A mother, far right, walks her daughters home from school on Elm Street, in the first rain storm of the spring season, Thursday. More rain is expected to give Napa a good soak over the next couple of days

State Assembly Democrats wrapped up their four-day summit at Napa’s Silverado Resort Thursday, providing lawmakers an opportunity to sample some Napa delicacies and take a gander at the Napa flood control project from chartered buses.

Marooned in a scruffy light-industrial zone of auto repair shops, a bus barn and equipment rentals, two hard-luck Victorian houses will soon be floated down the Napa River for a new life in Benicia.

Detectives are looking for man who allegedly brutally beat a 45-year-old Napa woman over a couple of days, according to sheriff’s Lt. Doug Pike.

Napa County residents report more problems with identity theft and consumer fraud per capita than anyone else in the nation, according to a federal report released this week.

ATLANTA — About one in 150 American children has autism, U.S. health officials said Thursday, calling the troubling disorder an urgent public health concern that is more common than they had thought.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Gunmen stopped a pickup truck full of illegal immigrants, shot some and took the rest captive Thursday in an attack that left at least three people dead and two wounded, authorities said.

CAMP PENDLETON — A military judge granted a Marine corporal’s request Thursday to withdraw his guilty plea to charges of murdering an unarmed Iraqi civilian, but warned the serviceman that he could be sentenced to death if convicted.

THORSBY, Ala. — A freight train struck a van at a rural Alabama crossing early Thursday, killing four men on their way to construction jobs and injuring four others, authorities said.

BARRE, Vt. — Put down the flute and keep your eyes on the road.

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — Rival Palestinian factions signed a power-sharing accord aimed at ending months of bloodshed Thursday, agreeing that the Islamic militant group Hamas would head a new coalition government that would “respect” past peace agreements with Israel.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S.-backed Iraqi forces stormed the Health Ministry and arrested the No. 2 official Thursday, accusing him of diverting millions of dollars to the biggest Shiite militia and allowing death squads use of ambulances and government hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as an extraordinary tabloid tale — Playboy centerfold, jeans model, bride of an octogenarian oil tycoon, reality-show subject, tragic mother — died Thursday after collapsing at a hotel. She was 39.

ATLANTA — The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said Thursday it is removing from the clergy a gay minister who announced he has a partner.

12:30 p.m. WASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials undercut the intelligence community in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq by insisting in briefings to the White House that there was a clear relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the Defense Department's inspector general said Friday.

1:15 p.m. DANIA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Prescription drugs were found in Anna Nicole Smith’s hotel room, but there were no pills in her stomach, and investigators said Friday they are awaiting tests that would tell whether the former centerfold died of an overdose, as some close to her suspect.