basayne of Napa, who turns 50 on Jan. 19. This mantra is one frequently held among the last third of the baby boom generation who live in Napa. People turning 50 today feel their best days are yet to come. With age comes wisdom and a better understanding of the world, they feel.

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO -- Delilah is homeless. She sleeps in a Ford Windstar van. And like her human owner, the 9-year-old mixed Labrador and Doberman relies on charity for food and medicine.

JINJA, Uganda -- At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep -- and dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer Gabriel Maziku.

BANIYANI, India -- It's an unused cornfield at the edge of an isolated village, an empty plot of earth that the police flattened with a backhoe and hosed down with a water tanker.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The young, bearded diplomat stretches back on his black leather sofa, speaking with the satisfaction of a CEO who has shattered Wall Street's forecasts.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's king warned Saturday that all of the Middle East is threatened by escalating conflicts around the region, from spiraling sectarian violence in Iraq to rising tensions in Lebanon to fighting among Palestinians.

MOSCOW -- The locked gates and barred windows that kept 45 women from escaping a fire early Saturday at a drug treatment center pointed to conditions now common in post-Soviet Russia's state-run institutions.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for financing insurgents and possessing bombs escaped from prison Saturday in northern Iraq with the help of a police officer, authorities said.