ANCHORAGE, Alaska The first serious scandal in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration has roots in a family feud. It erupted into public view with the July 11 firing of the state's top public safety official.

WASHINGTON The Bush administration can prohibit meat packers from testing their animals for mad cow disease, a federal appeals court said Friday.

WASHINGTON President Bush witnessed cannons firing, guns flinging and heavy marching at a Marines parade Friday night while visiting their barracks.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska If not for flooding at a remote creek, Chuck and Sally Heath might have found out by radio that their daughter, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, had been picked by John McCain to be his GOP running mate.

Reaction to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska The first serious scandal in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration has roots in a family feud. It erupted into public view with the July 11 firing of the state's top public safety official.

DENVER On a night of extraordinary history, Barack Obama turned instead to the ordinary - gas prices and tax cuts, jobs and mortgages - in hopes of finally convincing Americans that a man so unlike many of them has the experience and depth to lead.

DENVER On a historic day echoing the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Democrat Barack Obama on Thursday became the first African-American to accept a major-party presidential nomination and immediately set a JFK-like goal: to end America's dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska Sarah Palin was a hockey mom, small-town mayor and rising young Republican star in Alaska in 2003 when she ran afoul of her party's establishment over ethics reform and was cast into the political wilderness.

DENVER The flags waved and the "change" signs flapped and the flashes twinkled like fireflies. And the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan channeled a preacher with a dream, a Democrat from Hope and a Republican who saw morning in America, as 80,000 strong shook a coliseum with their feet.

WASHINGTON President Bush on Friday signed the Hubbard Act, surrounded by members of the California family whose multiple sacrifices inspired the military pay-and-benefits law.

DENVER Hiawatha Foster, a North Carolina delegate to the Democratic National Convention, already had two flags in her hands ready to wave Thursday afternoon, and an American flag jacket she said she'd worn to other political events.

BOSTON John McCain's search for a running mate was remarkable in that it was carried out in secret, concluded with a bang and conducted in sharp contrast to the freewheeling style of his early presidential campaign or his hard-charging Navy days.

Long before Denver, the drum roll of history began: If Barack Obama could capture the Democratic nomination for president, he would deliver the biggest speech of his life exactly 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s immortal "I Have a Dream" address.

DENVER Win or lose, John McCain threw the long ball Friday when he stunned the nation by picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

WASHINGTON Drunken-driving deaths fell in 32 states in 2007, the government reported Thursday, but alcohol-related fatalities increased among motorcycle riders in half the states.

DENVER John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate on Friday in a startling selection on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

PITTSBURGH Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden Friday took the momentum from their party's convention - and the sizeable poll bounce it produced - and plunged deep into the heart of this economically depressed region, where they badly need their energy and economic messages to click.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska Sarah Palin was a hockey mom, small-town mayor and rising young Republican star in Alaska in 2003 when she ran afoul of her party's establishment as a whistleblower and was cast into the political wilderness.

NAME - Sarah Heath Palin.