The son of a retired Napa peace officer was shot twice just after midnight Tuesday, as he and a friend were walking along Main Street in downtown Napa.

Police investigators from three cities are working together to catch the men believed to have used an AK-47 while robbing at least three grocery stores at gunpoint, including an Albertsons in Napa.

After more than a decade without change, fares for both the VINE bus and VINE Go paratransit service are increasing March 1.

Slick spots of black ice Wednesday morning forced the closure of Petrified Forest Road, a link between Calistoga with Santa Rosa, leaving many commuters stuck, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Jerry Rico.

Napa County would be compelled to build a jail twice the size of the one it has now and shoulder millions of dollars in operating costs under a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ease overcrowding in state prisons.

9:30 a.m. Vintage Bank, a local financial institution with five branches in Napa County, has been acquired as part of a $156 million deal by Oregon-based Umpqua Holdings Corporation.

LONDON — The world is nudging closer to nuclear or environmental apocalypse, a group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday as it pushed the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.

SAN FRANCISCO — A young mother who claimed she tossed her three young sons in San Francisco Bay to send them to heaven was declared criminally insane Wednesday by a judge whose decision spared her a possible life sentence.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — The Taliban are on the attack in Afghanistan, and U.S. commanders want more troops to fight them — at the same time the military is straining under President Bush’s plans to send more to Iraq.

WASHINGTON  — Democrats’ hopes of starting off their control of the Senate with a sweeping commitment to ethics reform received a painful jolt Wednesday, their ethics and lobbying legislation sidetracked by a dispute with Republicans.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — An attorney accused of killing a man he thought had molested his daughter has been hit with a $5 million lawsuit by the victim’s family.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration agreed Wednesday to let a secret but independent panel of federal judges oversee the government’s controversial domestic spying program. Officials say the secret court has already approved at least one request for monitoring.

WASHINGTON — California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are embracing two different approaches to fighting global warming as the new Democrat-led Congress prepares to take action on the issue.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill — Two National Guardsmen who served in Iraq have been arrested, accused of illegally selling thousands of dollars of stolen military gear — from night-vision equipment to body armor — on eBay.

LOS ANGELES — Allan Maxwell still struggles to understand how a stray bullet could pierce the wall of his family kitchen, striking his 9-year-old stepdaughter in the head.

McLEAN, Va. — A Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife regularly beat and abused three domestic workers who were kept under conditions akin to slavery for months before they escaped, according to a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday.

ATLANTA — The tide has turned in the nation’s battle against cancer.

NEW YORK — Napoleon Bonaparte died a more prosaic death than some people would like to think, succumbing to stomach cancer rather than arsenic poisoning, according to new research into what killed the French emperor.

8 a.m. TEHRAN, Iran -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Iran was prepared for any possibility in the standoff with the West over its nuclear activities - a tough reaction to a U.S. military buildup in the Gulf meant as a warning to Tehran.

The Register is compiling a story about Napa Valley residents who’ve had rats, mice, raccoons, squirrels and other wild invaders in their homes. If you’d like to share your tale, please e-mail it to Sasha Paulsen, features editor, at spaulsen@napanews.com or send it to her care of the Napa Valley Register, P.O. Box 150, Napa, CA 94559. Submissions should be less than 250 words./Register