CHINGUETTI, Mauritania — On nights when the wind hisses across the dunes, the old man sits on his straw mat, draws a blanket around his shoulders and counts his dwindling money.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Arctic sea ice this winter just missed setting the record for fewest square miles covered since monitoring by satellite began, according to University of Colorado researchers.

ROYAL MARINE BASE CHIVENOR, England — With Champagne bottles popping, a Royal Navy crew celebrated at home Thursday after nearly two weeks in Iranian captivity, hugging tearful relatives as Britons expressed outraged that the team was used by Tehran for propaganda.

Darryl Stingley spent more than half his life in a wheelchair, a symbol of the violence of the NFL, where large bodies collide at high speeds on every play.

BERKELEY — The state Senate leader on Thursday announced plans for an advisory ballot measure calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, hoping to prompt debate among presidential candidates campaigning in California.

OMAHA, Neb. — Now that it has identified the conditions that allowed a salmonella outbreak in peanut butter — a leaky roof and a faulty sprinkler — ConAgra Foods Inc. has to rebuild more than just parts of its plant. It has to rebuild trust.

NEW CASTLE, Ind. — A cat helped spare a family from death by carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on the bed and meowing wildly as fumes filled the home, the owners said.

WASHINGTON — Almost 25 million phone numbers were added to the federal government’s Do Not Call list in fiscal 2006, demonstrating that more and more Americans don’t want their dinners disturbed by telemarketers.

LONG BEACH — A father of three was arrested for allegedly running a methamphetamine manufacturing and sales operation in his home.

SAN DIEGO — More than one-third of 18,000 people arrested in a nearly yearlong federal crackdown on illegal immigrants were not the people authorities targeted, according to government figures.

EUREKA — Spent nuclear fuel rods currently resting in a decommissioned nuclear power facility in the King Salmon area appear to be destined for a safer location from the North Coast’s hefty seismic hazards.

The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts.

NEW ORLEANS — Today, the Lower 9th Ward is a dreary landscape of deserted brick and wood-frame structures, concrete slabs where homes once stood, unshaded streets and sidewalks buckled by uprooted live oaks and weeks of standing water. At night, a graveyard silence is broken only by the skittering of rats.